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61. Tax Reforms and "Modell Deutschland": Lessons from Four Years of Red-Green Tax-Policy

Author:
Achim Truger and Wade Jacoby
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
When the red-green (SPD-Bündnis90/DieGrünen) coalition took over the federal government from the Christian-Democrat/Free-Democrat (CDU/CSU/FDP) coalition in 1998, tax reforms had a very high political priority. And, in fact, the government pushed through an astonishing number of far-reaching tax reforms/tax changes within a period of little more than two years. This paper follows two aims. First, it gives a short description of the measures taken and evaluates them with respect to tax theory and the German tax reform debate of the 1990s. Second, it explicitly addresses the question whether the tax changes were influenced by the wish to reform the Modell Deutschland, i.e. whether something substantial was done to change Germany ́s status as a perceived high tax country and if so, whether the attempt was successful. It will be shown that even though the problem of high taxes might have been many observers ́ and, indeed, also the government ́s dominant concern, there was much more to the German debate. The chapter will also ask whether generously cutting taxes was the right thing to do. It demonstrates that under Germany ́s peculiar economic and institutional circumstances at the end of the 1990s, the attempt to cut taxes led to serious problems for fiscal policy, growth, and employment.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe

62. Back to the Nest? Europe's Relations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of Countries

Author:
John Ravenhill
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
Europe's association with African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries was the first of its interregional relationships. In the nearly half century since the signature of the Treaty of Rome, it developed into Europe's most institutionalized and multidimensional interregional relationship. It embraces not only trade and investment issues but also a development "partnership" that includes what has traditionally been the EU's largest single aid program, a joint parliamentary assembly, meetings of organizations representing civil society, and a dialogue on human rights. This chapter examines the factors that have shaped this relationship over the last four decades. The principal focus is on the trade regime, not just for consistency with the other contributions to this volume but also because it is in its trade dimension that the relationship has changed most dramatically over time.
Topic:
International Political Economy and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Caribbean, and Rome

63. Lessons of the Euro for the Rest of the World

Author:
Barry Eichengreen
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
Europe's single currency is widely invoked as a potential solution to the monetary and exchange rate problems of other regions, including Asia, Latin America, North America and even Africa. This lecture asks whether the Europe's experience in creating the euro is exportable. It argues that the single currency is the result of a larger integrationist project that has political as well as economic dimensions. The appetite for political integration being less in other parts of the world, the euro will not be easily emulated. Other regions will have to find different means of addressing the tension between domestic monetary autonomy and regional integration. Harmonized inflation targeting may be the best available solution.
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Asia, and Latin America

64. The Development of Europe's Linkages with East Asia: Hybrid Trans-Regionalism?

Author:
Julie Gilson
Publication Date:
12-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This chapter argues that the EU-Asia trans-regional relationship is still very hard to measure but that there is developing both a notion of economic Asia, a desire to collectivise responses in the face of differentiated resource allocation and a growing dominance of the form of regionalism demonstrated by the EU.
Topic:
International Political Economy and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe and Asia

65. The Worried Friend, or: Hegemony vs. Globalization

Author:
Claus Leggewie
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
How real is American hegemony, given that only a few years ago talk about the decline of American power dominated discussion? How do allied states deal with a superpower that is no longer so benign? Does the United States still provide security for Western Europe and the rest of the world at all? And is a transnational world in need of Pax Americana, or what should, from a European and transatlantic perspective, take its place?
Topic:
Security and Globalization
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

66. Where is Portuguese Agriculture Headed? An Analysis of the Common Agricultural Policy

Author:
Dulce Freire and Shawn Parkhurst
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
In the first part of this paper we analyze the conditions in of a shifting emphasis from the politics of prices to a social-structural policy. We also ask how well the CAP has adjusted to the ecological and social characteristics of the countries of southern Europe and whether it has actually supported the agriculture and rural citizens of these countries. In the second part of the paper, we present some of the results of the application of the CAP in Portugal, and discuss what role agriculture might have in developing the rural sections of the country. Broadly, our goal is to determine to what extent attempts to shift the CAP's focus from agriculture to the rural world and from productivity to quality can benefit Portugal and the other countries of southern Europe. Different countries and interest groups received the intercalary revision with a varying mixture of fear, caution and hope, and have opened a serious debate.
Topic:
Environment and Science and Technology
Political Geography:
Europe and Portugal

67. What Ever Happened to Portuguese Euroscepticism? The Depolicitization of Europe and its Consequences

Author:
Pedro C. Magalhães
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
In the following sections, I will argue that although opinions about Portuguese membership in the EU have ceased to play a crucial role both in party appeals and electoral behavior, that is not the case in what concerns their impact on other forms of political behavior and attitudes. More specifically, I will suggest that the decline in electoral turnout currently experienced in Portugal, particularly since 1995, cannot be fully understood with exploring the combination between resilient Euroscepticism among a minority of the population and the depoliticization of Europe at the level of political élites. Furthermore, I will also suggest that, under the present conditions, anti-Europeanism may have developed into a more permanent and disturbing set of political attitudes of mistrust in, and disengagement from, domestic political institutions.
Topic:
Political Economy and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe and Portugal

68. The European Union's Trade Policy towards MERCOSUR

Author:
Jörg Faust
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
Interregional relations between the European Union and MERCOSUR reflect a general trend of governments and firms to institutionalise their relations not only within but also across regions. As the global liberalization process within the WTO has been stagnating in recent years, transregional strategies have become attractive as next-best strategies. Against this background, the following analysis focuses on the institutional development of EU-MERCOSUR relations and the driving forces behind this development from a European perspective. This, because shedding some light on the political economy of relations between two of the most ambitious integration mechanisms of the 1990s should deepen our understanding of the forces shaping the growing importance of transregional and interregional trade relations. Rather than trying to explain the course of EU-MERCOSUR relations by one dominant hypothesis, I make an appeal for a multi-causal framework, highlighting three aspects of particular importance from a bottom up perspective. Firstly, one can observe that the interplay of economic interest groups has strongly influenced the course of interregional institutionalisation between the EU and MERCOSUR.) Secondly, political actors have not acted as mere agents of private interest but also have followed their own political agendas. Thirdly, the European Union's interregional trade strategy towards MERCOSUR has not been independent of the international context.
Topic:
International Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe, South America, and Latin America

69. The Uneasy Triangle

Author:
Lloyd Ulman and Knut Gerlach
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
". . . It is impossible for any community to have very full employment and completely free collective bargaining and stable prices. Either one of the three will be completely sacrificed, or else all three will have to be modified. ". . . In the last resort the answer will be given not by economists or by administrators but by the public opinion. At each corner of the triangle, the limiting factor is what public opinion will stand, and the degree of comprehension that public opinion will show for an economic policy that tries to preserve balance between competing objectives.
Topic:
Government and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe

70. The European Union and North America

Author:
Edward A. Fogarty
Publication Date:
10-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
This paper assesses the past, present, and future of transatlantic commercial relations in terms of EU trade strategies. After surveying the medium-term trajectories of the relationships with the United States, Mexico, and Canada-both separately and as a group-it will consider several possible sources of European Union trade preferences vis-à-vis NAFTA, including interest groups' incentives to seek to capture national and European governing institutions, the balance between the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, European leaders' desire to balance against overweening American power, and possible attempts to construct either a common Western identity or, alternatively, a European identity in contradistinction what the United States seems to represent. The hope is that these different approaches provide a contrasting set of interpretations whose comparison side-by-side allows new insights into the dynamics governing EU-North American trade relations.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Canada, North America, and Mexico