Search

Begin New Search Topic Political Economy Political Geography Europe

111. The Development of European Citizenship and its Relevance to the Integration of Refugees

Author:
Joanna Apap
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
Achieving an integrated Europe involves political and social unity as much as economic integration. Thus, the issue of European citizenship is central to the debate about European integration. Union citizenship needs to be distinguished from national citizen ship. Every citizen of the Union enjoys a first circle of nationality rights within a member state and a second circle of new rights enjoyed in any member state of the EU. The presence of immigrants in Europe also raises wider questions for government policy in the field of citizenship. There are various issues that arise in the European context with respect to the boundaries of citizenship. One of the main questions in this regard is the extent to which the division between European Union citizens and third country nationals will continue to prevail.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Human Rights, International Trade and Finance, Migration, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe

112. Consumer Credit Rates in the Eurozone: Evidence on the Emergence of a Single Retail Banking Market

Author:
Stefanie Kleimeier and Harald Sander
Publication Date:
01-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Policy Studies
Abstract:
This study provides new evidence on the emergence of a single eurozone retail banking market with particular reference to consumer credit. Given the heterogeneous nature of consumer credit products in the eurozone, the authors reject the earlier proposition of the Cecchini study, which equates banking market integration with identical interest rates throughout the eurozone. The present study advocates the use of the co-integration methodology, which allows us to investigate integration in the presence of country-specific credit rates. The empirical results indicate only very limited evidence of an integrated retail banking market prior to 1 January 1999, pointing to the limited effectiveness of the single market cum Second Banking Directive in particular in integrating consumer credit markets.
Topic:
Economics and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe

113. Earnings Insurance for Germany

Author:
Gary Burtless and Holger Schaefer
Publication Date:
07-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Brookings Institution
Abstract:
For more than a decade, Germany has suffered high rates of unemployment and very slow employment growth. Workers who have lost their jobs face unusually long spells of unemployment, in part because the adverse incentives of the German unemployment compensation system provide strong impetus for unemployed workers to remain jobless.
Topic:
Government and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe and Latin America

114. Creation of the Euro Area: Implications for Economic Statistics

Author:
Paul Schreyer
Publication Date:
02-2002
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Abstract:
A major event in early 2002 was the arrival of the euro banknotes and coins and the withdrawal of the existing twelve national currencies from circulation. The event has influenced every citizen in the euro area and is clearly a historic change. It heralds a new phase in forging an “ever closer union among the peoples of Europe”. In economic terms, however, the introduction in January 1999 of the single currency after determining the irrevocably fixed exchange rates of the national currencies with the euro was a more important event. It meant that decisions on monetary policy moved from national central banks to the Governing Council of the European Central Bank. This Statistics Brief highlights some of the consequences for economic statistics of the creation of the euro area.
Topic:
Economics and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe

115. 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

116. 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

117. Competing or Complementary Policies? Understanding the Relationship between the NEI and NDI

Author:
Christopher S. Browning
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
In recent years the relationship between the European Union and the United States has become increasingly contentious. The principal European critique laments what many Europeans see as America's blatant disregard of global norms and what Chris Patten, the EU's External Affairs Commissioner, has labelled America's "neuralgic hostility to any external authority over its own affairs". In its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol and the establishment of an International Criminal Court, its reluctance to pay its dues to the United Nations, and its eagerness to scrap the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Europeans often see America as lurching towards a unilateralist stance based on America's military preponderance, whilst multilateral organisations, legal conventions and international norms are pushed aside.
Topic:
Security, NATO, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

118. 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

119. 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

120. 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