EUROPP

Brussels blog round-up for 11 – 17 May: France in recession again, ‘Schwabylon’, and how to become a British Eurosceptic.

Blog Admin — Fri, 17 May 2013 13:30:47 +0000

Chris Gilson takes a look at the week in Brussels blogging.

The EU centre and the crisis

Jon Worth looks at six potential candidates from the European People’s Party for the President of the European Commission, including the Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and the current IMF head, Christine Lagarde. Meanwhile, Ralf Grahn profiles how some of the Europarties are beginning to prepare for the European Parliamentary elections in May, 2014, while Décrypter la communication européenne makes the important point that the political parties and parliamentary groups have been allocated €92 million for political communication in 2013. The Verfassungsblog looks at the debate in between some of Germany’s political parties and its Constitutional Court over the threshold for German parties to enter the European Parliament. Romanian MEP Corina Cretu writes that the decision of the country’s Prime Minister Victor Ponta, to attend the upcoming European Council meeting on 22 May is a sign of normalcy for the country.

Craig Willy has an in-depth look at how the Euro crisis has accelerated the continent’s demographic decline. Real Time Brussels reports that Sweden’s Finance Minister, Anders Borg has had a change of heart over austerity – he had previously been in favour of greater cuts, but now argues that the EU countries need to spend more. The Centre for European Reform argues in favour of a dose of inflation for the eurozone, saying that in combination with low interest rates, inflation could encourage greater spending.

By Justus Dahinden (Archiv Justus Dahinden) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Meanwhile, Open Europe looks at splits in Germany over banking union: Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble has argued against it until further treaty changes occur, while German ECB Board Member Jörg Asmussen has expressed the view that a centralised banking authority should be set up as soon as possible. As emergency loans to portugal of €2.1 billion are approved, Lost in EUrope has a catalog of austerity measures that the country must now undertake, including the loss of 30,000 civil service jobs, the raising of the retirement age to 66, and an extended working week of 40 hours. Open Europe has a good roundup of where each EU state stands in terms of bail-ins – some big splits still remain.

Rhein on Energy and Climate, writing at Blogactiv.eu, looks at how the EU might achieve a 45 per cent reduction on CO2 emissions by 2030, which will be necessary if it is to achieve its 90 per cent reduction targets by 2050.

The New Federalist looks at how we might be able to make things better at the European level, without spending more money. They suggest that more local power, or more people power (through the European Parliament) might be the answer. Meanwhile, Europe is talking calls for a renewal of the European federalist project, saying that it has taken on an aura of uncertainty, that is easy for eurosceptics to attack. Eva en Europa looks at the problem of lobbying in EU law making, and what some claim is a lack of transparency.

Across Europe

In the UK, the dust continues to settle after eurosceptic party UKIP’s successes in local elections last week. On Tuesday, Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron indicated that his party would put forward a draft bill for a UK referendum on the EU by 2017, according to The European Citizen (Open Europe looks at how it might become law). They write that the Conservative party’s negativity towards the EU may make any renegotiation of the UK’s membership terms difficult to portray as a victory which can be accepted by the British public. Mary Honeyball MEP says that Cameron is putting his party before the country, especially given that EU membership is peripheral to the priorities of most voters.

This week sees confirmation that France has entered a triple dip recession. Lost in EUrope looks at the further reforms that the European Commission is pressing for the country, while the OFCE blog examines the Commission’s growth projections for France to 2017. French Politics looks at recent attempts by France to slow the ‘invasion’ of American movies and cultural products into France and Europe. Lost in EUrope says that anti-EU feeling in France is on the rise, according to a new survey by Pew. Open Europe reports on Francois Hollande’s press conference to mark the first year of his presidency, where he called for greater EU economic and political union within two years.

Despite its current problems (its bonds were recently given ‘junk’ status, by ratings agency Moody’s), Lost in EUrope says that Slovenia is trying to avoid requesting a bailout, given the harsh conditions imposed on Cyprus.

