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Globally, Denmark stands out in terms of achieving high employment rates, containing unemployment and providing a labour market model combining flexibility, security and activation with a strong role for the social partners. The Danish labour market institutions and policies are seen as the catalyst for the transformation from industrial economy to a globalised, post-industrial and knowledge-based economy in which socio-economic equality and workforce security go hand in hand with competitiveness and the adaptability of business. In the 2000s, this mutual relationship came to be known as the Danish flexicurity model. Meanwhile, as a policy blueprint, ‘flexicurity’ has never really influenced Danish politics, and the reforms implemented since the 2000s have deviated from the premises of the model. This paper critically assesses the Danish model and its institutional components. It tracks the emergence of the Danish collective bargaining model as well as the flexicurity model. It scrutinises the challenges and performance of the current Danish labour market institutions and policies in a comparative perspective and discusses the extent to which the Danish experiences can and should be imitated abroad.

While forms of non‐standard employment (which include part‐time work and temporary employment) have received active promotion in recent years, possible negative effects emerging from these forms of employment have not been high on the agenda. This paper, accordingly, aims to compare workers with non‐standard contracts and those with standard contracts in relation to transitions out of employment into unemployment, inactivity, household/care activities and education/training. Country differences in outcome are expected due to varying regulations of standard and non‐standard employment and different reasons for resorting to forms of non‐standard employment.

The comparison covers four countries, namely Denmark, Germany, the UK and Spain. The segmentation theory is tested by analysing mobility patterns on the basis of the European Community Household Panel data. Event history analysis methods are used. Maximum likelihood multinomial regression models are calculated on the event history data in order to assess competing exits (unemployment, inactivity, household/care and education) between non‐standard and standard workers.

The risk of temporary workers exiting employment is greatest by far in Spain, but also evident in the other countries: casual employment is even more volatile than fixed‐term employment. Concerning part‐time workers, downward transitions to inactivity and/or household/care are much more frequent than among full‐time workers, and this is true even in Spain and Denmark where part‐time employment is not traditionally used to combine work with family activities. The expectation that there would be no differences in exits to unemployment – insofar as employment protection legislation applies to both full‐time and regular part‐time workers – proves true only for Denmark and Germany.

In contrast to most papers on the segmentation potential of non‐standard employment this paper is comparative. Furthermore, it uses event history methods and places a special focus on potentially employability‐enhancing “sideways transitions” to education/training measures.

In this concluding chapter, the editors provide an overall assessment of contemporary Danish public governance based on the main findings in the preceding chapters of the edited volume. Surveying the Danish governance responses to contemporary mega-challenges, the chapter reflects on policy implications and contemplate the future of both research and practice related to public administration, politics and governance in Denmark. The chapter argues that recent public governance reforms have turned the Danish welfare state into a mix of a neo-Weberian state and an enabling state, which deploys its considerable resources to create economic growth for the benefit of the large majority of Danes, to satisfy the needs of citizens and businesses and to develop collaborative solutions to complex problems. While the chapter concludes that this modified version of the well-known universal welfare state is largely apt for meeting the mega-challenges of the twenty-first century, recent reforms seeking to enhance job-seeking incentives for the unemployed and to integrate immigrants have resulted in new forms of marginalisation of weaker societal groups. Moreover, evolving problems such as climate change, an ageing population and digital citizen privacy will require further public governance reforms in the years to come.

In the twenty-first century, societies around the world are facing a wide range of daunting global mega-challenges: poverty, unemployment, income inequality, unequal distribution of political power, ageing populations, uncontrolled migration, segregated urbanisation, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and a massive decrease in biodiversity. In recent years, politicians, journalists and academic observers have singled out the Nordic countries, Denmark in particular, as model societies of trusting and happy people that have handled many of these challenges with remarkable effectiveness. And yet others warn against ‘becoming Denmark,’ painting a picture of a dysfunctional, socialist nightmare with high taxes, low job motivation and a general lack of private initiative. In this introductory chapter, the editors cut through the noise of the international debate and set the scene for the nuanced analyses presented here of contemporary public governance in Demark and its capacity to tackle some of the most pressing problems of our time. Specifically, the chapter discusses various conceptualisations of the Danish welfare state, delineates some of its most important historical and structural traits and outlines the main empirical features of contemporary Danish public governance. Finally, it outlines the structure of the book and briefly introduces each of its subsequent chapters.