Western European States Research Articles

“Multi-Speed Europe”: Issues of the Evolution of Geocultural Integration

Introduction. The rhetoric of the leaders of the countries of the European Un ion shows large-scale contradictions on key issues as well as the “geocultural” incompatibility of views. The objective of the study is to prove the need for a dichotomous division of the European Union into “West” and “East”, the conceptual application of the idea of “multi-speed Europe” being the theoretical basis for such separation. Materials and Methods. The method of unity of the qualitative and quantitative parameters of the countries of the former socialist bloc and Western European states was used to establish a sufficient evidence base. Empirical and theoretical studies as well as statistical data from international organizations were used as the materials for this study. Results. In the process of a comprehensive study, an up-to-date geocultural analysis of the comparative characteristics of the countries of the European Union was carried out. On this basis, the effectiveness of the concept of “multi-speed Europe” as a way of formalizing the existing differences within the European Union has been proved. An assessment of the consequences of the regionalization of Europe, optimistic for Russia, has been given. The actual application of this concept will improve the socio-economic ties between Russia and Western Europe. Discussion and Conclusion. The study has revealed the controversy and ineffectiveness of the existence of a united Europe. A comprehensive study of the concept of “multi-speed Europe” will make it possible to predict the further development of the European Union and evaluate the role of Russia in modern Europe. The results may be used by scientists and politicians to analyze the consequences of the enlargement of the European Union.

Why vote when you cannot choose? EU intervention and political participation in times of constraint

This article analyses how economic intervention affects individuals’ political behaviour by assessing the impact of intervention on aggregate and individual turnout. The intervention of the European Union in a selection of member states is viewed as having negative consequences for democratic choice, reducing the ability of voters to select between distinct policy alternatives, resulting in the absence of the primary benefit of voting: choice. It is argued that when voters are faced with electoral choices without the ability to shape policy alternatives, they are less likely to vote. Moreover, the negative effect of intervention is found to be conditioned by both individuals’ level of education and ideological identification. Voters on the centre and the left who feel abandoned by left-leaning parties, who have prioritised being responsible to their European paymasters, are significantly more likely to abstain when exposed to intervention. Empirical support for the argument is found via the analysis of aggregate turnout as well as individual level data from the European Social Survey from across fifteen Western European states.

Breaking out of the Regulatory Delusion. The Ban to Surrogacy and the Foundations of European Constitutionalism

Abstract The transnational market of reproductive services puts a strain on western European States that refuse to acknowledge surrogacy contracts on public policy grounds. The cases decided so far rise three questions. First, under what circumstances foreign surrogacy judgements should be recognised? Second, what would be the constitutional repercussions of the recognition of these judgements? Third, how would it be like a legislation at once effective and respectful of fundamental rights of all parties involved? This Article analyses these questions and how they relate to each other. Based on a transaction-cost economic framework an argument is made that neither top-down, nor market-based regulatory solutions overcome the constitutional arguments that uphold the ban to surrogacy. An alternative approach to legal reform is considered, grounded on IPL and substantive domestic measures.

Last but not least: how Italy finally legalized same-sex unions

ABSTRACTLGBT+ issues and marriage equality have for long been taboo in predominantly Catholic Italy, although since the 2000s they had been the subject of public debate. This might partly explain why in 2016 the country was the last western European state to approve a law legalizing same-sex partnerships, although the literature has also focused on the influence of the Catholic Church on the Italian political system, and on the influence of ʻmorality politicsʼ on Italian public discussion. This paper will take into account this most recent wave of discussion, specifically revolving around the Cirinnà bill approved by the Italian parliament in 2016, seeking to analyse the main phases of the debate, the actors involved, and their choices of frames and arguments. The article aims at understanding the changes taking place – in terms of actors’ behaviour and frames – throughout the different phases of the debate on the Cirinnà bill, as well as in comparison with the previous waves of debate on LGBT+ rights in the 2000s and 2010s. The concluding remarks will argue that final approval of the law was made possible by a mix of different factors, particularly: a change in actors’ perceptions, with wider recognition of LGBT+ rights as human rights, even among opponents of the law; the different modalities of involvement of the Catholic Church, which also implied a change in choice of frames; and the ultimate determination of the Renzi cabinet to pass the law, whose approval had become increasingly crucial for the Government’s image.