Croatia, the war, and the future looks at what it describes as the country’s ‘desperate’ economic situation, with falling exports, declining government income, and rising expenditure. They suggest that Croatia’s over-sized state is the culprit for the country’s woes and should now be cut.

EU Foreign policy and the European neighbourhood

Lost in EUrope reports that this week German Economic Minister Phillip Rösler has been in talks with the European Trade Commissioner De Gucht over the EU’s punitive tariffs against China. Rösler is concerned that the tariffs, designed to punish China for dumping, may harm German exporters. Meanwhile, Coulisses des Bruxelles looks at one of the main barriers to anj EU-US trade agreement – the harmonization of regulations, which many EU countries are worries will be to the advantage of the US.

European Geostrategy looks at the French armaments industry, saying that in the context of the crisis and falling defence spending, it must do more to encourage military-industrial cooperation in Europe. Kiels Prat in Europe is exasperated at Germany’s spending of over €500 million on a military drone project.

Writing at Blogactiv.eu, eestiglew argues that it is now time for Sweden to abandon its longstanding policy of neutrality, and become a member of NATO, especially given greater military cooperation between Belarus and Russia.

Graph of the Week

The OFCE blog looks at which factors have put the brakes on growth in France, as the country has not yet returned to its pre-crisis GDP levels:

And finally…

What has President of the European Council, Herman van Rompuy been up to this week? This week he attended a development conference in Mali, the European business summit, and met with the Speaker of the Turkish Parliament, Cemil Ciçek.

Kiels Prat in Europe has a tongue in cheek guide of how to become a British Eurosceptic, while German Joys looks at what was once called Schwabylon.

Coulisses de Bruxelles thinks that Brussels is definitely not beautiful.

_________________________________

Please read our comments policy before commenting.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/Z12SiI

Children with politically engaged parents are more likely to deviate from their parents’ political views in adulthood.

Blog Admin — Fri, 17 May 2013 06:30:35 +0000

How do the political attitudes of parents influence those of their children? As Elias Dinas notes, a common assumption is that children from more politically engaged families are more likely to retain their parents’ political views. Taking issue with this perspective, he finds evidence that while young people from politicised homes may be more likely to acquire an initial partisan orientation from their parents, they are also more likely to abandon that preference as they enter adulthood and experience politics for themselves.

How do we end up supporting a specific political party? Why do some people in the UK, for instance, call themselves Labour or Conservative supporters, whereas others fail to identify with any individual party at all? One of the most oft-cited explanations alludes to the role of parents. Through family socialisation, young individuals get to know about the `goodies’ and the `baddies’ of the political world. Accordingly, they form their partisan preferences before they develop a sophisticated understanding of politics. These attachments may not be strongly felt, but children rarely declare a party identification with the main rival of the party to which parents are loyal.

Zwei Urwähler im Gespräch, Adolph von Menzel (Public Domain)

Research in social psychology confirms this view. In what probably constitutes the most influential critique to the long-standing notion that children’s personalities are shaped by their parents, Judith Harris suggests that what matters for the formation of an adult is genes and peers. Still, she acknowledges that her `nurture thesis’ does not hold for the development of political preferences. During childhood, political attitudes are not defining features linking peer groups. Thus, political views acquired at home are not undermined by conformity within these groups. Eventually, however, adolescents become adults and they leave their parents’ home. For some, the partisan affiliation expressed in childhood persists and for others it does not. What explains this variation?

If one pictures parental influence as a form of partisan legacy, we are led to conclude that the more vivid parental politicisation has been during childhood, the more likely its footprints are to persist during adulthood. Parents who provide unambiguous partisan cues are those parents who talk more about politics. These parents, according to the established wisdom, should then be more successful in transmitting an enduring partisanship to their offspring. It turns out, however, that this logic is partially wrong. The reason is that it considers the strength of the initial socialisation, but neglects the strength of the change-inducing circumstances individuals confront later in life.

