Number of results to display per page
Search Results
34352. Reconsidering Economic Relations and Political Citizenship in the New Iberia of the New Europe: Some Lessons from the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Accession of Portugal and Spain to the European Union
- Author:
- Paul Christoper Manual and Sebastián Royo
- Publication Date:
- 11-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The purpose of this paper is to use the fifteenth anniversary of the accession of Portugal and Spain to the European Union as an opportunity to reflect on what has happened to both countries since 1986. It examines the integration process and how it has affected political, economic and social developments in Portugal and in Spain over the last fifteen years. In our view, and on balance, Spain and Portugal have benefited from accession. Since the last century, the obsession of Spanish and Portuguese reformists has been to make up the lost ground with modernized Europe. EU membership has been a critical step in this direction. The record of the past fifteen years is that this dream is becoming an economic reality. Despite impressive achievements, however, namely, since 1986, Portugal's average per capita income has grown from 56 percent of the EU average to about 74 percent, whereas Spain's has grown to 83 percent—both Iberian countries still have a long way to go to reach the EU average wealth. In addition, the question of Iberian and/or European citizenship, and its impact on the Portuguese and Spanish, remains open.
- Topic:
- Government, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Spain
34353. Does the European Union Strengthen the State? Democracy, Executive Power and International Cooperation
- Author:
- William Phelan
- Publication Date:
- 11-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Many observers have suggested that the strengthening of executives vis-à-vis other political actors, in particular national parliaments, has been one of the principal effects of European integration (and perhaps international cooperation more generally) on national democracies, with democracy being “perverted” and parliaments becoming “rubber stamps” Moravcsik (1994) has argued that there were four theoretical ways in which international cooperation could “strengthen the state,” by redistributing institutional power, initiative (agenda-setting), information and ideas in favor of the executive in Europe. However, consideration of domestic politics in Europe shows that elites are already – for exogenous reasons – dominant in institutions, initiative and information. In Europe, therefore, the “strong” executive is not a product of European integration, and the reverse may even be true: that the dominance of the executive in national political systems has been a prerequisite for the success of European integration – that European openness has been built on national political closure. More generally, assessments of the impact of international cooperation on democracy should measure the effect of international cooperation at the margin on the existing characteristics of particular national democratic systems.
- Topic:
- Government and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Europe
34354. Temporary work agencies and equilibrium unemployment
- Author:
- Michael Neugart and Donald Storrie
- Publication Date:
- 10-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- A striking feature of OECD labor markets in the 1990s has been the very rapid increase of temporary agency work. We augment the equilibrium unemployment model as developed by Pissarides and Mortensen with temporary work agencies in order to focus on their role as matching intermediaries and to examine the aggregate impact on employment. Our model implies that the improvement in the matching efficiency of agencies led to the emergence and growth of temporary agency work. We also show that temporary agency work does not necessarily crowd out other jobs.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Europe
34355. Ties That Bind? The Parapublic Underpinnings of Franco-German Relations as Construction of International Value
- Author:
- Ulrich Krotz
- Publication Date:
- 10-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Beneath the relations among states, and distinct from the exchanges of an autonomous regional or global civil society, there is another set of international practices which is neither public nor private but parapublic. The Franco-German parapublic underpinnings consist of publicly funded youth and educational exchanges, some two thousand city and regional partnerships, a host of institutes and associations concerned with Franco-German matters, and various other parapublic elements. This institutional reality provides resources, socializes the participants of its programs, and generates social meaning. Simultaneously, parapublic activity faces severe limits. In this paper I clarify the concept of “parapublic underpinnings” of international relations and flesh out their characteristics for the relationship between France and Germany. I then evaluate the effects and limits of this type of activity, and relate this paper's findings and arguments to recent research on transnationalism, Europeanization, and denationalization.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Civil Society, and Education
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany
34356. Structure as Process:The Regularized Intergovernmentalism of Franco-German Bilateralism
- Author:
- Ulrich Krotz
- Publication Date:
- 10-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- This article systematically scrutinizes the intergovernmental and administrative aspects of Franco-German relations with the 1963 Elysée Treaty at their core. This treaty, together with its various additions and extensions, has defined the basic processes of bilateral interaction between the French and German states. Recurrent tension in Franco-German relations notwithstanding, many observers and participants have viewed France and Germany to be connected particularly closely since the 1960s. This article explores key elements of what it is that links France and Germany. Thereby it clarifies the concept of regularized inter governmentalism, suggests viewing this specific set of international practices from a social-structural perspective, and evaluates the effects and limits of such regularized procedures. Its findings suggest that bilateral structures have complemented and undergirded a broadly multilateral post-World War II world and are likely to continue to do so.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Government, and Treaties and Agreements
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Germany
