Implementing Social Europe in Times of Crises: Re-established Boundaries of Welfare?

This volume examines the state of social Europe when European Union principles and policies have to be implemented in the member states while the EU legitimacy crisis and the Great Recession prevail. The volume explores diverse processes, stages and subjects of implementation in a variety of social policies to identify different institutional dynamics and actor behaviours at play. The individual contributions examine the transposition of the patients’ rights directive to the Europeanisation of pension reforms; the role of national parliaments in transposing social Europe; judicial Europeanisation; and the multi-level enforcement of EU decisions. Theoretically, the volume highlights that implementation is often conditioned by domestic politics or comes as a ‘random walk’ due to organisational and cognitive constraints. Empirically, the volume has three main findings. First, the constitutive components of the EU tend to have a contradictory impact on the EU’s social policies and the national welfare systems. Second, crises influence the implementation of social Europe, at times leading to a modification of fundamental principles and content, but not across the board. Third, as a result, there is evidence of differentiated Europeanisation.     

Converging on euroscepticism: Online polity contestation during European Parliament elections

Does the increasing politicisation of Europe signify a step towards the legitimation of the Union? This could be the case if the increased public intensity of debate and polarisation of opinion brought about by politicisation do not fragment the audience and if arguments presented in public are sufficiently clear about the desired nature of the polity. To answer this question, the focus of this article is on dynamic contestation in the public sphere using original data of news platforms and political blogs in 12 EU Member States and transnational websites during the European Parliament election campaign of 2009. The results are, first, that diffuse eurosceptic evaluations dominate public debates despite large variation in the intensity of debate across Member States. Second, a majority of evaluations made, particularly those by citizens leaving comments online, are negative in all countries included in this study. A gap between elites and citizens persists, but it appears less pronounced than often proclaimed in the literature. And third, democracy is a primary concern in EU polity contestation, especially for those evaluating the EU negatively. Although little evidence is found of a fragmentation of audiences, the prominence of diffuse euroscepticism poses a major challenge to legitimation of the Union.     

The search for the centre: Pivot parties in West European party systems

The central question is whether or not in multiparty systems the so‐called parties of the ‘centre’ can be defined and observed in isolation. We start from the assumption that party‐life in the centre‐space of a political system has distinctive features. Centre parties must therefore be conceptualised and analysed as phenomena sui generis and do not belong to either the left‐wing or the right‐wing of a party system. The second assumption is that every party in a parliamentary democracy is a vote seeking and policy guided actor. This means that a centre party depends on its capacity to compete with both ‘wings’ of a party system whilst occupying the centre‐space. It is then capable of becoming the ‘pivot’ of the system: its ‘centrality’ and ‘dominance’ represent ideological distinctiveness and electoral/legislative weight. The cross‐national analysis demonstrates that only a few parties are genuine pivot parties. The paper concludes with a discussion about the issue whether or not the existence of a pivot party is a blessing in disguise for the working of a democracy.     

A crisis of integration? The development of transnational dyadic trust in the European Union, 1954–2004

The healthy functioning and long‐term viability of the European Union (EU) ultimately depend on its citizens finding common cause and developing a shared sense of political community. However, in recent years, scholars and pundits alike have expressed doubts about whether the EU's growing cultural, religious and economic diversity is undermining the development of citizens' shared sense of political community, especially following eastern expansion. In this article, this question is examined using data on a key aspect of political community: transnational dyadic trust. Drawing on a unique set of opinion surveys from the formative years of the EU to the first wave of eastward expansion (1954–2004), the development and sources of dyadic trust among EU Member States is studied. While recognising the importance of diversity for trust judgments in the short‐term, the prevailing viewpoint that it is also a long‐term obstacle to integration is challenged. Instead, it is argued that citizens from diverse cultural and economic backgrounds can learn to trust one another and build a sense of political community over time through greater cooperation and interconnectedness. This theory is tested with data on bilateral trade density, which is seen as a proxy and precursor for other forms of cross‐national interconnectedness. Employing longitudinal models, the article also goes beyond existing research to test the theories over time. The study makes a contribution to the research on European integration, suggesting that over time mutual trust and a shared sense of political community can indeed develop in diverse settings.     