Once leaving their parental home, young adults frequently encounter new political stimuli, some of which may contradict their parental partisan lessons. Political learning may be prompted by mass media communications or through experiences in college, in the workplace, and in newly formed social networks and families. Although the partisan direction of these cues will depend on the time period and the specific social locations of individuals, the magnitude of their influence on young people’s partisan outlooks should vary according to the individual’s latent predisposition to receive such cues, which in turn will depend on their level of political involvement. Although selective exposure will shape some information flows, others can be thought of as operating exogenously. People do not tend to opt for colleges or jobs on partisan grounds. And while sorting is strong in the selection of spouses, it is much weaker when it comes to the people a young person interacts with in college or in the work environment. Exposure to political discussion in such contexts may lead to instances in which prior views are challenged.

Here again, political socialisation enters in, since a person’s attentiveness to public affairs is shaped by experiences during childhood and adolescence. Although not the only agent of socialisation, the family plays an important role in inspiring the child to take an interest in the political world. Politically interested young adults are likely to have grown up in politicised families. An adolescent acquainted with political discussions within the family will probably continue to talk about politics in their new social contexts. A person whose early socialisation promoted knowledge of and interest in politics will likely continue to be attentive and interested as they move through their adult years. This contact will bring them closer to external influences that might induce them to revise their political worldview.

Political engagement on the part of parents, thus, plays a dual role in the political socialisation of the young. It boosts the intensity of pre-adult political learning, strengthening the transmission of political attitudes from parent to child. It also makes children more politically engaged themselves. Taken together, a seemingly counter-intuitive pattern arises. Young people from politicised homes may be more likely to acquire an initial partisan orientation from their parents, but they are also more likely to abandon that preference as they enter adulthood and experience politics for themselves. Evidence from the US and Britain confirms this perspective, as shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Parent-child political convergence for politicised and non-politicised families in the UK (1991-2008)

Notes: Each dot represents the average difference in the probability of party similarity between parent and child between children from more politicised families and children from less politicised families. The black solid curve summarises the pattern, showing how the passage through early adulthood is shaped by decreasing levels of convergence among offspring from more politicised homes. The analysis is based on the British Household Panel Study.

The evidence shows that young Americans and Britons from highly politicised homes are more likely to deviate from their parents’ partisan preferences. Moreover, the evidence helps to shed light on the mechanisms. A typical context within which many young adults find themselves is the university – a left-leaning institution. Consistent with the argument presented here, it turns out that offspring from right-wing politicised homes are more likely to shift towards a more left-wing direction than children that stem from less politicised right-wing families. Furthermore, when an important political event takes place, be it a war or a scandal, young adults from more politically active families are more likely to update their partisan preferences accordingly. The evidence shows that parent-child divergence is not confined to instances in which the political context prompts young people to develop more liberal stances. For instance, during the 1960s, the civil-rights movement led the American South away from the Democratic party. Consistent with the hypothesis advanced here, it was the young Southerners growing up in politically engaged homes who primarily drove the shift away from the Democrats.

Apart from highlighting the multi-dimensional role of family socialisation, the overall results also shed light on the origins of political change over time. Period forces give room to the formation of generational units only when they are infiltrated through one’s own active involvement. New political climates are only a necessary condition for political change. The sufficient condition is political engagement, at least in part originating in family socialisation. Thus, if knowledge of parental partisanship is important in explaining continuity, knowledge of parental politicisation may be more vital for our understanding of partisan and attitudinal change.

For a longer discussion of the topic covered in this article see: Dinas, Elias (2013) Why Does the Apple Fall Far from the Tree? How Early Political Socialization Prompts Parent-Child Dissimilarity. British Journal of Political Science.

This article was cross-posted simultaneously on the University of Nottingham’s Ballots & Bullets site.

Please read our comments policy before commenting.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/12xPXDo

_________________________________

About the author

Elias Dinas – University of Nottingham
Elias Dinas is a Lecturer in the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham. His main research interests are political socialisation, and the formation and crystallisation of political attitudes and partisan identities.

Bulgaria’s low election turnout is a symptom of the growing mistrust for the ruling GERB party and the country’s political system.