34357. Germany, Multilateralism,and the Eastern Enlargement of the EU
- Author:
- Claus Hofhansel
- Publication Date:
- 10-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Since World War II, the most distinctive characteristic of German foreign policy has been its commitment to multilateralism. This commitment has served German material interests, but it has a normative basis as well. This paper analyzes German domestic support for multilateralist policies, defined in terms of the principles of indivisibility, generalized principles of conduct, and diffuse reciprocity, in the context of negotiations on the EU's eastern enlargement. Empirically, the paper focuses on the policy areas of freedom of movement for workers and agriculture. The main theoretical argument is that domestic support for multilateralist policies depends on the distributional consequences of such policies and the ability of political institutions to manage distributional conflicts. Distributional conflict undermines support for multilateralist policies. In the case of Germany, distributional conflicts among different sectors and regions of the German economy have become more severe partly, but not exclusively, due to German unification. Furthermore, German political institutions are less able to resolve such conflicts than in the past. The evidence presented here shows more intense domestic distributional conflicts on the free movement of labor issue than over agriculture, and, as expected, we see more explicitly bilateral and less multilateralist demands by unions and employers.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy and Government
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Eastern Europe, and Germany
34358. Redesigning the Spanish and Portuguese Welfare States: The Impact of Accession into the European Union
- Author:
- Ana Guillen, Santiago Alvarez, and Pedro Adlao e Silva
- Publication Date:
- 10-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Despite the fact that the norms issued by the European Union regarding the regulation of social protection policies are scant, becoming a member of such a supranational institution can be expected to have influenced the redesign of welfare states. The present paper assesses the extent to which the enlargement of the EU towards the South has impacted the reform of social policies. In particular, it focuses on the cases of Spain and Portugal. The paper includes both a quantitative and a qualitative analysis. From the quantitative point of view, it assesses the evolution of financing and expenditure trends. From the qualitative point of view, it analyses direct and indirect effects of EU membership on social policy, and considers the development of social policy in the domestic sphere in relation to the European Social Model. The concluding section discusses the influence of both external and internal interests and challenges in the redesign of the Spanish and Portuguese welfare states.
- Topic:
- Government and Human Welfare
- Political Geography:
- Europe
34359. The Marian Apparitions in Fátima as Political Reality: Religion and Politics in Twentieth-Century Portugal
- Author:
- Paul Christopher Manuel
- Publication Date:
- 10-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The reaction of the Catholic faithful to the supposed miraculous events at Fátima serves as an illustration of how religion can influence the political life of a country. In this instance the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to three ordinary Portuguese country children over a six-month period starting on 13 May 1917. During these visits the children reported that she asked them to pray for the souls of sinners, for the soldiers in World War I, and for Russia. During and immediately after the Marian apparitions in Fátima, powerful conservative players in Lisbon seized on the symbolism of the event to discredit the anticlerical First Republic. As the situation unfolded, this religion-politics dynamic took the form of popular Catholic resistance in the countryside to an urban-based elite-driven secularization, setting the stage for the subsequent emergence of the Salazar regime. Some political scientists and historians have treated these events only as a case of popular reaction against modernity, without any enduring consequences. In this view, Fátima was not much more than a useful symbolic tool of conservative resistance to the First Republic, and it set the groundwork for the subsequent dictatorship. This paper, in line with recent scholarship offered by David Blackbourn, William Christian, Ruth Harris, and others, will suggest that social scientists need to treat the consequences of wide-scale popular religiosity more completely–not as a theological reality, but as a political one. Certainly, some cases have taken on more lasting political life than others, but all cases of popular devotion offer a revealing window into the political culture and life of a country.
- Topic:
- Religion
- Political Geography:
- Europe
34360. Building the Dual Earner/Dual Carer Society: Policy Developments in Europe
- Author:
- Marcia Meyers and Janet Gornick
- Publication Date:
- 10-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- A new model of work and family life is emerging out of contemporary debates on social citizenship and the characteristics of the “woman-friendly” welfare state. The dual-earner/ dual-carer model refers to a social and economic arrangement in which men and women engage symmetrically in both paid work in the labor market and in unpaid work in the home. Parents' ability to balance family and market responsibilities, and to allocate employment and childcare-giving equally between mothers and fathers, could be facilitated by a package of state policies. Three areas of supportive policy – all invarious states of development across Europe – include: (1) family leave schemes that provide job protections and wage replacement for parents of young children; (2) affordable, high quality early childhood education and care, to a limited extent for very young children and to a much larger extent for children aged three to school-age; and (3) labor market regulations aimed at shortening the standard work week and strengthening re-muneration for reduced-hour employment. In this paper, we review European policy provisions, and then turn our attention to the United States case. We suggest that embracing the vision of the dual-earner/ dual-carer society may help to draw diverse but unified support for family policy development in the United States.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, and Human Welfare
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe