The variety and growing number of continuing training providers in France have led the government to question whether these bodies constitute full-fledged service producers functioning in a market situation. In the absence of quality standards and rules governing competition, many questions arise as to the ways it is to be implemented and…

As this paper demonstrates, studying abortive educational reforms reveals a great deal about the complex political dynamics involved in making (and unmaking) key policy decisions. Using case studies of France and West Germany, the paper argues that the state in advanced industrial countries tends to maximize the political gains derived from…

This book contains 12 chapters, each of which is a case study or a commentary on the unemployment of the 1980s and early 1990s and on the programs devised to retrain workers. Titles and authors are as follows: "Understanding Unemployment: A Critical Overview of Labour Market Trends, Employment, and Unemployment: (John Hughes); "A…