The Bio-economy and the Competition State: Transcending the Dichotomy between Coordinated and Liberal Market Economies

This article examines the role of the state in the emerging bio-economy. The starting point is that state interventions, including supportive regulatory arrangements and the shaping of public attitudes, constitute core assets in the evolution of bio-industrial complexes. Public policy in the bio-economy, across advanced industrial countries, is well captured by the “competition state” concept. This type of state takes different forms, analogously with the historical variants of the Keynesian welfare state. The article compares patterns of governance of the biotechnology sector in Finland and Sweden, the USA and the UK, and Australia. It is concluded that the bio-industry sector does not fit with the “models of capitalism” paradigm which postulates coherence within, and systemic divergences between, national models of economic governance. The bio-economy displays trends toward convergence, in particular mounting public investments in health care and in research and development. On the other hand, countries differ in their approach to market regulation, industrial support, and ethical restrictions. These differences do not follow the dichotomy between “liberal” and “coordinated” models of capitalism.     

Public employees and public sector reform implementation

Conventional wisdom says that reforms that aim at improving the productivity of the public sector face opposition from public sector employees, and for this reason, tend to be poorly implemented. These claims are not backed by much hard evidence. This paper seeks to fill some of that gap by investigating why an educational reform containing explicit accountability elements is poorly implemented across Norwegian municipalities about four years after the reform has passed the parliament. The empirical analyses provide evidence that municipalities with a large share of public employees are less likely to implement the reform. The relationship seems to be causal. A reduced-form approach is applied, which prevents conclusions about the mechanisms through which the public employees exercise their influence. However, some preliminary analyses indicate that school leaders hold more negative attitudes towards the reform in municipalities with a large share of public employees, potentially indicating that regulatory capture is an issue: school leaders tend to sympathize more strongly with teachers in such environments.     

Book reviews

Parties and Party Systems: A Bibliographic Guide to the Literature on Parties and Party Systems in Europe Since 1945 on CD‐ROM. Edited by Stefano Bartolini, Daniele Caramani and Simon Hug. London: Sage Publications, 1998. £99 (stand alone version), £150 (network version). ISBN 0–7619–5924–6 and ‐6002–3.

Changing Party Systems in Western Europe. Edited by David Broughton and Mark Donovan. London: Pinter, 1998. Pp.xix+315, 2 figures, 13 tables, biblio., index. £55 (cloth); £16.99 (paper). ISBN 1–85567–327–4 and ‐328–48.

The Choice for Europe. Social Purpose and State Power from Messina to Maastricht. By Andrew Moravcsik. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. Pp.xii+514, index. £16.95 (paper). ISBN 0–8014–8509–6.

People and Parliament in the European Union: Participation, Democracy, and Legitimacy. By Jean Blondel, Richard Sinnott and Palle Svensson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Pp.xvi + 287. £40 (cloth). ISBN 0–19–829308–9.

Legitimacy and the European Union. By David Beetham and Christopher Lord. London: Longman, 1998. Pp.viii +144. £9.99 (paper). ISBN 0–582–30489‐X.

Democracy in Europe: Legitimising Politics in a Non‐State Polity. By Heidrun Abromeit. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1998. Pp.ix + 182, bibliog., index. £25 (cloth). ISBN 1–57181–985–1.

Political Theory and the European Union: Legitimacy, constitutional choice and citizenship. Edited by Albert Weale and Michael Nentwich. London: Routledge, 1998. Pp.xiii + 205. £55 (cloth). ISBN 0–415–17313–2.

Germany, France and the Integration of Europe: A Realist Interpretation. Thomas Pedersen. London: Pinter, 1998. Pp. viii + 221, bibliog., index. £40. ISBN 1–85567–537–4.