„Új” HR-megoldások és szerepük az állami foglalkoztatottak alkalmazásában

A közszektor és az annak részét képező közigazgatás az országok túlnyomó részében a munkaerő széles tömegeit foglalkoztatja. Az OECD-átlagot tekintve ez az összfoglalkoztatottak 15%-a, míg az állami alkalmazottak kompenzációja a GDP 11%-át éri el. Nem véletlen, hogy a közszolgálat fejlesztését célzó intézkedések az ezredforduló második évtizedében is töretlenül jellemzik a kormányzati szándékokat. Az Európai Unió tagállamainak többségében a modernizáció magában foglalja a humán erőforrásokat érintő viszonyok fejlesztését; akár átfogó jelleggel, akár egy-egy részterület vonatkozásában. Az elmúlt évtizedben inkább a második megoldás volt jellemző. Az írás olyan uniós országok szabályozásából, gyakorlatából, reformelképzeléseiből emel ki példákat, amelyekben a változások a korábbi berendezkedéshez képest jelentősnek minősíthetők. Betekintést nyújt a három nagy közigazgatásimodell-ország – Egyesült Királyság, Franciaország, Németország –, illetve további nyugat-európai államok utóbbi tíz évének közszolgálati változásaiba.

КОММУНИСТИЧЕСКИЕ ПАРТИИ ЗАПАДНОЙ ЕВРОПЫ: ФАЗЫ ИСТОРИЧЕСКОГО ПОДЪЁМА И УПАДКА ЧЕРЕЗ ПРИЗМУ ДИНАМИКИ ЭЛЕКТОРАЛЬНЫХ ПРЕДПОЧТЕНИЙ

The article presents the results of a study of the history of the communist parties of Western European states in the context of assessing the degree of their social influence. The aim of the work was to identify the phases of the rise and fall of the communist parties in Western Europe. The research methodology consisted in correlating the history of the communist parties with the results of elections to national parliaments. The factors that led to the growth or loss of the popularity of the communist movement among Western Europeans were identified. Special attention was paid to ideological splits within the Communist Parties and their attitude to the CPSU line. The conclusion is made about the achievement of the apogee of the popularity of the Communist parties in the first post-war years on the wave of the Victory in the Second World War, associated with the special role of the USSR. The subsequent decline of the communists in Western Europe is explained by the loss of the attractiveness of the Soviet project, by the erosion of the original values. At the present historical stage, a new rise in the popularity of the left forces is recorded, which is associated with a modern systemic crisis and a search for alternatives to capitalism.

Проблема переосмысления достижений французской историографии XVI века в труде Филиппа Лаббе (1607—1667) «Новая библиотека рукописных книг»

Using the key historians of the so-called “French school” as an example, it is shown that the tendency of historical writing, laid down in the 16th century, underwent a critical reappraisal in the subsequent period. The authors of the article show that F. Labbe (1607-1667) in his work “The New Library of Manuscript Books” ( Nova Bibliotheca Manuscriptorum Librorum ) conceptually rethought the list of those historians who, in his opinion, deserve the attention of his contemporaries. It is alleged that works which subject matter was closely related to the interests of national monarchies appeared to be out of view. It is noted that F. Lubbe, as a representative of the Jesuit Order and, therefore, the spokesman for the interests of the Catholic Church, insisted on the need for cooperation between the papacy and the French kingdom. It is emphasized that, from the point of view of Labbe, the historical works of the 16th century deserved attention, which emphasized primarily the common historical fate of Western European states under the auspices of the church and the papacy as continuers of the Roman Empire’s tradition threatened by o the spread of the Reformation. The authors conclude that the reevaluation of the works of French historians of the 16th century by researchers of the next generation was far from always determined by a purely confessional point of view or proximity to royal power.

Rent, Taxes, and Political Participation: Long-Term Effects of Urban Autonomy in Recent Studies in Development Economics. Article 1

The article addresses a central modernization problem: how to build and maintain effective public administration while being dependent on foreign debt and investment? Based on a review of the recent literature, the article shows that, in the 13th–18th centuries, Western European states facing outside finance shortage tended to look for alternative source of revenue and improve their fiscal systems and bureaucracies. The article also uses the case of Italian urban autonomy to discuss whether public debt, fiscal system and parliamentary control are interdependent

The Labor Law Issues in the Treaties of Friendship and Cooperation Made by Poland with the Western European Countries after 1989

The Labor Law issues constitute a subject of the numerous bilateral and multilateral treaties. They have an important role in the system of Labor the Law sources. In regard to the bilateral treaties, Treaties of Friendship and Cooperation (so called political treaties) play significant role, not only because they reflect the priorities of one state’s foreign policy through definition of its territorial scope of interest, but also they indicate the areas of the particular interests of the parties. Poland, after the transformations of 1989–1990, entered into this type of treaties with the former socialist republics of the Central and Southern Europe established after the USSR dissolution, and – what constituted a novelty in Polish treaty policy – with the Western European states (France, Spain, Germany and Italy), and also with the countries included in this group for the political, not geographical reason: Greece and Turkey. Analysis of these treaties shows that the most of the labor references were used in the political treaty with a neighboring state, Germany. What is more, this field of cooperation was given its adequate rank and significance. Favorable solutions have been included in the treaties with Greece, Spain and Italy. The least consideration for the labor issues was given in the treaty with Turkey, as it includes only one provision, similar to the treaties with the other states, that deals with supporting the direct contacts among the trade unions.

