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261. Economic Survey of Sweden, 2005

Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
The Swedish economy has undergone impressive changes and has delivered a remarkable surge in productivity since the mid-1990s. Consequently, per capita incomes are slowly making up the ground lost in earlier decades. Labour market performance, however, has been less inspiring. Employment rates have yet to recover to their 1990 peaks and hours of work need to increase to support the welfare state.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Europe and Sweden

262. Economic Survey of Spain, 2005

Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
The Spanish economy has enjoyed many years of brisk growth and has recovered swiftly from the recent international slowdown. Activity has been boosted by low interest rates and strong job creation, and underpinned by structural reforms and a sound fiscal policy. As a result, the income gap with the euro area steadily narrowed. However, tensions have arisen that could undermine the strong growth performance as inflation is relatively high, eroding competitiveness, while the surge in house prices does not yet show signs of abating. Also productivity gains have remained meagre and unemployment is still high.
Topic:
Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe and Spain

263. Economic Survey of Belgium, 2005

Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
The dominant challenge for Belgium in the years to come is to prepare for population ageing. This entails putting in place policies to attenuate its effects on economic growth and public finances. The few years left before large numbers of baby boomers retire provide a window of opportunity to push ahead with such policies and so preserve the essential elements of the system of social protection. First, further budget consolidation is required to put public finances on a sustainable path. Second, reforms are needed to increase employment rates, especially for the older working age-population, school leavers and ethnic minorities, and to slow the decline in working time. Finally, reforms are required to raise productivity growth.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Europe

264. The Battle over the Draft

Author:
Leon Aron
Publication Date:
07-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
On December 29, 2004, Russia's minister of defense, Sergei Ivanov, announced plans to eliminate draft deferments for college students. Predictably, the popular reaction was so uniformly negative and furious that the abolition of deferments has been postponed—but not eliminated from the Kremlin's agenda.
Topic:
Civil Society, Government, and War
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

265. The Challenges of EU Accession for Post-Communist Europe

Author:
David R. Cameron
Publication Date:
02-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
The accession of ten new member states in May 2004 and the prospective accession of several more in the near future will pose severe budgetary, administrative, and operational challenges for the European Union. But however great, the challenges of enlargement pale in comparison with the challenges of accession that will be faced by the new member states, especially those which until a decade ago were governed by Communist parties that presided over centrally-planned and predominantly-collectivized economies. This paper explores five of the most critical challenges that will face the new member states of post-Communist Europe: 1) administering the acquis; 2) deepening and extending the reform and transformation of the economy; 3) reducing the high levels of unemployment and large government, trade, and current account deficits; 4) financing accession in the face of the EU’s budgetary constraints and financial provisions; and 5) coping with all of those challenges in the face of low levels of support for enlargement in many of the member states and high levels of ambivalence and skepticism about membership in most of the new member states. The chapter concludes by noting the low levels of trust in the national government and satisfaction with the way democracy works that exist in most of the new member states and suggests that those low levels of trust and satisfaction will make it difficult for the governments in the new member states to address these challenges while also maintaining sufficient public support to retain office.
Topic:
Economics and Government
Political Geography:
Europe

266. CERI: Solving Europe's Binary Human Rights Puzzle. The Interaction between Supranational Courts as a Parameter of European Governance

Author:
Laurent Scheeck
Publication Date:
10-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
As the European Union has become ever more powerful in terms of political output, it has also turned out to be a potential source of human rights violations. While national governments have disagreed on setting up consequential control mechanisms for several decades, the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights pre-empted intergovernmental choice. The European courts' paths unexpectedly crossed when they were both impelled to work out a way to deal with a twofold human rights conundrum situated at the EU level. Turbulent interaction between Europe's two supranational courts has not only led to a relative improvement of the protection of human rights, but has also deeply transformed the course of European integration. The courts' increasingly nested linkage has given rise to new forms of supranational judicial diplomacy between European judges. As a result of their evolving relationship, which is simultaneously underpinned by competitive and cooperative logics, the traditional opposition between an "economic Europe" and a "human rights Europe" has been overcome and the EU's accession to the European Convention on Human Rights is high on the political agenda. Yet, this process of integration through human rights remains a fragile and incomplete endeavour. Just as in co-operative binary puzzles where two players must solve the game together and where both lose as one of them tries to win over the other, solving Europe's binary human rights puzzle has required of European judges a new way of thinking in which it's not the institutions, but their linkage that matters.
Topic:
Government, Human Rights, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

