Suchergebnisse

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE WELFARE STATE. WHICH HAS EMERGED AS THE SUCCESSFUL RESPONSE OF CAPITALIST DEMOCRACIES TO THE ECONOMIC CRISIS OF THE NINETEEN-THIRTIES, IS NOW CONFRONTED WITH NEW PROBLEMS ANDDEMANDS WHICH SEEM TO CHALLANGE ITS CONTINUING VIABILITY.

As economic integration deepens globally and even more so within the European Community, national capacities to regulate and to tax mobile capital and firms are reduced, whereas governance at European or international levels is constrained by conflicts of interest among the governments involved. The effectiveness of problem solving at the national and European and international levels varies considerably from one field to another. Identifies factors that could explain the varying intensity and direction of competitive pressures on national regulatory systems, as well as the greater or lesser political feasibility of European or international regulation. (Original abstract - amended)

Examines the implications of the European Union's control of its members' external trade & restriction-free internal market for European welfare states. The European Union's lack of democratic legitimation is seen as a specific consequence, whereas the democratic deficit occurs in those areas where conflicting interest & ideology are endemic. European economic integration interferes with the success of the national welfare state & impedes democratic self-determination at the national level. It is suggested that regulatory competition in the market could be softened by placing responsibility of the redistributive policies at the European level. National-level policy choices are available, but will require a major change in strategy that will mostly affect labor unions & leftist parties. 1 Figure, 28 References. P. Schlachte

The completion of the internal market reduces the capacity of member states to shape the collective fate of their citizens through their own policies, while the policy making capacity of the European Community cannot be increased sufficiently to compensate for the loss of state control at national level. There is a need for coordination techniques which impose minimal constraints on the autonomous problem solving capacities of member states, who, in turn, must pursue policy goals in ways which impose minimal constraint on free movement within the Union. (Original abstract-amended)

Attempts to develop an institutional explanation for the paradox of frustration without disintegration and resilience without progress, by exploring the similarities between joint decision making in German federalism and decision making in the European Community. (Abstract amended)

Focusing on 4 countries, Austria, Great Britain, Sweden and West Germany, it is shown that both runaway inflation and rising unemployment could be avoided whenever it was possible to achieve a Keynesian concertation between fiscal and monetary expansion on the one hand and union wage restraint on the other. The actual policy experiences of the 4 countries are then explained in terms of the linkage between a 'coordination game' played between the government and the unions in which macro-economic outcomes are determined, and a politics game in which the government tries to anticipate the electoral responses of different voter strata to these outcomes. (Abstract amended)