Canada in the United Nations General Assembly from Trudeau to Trudeau

AbstractAll Canadian governments say that Canada must look to its friends and allies and like-minded partners to achieve greater cooperation on global issues. But who are these countries exactly? To gain a better understanding of where Ottawa stands in the world, with whom and under what conditions, we analyze Canada's voting patterns in the United Nations General Assembly from 1980 to 2017. We find that Canada's overall record tends toward that of Western European states. We find no evidence of greater affinity with US positions either when the Democrats are in power in Washington or when the conservative parties are in power in Ottawa. We identify a sharp pro-US turn in the Harper years and also confirm that the government of Justin Trudeau started off by maintaining rather than reversing this trend.

Introduction

Introduction

Going Local. Voting for independent local Parties in the Netherlands 1986-2010

ABSTRACT This paper examines why the support of independent local parties has grown substantially in the Netherlands. These are parties that run in municipal council elections, but do not run in elections at higher levels, specifically the national level. Such parties saw their support double in the Netherlands between 1986 and 2010. Parties of this type have also grown in other Western European states. This paper examines two possible explanations: declining political trust on the level of voters and, on the supply side, the rise of parties that are not rooted at the local level. The evidence shows that the rise of independent local parties reflects the rise of national political parties that do not run in many municipal elections. This article examines the case of the Netherlands, pooling five surveys from the 1986–2010 period.

OPTIMAL MONETARY AREAS AND MONETARY POLICY. AN ANALYSIS OVER WORLD POWER CENTERS

The phenomenon of power in international relations has always caused interest. The current international environment is extremely amplified and interconnected, and developments in recent decades have led to the foundation of a multipolar system. At present, the competition between power centers in the world economy is manifested at all levels of power, especially from an economic perspective. There is a clear desire for the Western European states that are members of the European Union and the BRICS to detach from their financial dependence on the US dollar and the United States financial instruments. We propose to analyze whether there are correlations between the monetary policies adopted by these entities and the characteristics of the optimal monetary areas. If monetary policy moves closer to the optimal monetary area specifications, then does that global influence increase?

The Less-Known History of the Voluntary Sector in an East Asian Welfare Regime: A South Korean Case

AbstractAlthough the voluntary sector is internationally valued as an integral component of the welfare mix, studies on East Asian welfare regimes have primarily focused on state-market-family interactions, paying scant attention to the long-standing and pivotal role of voluntary agencies in their construction. This case study illuminates this less-known aspect of modern welfare history in the context of South Korea, with a particular focus on the activities of voluntary organizations. The study categorizes South Korean voluntary associations into four types and examines their different contributions in shaping South Korea’s welfare regime, by applying Young’s framework on government–voluntary organizations relations. This historical exploration on the South Korean voluntary sector aims to deepen understanding of an East Asian welfare state regime. It further suggests that current welfare mix debates, focusing on the service delivery role of voluntary organizations within Western European welfare states, should be broadened.

The Ordeals of Colonial Contracting: Reactions to and Repercussions of Two Failed State-Private Ventures in Habsburg Portugal (1622–1628)

AbstractAmong the solutions devised by early modern Western European states to engage with the private sector in the governance of their overseas empires, the adjudication of revenue farms and colonial monopolies was often dismissed by historians on the grounds of being coercive, inefficient, and risk-exempt for the contractors. In reality, however, the threat of financial hardship and insolvency was very real, and not infrequently led to contractual removal, the seizure of collateralized assets, and even the imprisonment of the concessionaires.This article approaches the neglected topic of failure in big business in early seventeenth-century Portugal, an overlooked case of a contractor state that relied extensively on the adjudication of government contracts to finance and rule its overseas empire. By looking into the downward trajectories of two tax-farmers and the collapse of their contractual dealings, light will be shed on how the Crown and private entrepreneurs reacted to the repercussions of failure in these early modern public-private partnerships. It will also be shown how the road leading to termination was very much shaped by the political relationships between the Crown and its contractors and can only be understood in the context of wider relationships of brokerage, credit, and service between the two.

Governance of religious diversity in Western Europe

“Governance of religious diversity” appears to be the latest term to address the relationship between the state and (immigrant) religious groups in Western Europe. Conventional/established arrangements and frameworks of state-church relations (i.e. secularism) need to be revisited to include new religions and religious groups to the equation. It is suggested that contemporary multicultural societies require a broader perspective and a sophisticated framework than established understandings of secularism, and receiving states’ governmental policies. Today, the main concern of Western European states is not the relationship between the state and church, but how to deal with Islam and accommodate distinctive religious practices in public spaces. This review article examines the current debates on governance of religious diversity through elaborating on the six books reviewed.

Data protection in the age of welfare conditionality: Respect for basic rights or a race to the bottom?

This article addresses the informational control powers of the state to detect social security fraud as one of the pillars supporting welfare conditionality in Western European states. It sheds light on the question of whether the repressive trend of vastly expanding conditions and sanctions attached to welfare benefits can also be observed in an unwarranted expansion of the adopted control powers of the government. The article begins by highlighting the importance of data protection law in the field of social security. It then provides a normative yardstick for assessing nationally the control powers by analysing the normative criteria set by the EU data protection framework, more specifically with regard to the purpose limitation principle and the transparency rights of individuals. Three case studies are carried out on Germany, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands which investigate the conformity of the control powers of the welfare administration with the basic right to data protection. The article concludes by providing explanations for the diverging level of protection in the examined countries and by recommending strategies for improving the data protection position of welfare beneficiaries.

Henry Kissinger's book World order: Reflections on the beginnings of nations and the course of history

The central idea of Henry Kissinger's latest book, The Global System, is that the world desperately needs a new world order, otherwise geopolitical chaos threatens the world, and perhaps chaos will prevail and settle in the world.
 According to Kissinger, the world order was not really there at all, but what was closest to the system was the Treaty of Westphalia, which included about twenty Western European states for almost four centuries.

Europe's (Lack of) Welfare Chauvinism: Evidence from Surveys and Spending

Immigration’s effect on European welfare states is complicated. On one hand, increased immigration might undermine social solidarity and impose greater fiscal burdens on redistribution, reducing support for welfare spending. On the other, natives could respond to greater globalization with economic anxiety, increasing support for redistribution in order to mitigate risk. Welfare chauvinism predicts a mixed effect—increased spending for programs that middle-class natives use and reduced spending for programs that benefit immigrants disproportionately. I test this theory by analyzing (1) European attitudes towards immigration and welfare spending and (2) actual spending on these programs, particularly social housing. Additionally, I present a brief case study of France’s immigration/welfare relationship. Despite large increases in immigration, I find no significant increase in welfare chauvinistic attitudes and no systematic relationship between immigration and social spending. This surprising result—which contradicts recent empirical findings—suggests that immigration-based fears about Western European welfare states are overstated.

ПОДАТКОВІ ОРГАНИ В НАДДНІПРЯНСЬКІЙ УКРАЇНІ В ПОРЕФОРМЕНИЙ ПЕРІОД: СУЧАСНА УКРАЇНСЬКА ІСТОРІОГРАФІЯ

The liberal reforms carried out in the Russian Empire during the 1860's and 1870's markedly affected the financial sector of a gigantic country. They also had their peculiarities on the territory of the provinces inhabited by Ukrainians. Especially significant was the reformation of the tax service, which became more modern and copied the principles and methods of their work from similar structures of Western European states. In the middle of the nineteenth century іn the Dnieper Ukraine there was virtually no special tax authority. These functions were carried out by a number of government institutions, and the state-owned chambers carried out the coordination of their activities at the local provincial level. After the defeat of the Russian Empire in the Crimean War, its government was forced to carry out a series of systemic reforms. One of the directions of the reformation of the Romanov Empire was the reorganization of the sphere of public finances, in particular, of financial management and financial control. Over the past decades, Ukrainian historical science has paid special attention to the functioning of the tax authorities of the empire on the lands of modern Ukraine. In view of this, the article analyzes the contemporary Ukrainian historiography of the question of the functioning of the tax authorities of the Russian Empire in the Dnieper Ukraine in the second half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The main domestic researches of the activities of those power institutions that performed the functions of tax control in the Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire were considered. Particular attention is paid to the works, which highlighted regional features of the work of tax authorities. Perspective directions of further researches of this problem are outlined. The article states that the problems of the activity of tax authorities in the Dnieper Ukraine in the pre-reform period became the subject of the research of many modern Ukrainian scholars. One can even note the fact of formation of scientific schools on the problems of the history of financial policy in Ukraine. This is the Kyiv Historical School of Professor O. Reyent, the Kharkiv School of History and Law of Professor O. Golovko and the Kropyvnytsky School of Economic History of Professor V. Orlyk. However, there remain a number of aspects of the problem that require further in-depth study.