Blog Admin — Thu, 16 May 2013 13:30:43 +0000

Last weekend’s election saw GERB continue as the largest party in Bulgaria’s parliament, a success for former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov. Antoaneta Dimitrova argues that while European commentators may see the election result as confirmation of the government’s good management of the country, the low turnout of 53 per cent suggests that Bulgarians have become disenchanted with GERB and the country’s political system. Recent protests over government corruption, and an electoral system that means 25 per cent of voters are not represented in parliament, may mean more troubled times are ahead in Bulgarian politics.

As so often happens with news from Bulgaria, the results from the recent Bulgarian elections look different from European and Bulgarian perspectives. The elections can barely be explained through existing political theoretical paradigms, for example of theories of democracy, and the gap between democratic theory and Bulgarian realities has never seemed so large. Leaving aside analysis of the concrete results and the difficulty of forming a government based on an almost perfectly split parliament, at present no single perspective can help us understand what the results tell us about the future of Bulgaria’s political system. This could be also the only good news from these elections.

From a European perspective one could say the elections were won by a right centrist party (GERB) supported by other European Christian Democrats, center right parties and the European People’s Party Group. As recently as 2011, Joseph Daul, the EPP group chairman, congratulated GERB leader and former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov for his government’s good financial management, progress achieved in improving key infrastructure and limiting unemployment.

Figure One – Bulgaria election results 2009, 2012

With its small, but clear lead of 30 per cent of the votes or 98 seats, as shown in Figure One, GERB is now a second time winner of parliamentary elections, even third time if we count local elections. This could be interpreted as a sign of stability and satisfaction with Bulgaria’s current economic policy of balanced budgets. Bulgaria has been described by some as ‘a model of fiscal probity’, yet the current results are not really a reward by the electorate given continued policies of austerity and the lowest salaries and pensions in the EU.

The moment one looks closer, the picture of a country being led by a good member of Europe’s right centrist parties falls apart in blurry smudges like an impressionist painting. A closer look reveals continued economic hardship, the failure to raise living standards, increasing unemployment and above all, evidence of state capture by GERB politicians and associated businessmen, supported by a police and secret service apparatus that were meant to be strengthened as part of the fight against organized crime. Among last year’s revelations, which helped to seriously damage GERB’s image, systematic illegal wiretapping of the conversations of ministers, politicians and public figures by the secret service seemingly ordered by GERB’s minister of the interior was discovered.

In addition, there were favours for monopoly businesses with offshore registration led by figures linked to GERB structures, to ministries and parliament and to Borisov personally. There have also been systematic allegations of violations of proper procedure and rule of law in development and public procurement contracts, and the arbitrary appointments of personal favourites for key posts. These have been hastily withdrawn on occasion, as was the case for Bulgaria’s failed first nominee to the European Commission, former Foreign Minister Roumyana Zheleva in 2010. On the basis of their almost complete mandate, GERB have turned out to be much less good news for Bulgaria’s struggle with state capture and corruption than they have claimed. From this perspective, GERB’s second win seems more like a continued grip on power by somewhat authoritarian leaning right wingers than just rewards for good policy results.

Bulgaria’s elections and their outcome, and above all the lowest, at 53 per cent, turnout in the history of post communist democratic elections, represent a challenge for accepted tenets of democratization theory. Namely, that a democratic transition is complete when no major actor challenges the rules of the democratic game. Here, the challenge does not come from established parties that suddenly change the constitution, as has happened in Hungary, but from citizens themselves who no longer see the constitution as democratic enough to allow them sufficient participation. This was evident not only from the election’s turnout but from the protests of January to March this year – the largest since 1997.

Ostensibly the protests’ original cause was high electricity prices, but later they voiced chaotic and unarticulated, but persistent complaints against the existing electoral system and political parties, state capture, uncontrolled monopolies and the state assisted grip of certain groups of shady businesses on policy sectors and even whole towns like Varna. The number of seats in parliament, the parliamentary threshold of 4 per cent, which prevents many new formations from entering parliament, the proportional system of representation that does not allow preferential votes, the lack of real citizen consultation in policy making have all now been questioned by a sufficiently broad group of Bulgarians. One may now conclude that there are major actors who question Bulgaria’s constitution and institutions, but that these are not among the established political parties.

