Dealing with the 'flexibility-security nexus': institutions, strategies, opportunities and barriers

This paper discusses the "flexibility-security nexus" which has become manifest in employment, the labour market and industrial relations. The starting point of the paper is the concept of "flexicurity", viewed as a particular way of dealing with the aforementioned nexus. The analysis focuses on four EU-member states: Denmark, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. The paper explores differences in the emphasis put on types and levels of flexibility and security, the particular trade-offs between forms of flexibility and security and the institutional contexts that "govern" these types, levels and trade-offs. In doing so the paper highlights important barriers, opportunities and challenges in dealing with the flexibilitysecurity nexus. Coordinated decentralisation and flexible multi-level governance in national IR-systems seem to represent important preconditions for the introduction of flexicurity arrangements, as the Danish and Dutch cases show.