Policy Transfer and Innovation for Building Resilient Bridges to the Labour Market

In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the urgency of the youth problem, in many parts of Europe, led to a swathe of policy responses involving learning, transfer and experimentation in order to address the complex needs of youth at risk. By drawing upon the main explanatory frameworks of policy learning and transfer, we test the hypothesis of a distinction between countries with policy machineries facilitating learning and experimentation with new, proactive youth employment measures and those exhibiting path dependence and inertia. Our study covers nine European countries (including Turkey) that represent a range of school-to-work transition regimes and of broader welfare regimes, and exhibit variable levels of national performance relating to youth (un)employment and its gender dimension. The primary research consists of interviews conducted, in each of the nine countries, with policy experts, officials, academics and researchers. Our analysis corroborates the above hypothesis. It provides evidence of processes that cross-cut the school-to-work transition-regime typology, and maps out trends across countries/regimes (as well as across regions/localities) with regard to policy learning and effective innovation in youth labour markets. It also highlights the policy challenges faced by the countries with exceptionally high youth unemployment (mostly Greece and Spain).  The paper comprises four sections. The first two sections present our analytical framework and lay out the research methodology. The third and fourth section examine the major channels of policy influence, transfer and diffusion within and across various levels of governance (including the supranational level) and reflect upon lesson-drawing processes.