Equal pay by gender and by nationality: a comparative analysis of Switzerland's unequal equal pay policy regimes across time

What explains the adoption of two different policies on equal pay by gender (EPG) and by nationality (EPN) in Switzerland? And why is the liberal, litigation-based, equal pay policy regime set up by the Gender Equality Act of 1996 much less effective than the neocorporatist ‘accompanying measures' to the Bilateral European Union-Switzerland Agreement on Free Movement of Persons adopted in 1999 to ensure equal pay for workers of different national origins? The formation of two different policy regimes cannot be explained by different levels of political will. Equally, different ‘varieties of capitalism' cannot explain the setup of the two different equal pay policy regimes within the very same country. Instead, our qualitative comparative analysis across time suggests that the differences can be best explained by a particular constellation of attributes, namely the use of different policy frames—i.e. ‘anti-discrimination' in the EPG and ‘unfair competition' in the EPN case—and the different setting of interest politics epitomised by the opposite stances adopted by Switzerland's employer associations in the two case

Job opportunities and school-to-work transitions in occupational labour markets. Are occupational change and unskilled employment after vocational education interrelated?

This study links TREE panel data surveying school-to-work transitions in Switzerland with unique job advertising data from the Swiss Job Market Monitor that mirrors individual job opportunities. We investigate: (i) whether occupational change and unskilled entry level employment are two related transition outcomes among graduates from initial vocational education and training (IVET) in the occupational labour market of Switzerland. Our analysis further focuses on (ii) the impact of a low number of occupation-specific job opportunities on the risk of such a combined horizontal and vertical job-education mismatch, and (iii) the extent to which overall labour demand facilitates occupational changes to skilled employment

Trust and Openness: Prerequisites for Democratic Engagement ?

© 2013 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg. All rights are reserved. The impact of political trust on political participation is still contested, especially considering the variety of political expressions citizens use as political tools. A further complication is added by the substantial differences in the context under which participation take place and the contextual impact on the link between political trust and participation. We here examine how political trust affects institutionalised and non-institutionalised forms of political participation. Furthermore, we examine how these linkages are affected by the institutional openness of the political system, since this constitutes a central element of the context of participation. These research questions are examined using data from the fourth round of the European Social Survey from 2008 including 26 democratic countries and a total of 49,979 respondents. The results suggest that political trust promotes institutionalised participation and has a negative impact on non-institutionalised participation. Furthermore, the institutional context mediates the effect of political trust on political participation meaning that institutional openness strengthens the effect of political trust on institutionalised participation whereas it weakens the effect of political distrust on non-institutionalised participation.status: publishe