267. CERI: Les analyses de l'engagement associatif en Russie

Author:
François Dauceé
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
Collective mobilizations in post-Soviet Russia constitute an enigma for Western political sociology due to their numerical weakness and their incapacity to strengthen democratic practices in the country. This perplexity can be explained by the unsuitability of the research tools used for their study. Academic research on social mobilization has long been based primarily on postulates concerning the modernization of social movements in a economically and politically liberal context. Western and Russian leaders involved in the transition process demonstrated a will to foster the constitution of organizations independent from the State and the creation of a civil society as an opposition force. In the early 90s, the practices of voluntary organizations in Russia became closer to Western ones. Notions such as "associative entrepreneurship", "professionalization" or "frustration" were shared by Russian movements. However, later evolutions showed the unsuitability of these concepts to understanding the full complexity of these movements. That is why this issue of "Research in question" aims to suggest new theoretical perspectives for studying associations in Russia. These are at the crossroads of various grammars, where civic and liberal principles are combined with domestic and patriotic preoccupations. This complexity, which resists a purely liberal vision of social organizations, draws convergent criticisms against their action. In order to investigate this complexity of practices as well as criticisms, the tools produced by a pragmatic and multiculturalist sociology are useful to show the diversity of social and political bonds that link militants in contemporary Russia.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

268. The U.S. National Security Strategy and the Global War on Terror “Force Multiplier”

Author:
Charles W. Parker III
Publication Date:
04-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
In September 2002, President George W. Bush published a new National Security Strategy (NSS) in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 (9/11) terrorist attacks in the United States homeland. The publication of the new NSS represented a codification of a series of policy ideas that had been brewing since the end of the first Bush Administration and throughout the Clinton Administration, which were sharpened as a result of the newly perceived threats to the United States' security posture. Some prominent academics have argued that the NSS and Bush's actions represent a “neoimperialist” or “unilateralist” approach to the conduct of U.S. foreign relations, and are a radical and fundamental shift in the trajectory of U.S. power projection and assertiveness. They also lament a rift in relations with European allies in part due to this new policy trajectory, to the point of declaring that the Europe and the United States will be future rivals on the world stage.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and Government
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

269. ¿Integración por la puerta trasera? La incursión del Tribunal de Justicia de las Comunidades Europeas en materia tributaria

Author:
Antonio Cubero and Loreno Ruano
Publication Date:
11-2005
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
To what extent do member states control the process of European integration? This question has traditionally confronted Intergovernmentalists with Neo-functionalists and Institutionalists of various sorts. This paper provides evidence that supports the second school of thought and refines its theoretical claims with a case study: the European Court of Justice's jurisprudence on direct taxation. This is a 'hard case', because in this sector, the member states' resistance to the expansion of Community competence has been particularly virulent. It will be shown how, inspite of this, the Court's jurisprudence has ventured in the field of taxation to the point of undermining the principle upon which rest all national fiscal systems (the distinction between residents and non-residents), putting under severe strain the coherence of national tributary systems. The Court's jurisprudence have also had effects on issues pertaining exclusively to national taxation, through the principle of 'inverted non-discrimination'.
Topic:
International Relations, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Europe

270. Securing Europe and Its Neighbours

Author:
John Edwin Mroz
Publication Date:
09-2005
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
Europe's policy makers currently face two key challenges: finding new methods for governments to work better together, and identifying new ways for businesses and civil society to protect the continent's citizens, infrastructure and economies from the threat of terrorism. The terrorist attacks in Madrid on 11 March 2004 and London on 7 July 2005 were vivid reminders that not enough has been done.
Topic:
Civil Society, Government, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Europe and London