GERB’s tactical resignation in February this year, and call for early elections may have left them with enough support to win, but in combination with last summer’s environmental protests and the election results, voters have made it clear that they do not like the rules of the game as played in Bulgaria at the moment. Not only has this election been marred by low turnout, but the four parties that have made it into parliament represent only 75 per cent of the votes cast. There has been a considerable vote for small parties that did not make it above the 4 per cent barrier. Both of these facts suggest that those who think something is wrong with Bulgaria’s current political system comprise a sufficiently large part of the citizens of the country that we should all be worried not about stability, but about change.

Please read our comments policy before posting.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/10HOR4M

________________________________________

About the author

Antoaneta Dimitrova – Leiden University
Dr. Antoaneta L. Dimitrova is Associate Professor at the Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University.

As the EU gears up to reform data protection rules, the rift between individuals and companies over online personal data processing is gaping.

Blog Admin — Thu, 16 May 2013 06:30:41 +0000

The EU is currently seeking to replace its nearly two decade old policy on data protection for the Internet, social networking and smartphone age. Its proposed reforms seek to deliver better data protection, legal certainty and trust, with the aim of enhancing the EU’s competitiveness. Kristina Irion and Giacomo Luchetta discuss their new report on Online Personal Data Processing and EU Data Protection Reform, arguing that the reforms may fail due to the real risks of the politicisation of data protection, the still fragmented nature of regulations on electronic privacy, and a lack of innovative elements in the proposals.

Data protection policy has developed from being a niche regulatory subject into a mainstream concern for policymakers, individuals and businesses. The issue’s salience today can be explained by the role that is envisaged for personal data in the emerging information-rich economy. The Boston Consulting Group has estimated that the volume of global data transactions is increasing annually by 45 per cent and in the near future 8 per cent of the EU’s GDP will be directly attributable to extracting value from information. When personal data is a most valuable commercial asset on which many online businesses thrive, companies’ stakes in any regulation that would restrict their ability to use personal data as they see fit are understandably very high.

As online technologies develop, connected mobile devices proliferate and the use of social media grows exponentially, users appear to divulge information about themselves and to accept a company’s terms and conditions with a quick click of the mouse. But it is not just carelessness that makes users surrender their privacy but the fact that consumers are often not empowered vis-à-vis online companies. Numerous studies have shown little consumer confidence in the way many online companies make use of personal data and resignation about users’ effective ability to control their personal data.

Source: Pixabay

Since the 1990s a distinct European approach to data protection has developed which is firmly embedded in a constitutional recognition of the right to privacy. Moreover, the “right to the protection of personal data” has evolved to become a modern fundamental right in the EU. In the face of ongoing transformations that have been spurred on by Information and Communications Technology, we may not yet fully comprehend the importance of these rights for individuals and our democratic culture even in a commercial context. Certainly, data protection should be enabling for modern business models, including those that require sophisticated analytical techniques, as long as this is in the interest of consumers and their ability to influence if and how their personal data is used is respected.

The first generation of EU data protection rules were established in a 1995 directive which, from the very outset, has pursued two objectives that are seemingly at odds: to protect these fundamental rights while ensuring the free movement of personal data in the EU internal market. At present, the EU legislator (Council and Parliament of the EU) is working to modernise the general rules so that it can deliver better data protection, legal certainty and, ultimately, trust with the wider ambition to enhance the EU’s competitiveness. This reform was originally launched with the intention to retain the existing level of data protection, to overcome legal fragmentation by resorting to a single EU-wide instrument and to modernize the regulation in order to cope with today’s ubiquitous data processing. Despite important innovations in detail, our recent report suggests that there is a risk that the reform will fall behind in all three of these goals.

