As the longest economic boom in history has given way to leaner times, unemployment has re-emerged as a major issue.

As the longest economic boom in history has given way to leaner times, unemployment has re-emerged as a major issue. This theoretically and empirically sophisticated book examines how unemployment takes on widely different political meanings and explores the ways in which governments act to change their own accountability for unemployment. It contributes to the comparative political economy literature that analyzes political responses to economic problems. Baxandall reverses a conventional application of comparative research by using an Eastern European case to reveal political dynamics that are mirrored in the West - as demonstrated with American and Western European cases. Using interviews and previously unexplored archives to consider a dramatic transformation in the meaning of unemployment in Hungary, he demonstrates how the politics of economic change depend crucially on the political re-crafting of economic categories.

Part I: Introduction: Changes and differences in the meaning of unemployment. Part II: From Multiple Changes in a Single Case to International Comparisons: Communism without an unemployment taboo
Birth of the unemployment taboo and its defence in early reforms
Eroding employment to avoid unemployment
Migratory birds, work shirkers and the redefinition of unemployment
Rising unemployment and its political disappearance after communism: toward regional and international comparisons. Part III: Comparative Cases: Comparative cases of conceptual change: America, Britain, the USSR and municipalities near Geneva
Comparing the political importance of unemployment across the EU. Part IV: Theory and Predictions: How the meaning of unemployment is constructed
The future of unemployment
Bibliography
Index.