Recreating Europe: The European Union's Policy towards Central and Eastern Europe. By Alan Mayhew. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp.xxi + 403, 2 maps, 7 figures, 37 tables, bibliog., index. £45 (cloth); £15.95 (paper). ISBN 0–521–63086‐X and ‐63897–6.

Enlarging the EU Eastwards. By Heather Grabbe and Kirsty Hughes. London: Pinter for the Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1998. Pp.x + 130, 1 map, 16 tables, 4 figures, bibliog., index. £27.50 (cloth); £11.99 (paper). ISBN 1–85567–525–0 and ‐526–9.

Divided Europe: The New Domination of the East. By Adam Burgess. London: Pluto Press, 1997. Pp.222, bibliog., index. £40 (cloth); £13.99 (paper). ISBN 0–7453–1262–4 and ‐1257–8.

The European People's Party: Origins and Development. By Thomas Jansen. New York: St Martin's Press; London: Macmillan. 1998. pp.xiv + 206. 2 annexes, bibliog., index. £45. ISBN 0–312–21062–0 and 333–72057–1

The Italian Guillotine. Operation Clean Hands and the Overthrow of the First Republic. By S. H. Burnett and L. Mantovani, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998. Pp.xii + 332, chronology, The Cast of Characters, index. £45 (cloth); £15.95 (paper). ISBN 0–8476–8877–1 and ‐8878‐X.

The French Civil Service. By M. Luc Rouban. Paris: La Documentation Francaise, 1998. Pp.118, bibliog. NP. ISBN 9–782110–038777.     

A-Legality: Postnationalism and the Question of Legal Boundaries

This paper critically examines the prevailing assumption that legal boundaries are becoming irrelevant in postnationalism. While the boundaries of the nation-state are forfeiting some of their hold on human behaviour, postnational legal orders are simply not legal orders unless they can in some way draw the spatial, temporal, material and subjective boundaries that make it possible to qualify human behaviour as legal or illegal. This implies that reflexively constituted legal orders – whether national or postnational – must be presented as legal unities. To the extent that boundaries are the necessary condition of national and postnational legal orders, and therewith of legal unity, they also spawn the possibility of political plurality, manifested in behaviour that resists the very distinction between legality and illegality, as drawn by an order of positive law: a-legality. Rather than signalling the demise of legal boundaries, postnationalism ushers in a novel way of dealing therewith – and with a-legality.     

Human eye colour and HERC2, OCA2 and MATP

Prediction of human eye colour by forensic genetic methods is of great value in certain crime investigations. Strong associations between blue/brown eye colour and the SNP loci rs1129038 and rs12913832 in the HERC2 gene were recently described. Weaker associations between eye colour and other genetic markers also exist. In 395 randomly selected Danes, we investigated the predictive values of various combinations of SNP alleles in the HERC2, OCA2 and MATP (SLC45A2) genes and compared the results to the eye colours as they were described by the individuals themselves. The highest predictive value of typing either the HERC2 SNPs rs1129038 and/or rs12913832 that are in strong linkage disequilibrium was observed when eye colour was divided into two groups, (1) blue, grey and green (light) and (2) brown and hazel (dark). Sequence variations in rs11636232 and rs7170852 in HERC2, rs1800407 in OCA2 and rs16891982 in MATP showed additional association with eye colours in addition to the effect of HERC2 rs1129038. Diplotype analysis of three sequence variations in HERC2 and one sequence variation in OCA2 showed the best discrimination between light and dark eye colours with a likelihood ratio of 29.3.     

Principled Moderation: Understanding Parties’ Support of Moderate Candidates

Recent scholarship has argued that parties strategically support more moderate, and thus more electable, candidates. Using interviews with party elites and new data on the party support and the ideology of primary candidates for the US Senate, I show that parties do support moderate candidates. However, using evidence from districts with different levels of competitiveness and over time, I find that support of moderate candidates appears not to be strategic. Rather, party support of moderate candidates appears to be the result of the ideological preferences of party leadership rather a strategic effort to win elections.