Policy Endurance Despite the Crisis: Why the Context Changed but Employment Policies Did Not

Active social policies try to make work pay better than welfare. Such policies have been experimented upon in Europe since 1997. In the first half of the 2000s, they failed to accelerate a return to work, while results were even worse during the last crisis. How can we explain the persistence of such ineffective strategies? In an analysis of European institutions in three EU Member States, we argue that institutional, cognitive, and political factors can explain the inertia of public policies in periods of crisis.