First, retaining current levels of data protection may be endangered because EU decision makers are not sure if the reform will stifle innovation or actually enrich innovation. This is not least because powerful lobbies from within the EU and overseas advocate for the interests of providers over consumers. Even today, data protection compliance is often a symbolic and passive exercise whenever individuals must give a consent bundle that authorizes the extensive use of their personal data. But in the discussion about the reform proposals some core concepts of data protection regulation, such as the definitions of personal data and individual’s consent, have turned out to be highly politicised. This is despite the fact that they are already part of the present rules. Damage would be done if a new regulation protects less than all personal data and consent is not explicit and separated from any other transaction.

Second, while it is true that a single EU regulation would overcome the fragmented legacy of the 1995 directive, from the vantage point of processing personal data that is inherent to most online businesses today, fragmentation will persist along the lines of a specific directive on electronic privacy. This leads to conflicting outcomes where installing cookies on end-user terminals or sending email marketing – which are both fairly mainstream practices – will still be regulated separately by 27 member states. EU policymakers are well aware of the two tracks, which can be explained against the background of EU competencies and reform agendas opening different windows of opportunity to introduce new rules. However, it is an increasingly artificial distinction to treat “online” as a different sector, but this should be consolidated into general rules.

The third and final point about modernized rules that will be fit to cope with today’s ubiquitous data processing is only partially resolved. The legislative proposal carries a few innovative elements such as a provision that requires organizations to implement data protection by design and by default. But overall, the reform has been criticised for applying linear concepts to a world of ubiquitous and distributed personal data processing but not offering anything that would scale data protection adequately in the expanding information-rich future. In our report, we discuss options of how to meet the expected magnitude of online personal data processing, and, most importantly, that the role of producers and online platforms should be reconsidered because they are central in helping to ensure compliance. For example, often apps are designed specifically for certain social media sites or smartphones, but the interfaces over which personal data is exchanged do not leverage data protection compliance.

EU legislators now have the difficult task of remaining firm on the principles of data protection and to issue a new EU-wide data protection regulation which is internally consistent, comprehensible and flexible. Data protection in the information-rich economy should enable rendering personalised online services to users but also empower them to effectively control what is done with their personal data beyond the original context. The new regulation can help companies to better demonstrate the benefits of processing personal data to users and their responsible use which ultimately helps to establish trust online.

Please read our comments policy before commenting.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/12bsxlf

_________________________________

About the authors

Kristina Irion – Central European University
Dr. Kristina Irion is Assistant Professor at the Department of Public Policy and Research Director at the Center for Media and Communications Studies (CMCS) at Central European University in Budapest, Hungary. Pertaining to the information society, her research focuses on policies and governance of communications, media and information.

Giacomo Luchetta – Centre for European Policy Studies
Giacomo Luchetta is a Researcher at the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels, Belgium, where he contributes to the activity of the Regulatory Policy Unit. His expertise covers better regulation issues, impact assessments, competition law and economics as well as ICT law and economics.

History suggests that Norway is in line for a change of government in September’s elections.

Blog Admin — Wed, 15 May 2013 13:30:46 +0000

Norway is due to hold parliamentary elections in September. Sveinung Arnesen looks ahead to the elections, arguing that the cost of ruling is taking its toll on the governing centre-left coalition. Despite the country’s oil-rich economy, evidence suggests that the incumbent government is still likely to lose support. He concludes that the stage is set for a centre-right government to come into power in September, unless they stumble like they did in the last elections four years ago.

The political scientist Helmut Norpoth once wrote that “as long as people have chosen political leaders through some form of election, it has been noted, almost like a law of politics, that popularity diminishes with time in office.” The general argument for the cost of rule is that decreasing support comes as high expectations of the newly elected leaders turn into citizen disillusion when they realise the gap between their expectations and what is actually being fulfilled. An alternative explanation is that the electorate changes governments so that the policy outcomes over time remain stable at the centre of the ideological spectrum.

Jens Stoltenberg, Prime Minister of Norway (Credit: Kjetil Ree, CC BY SA)

This regularity is also found in Norway, as there is empirical evidence of a general depreciation in support for incumbents. For example, Gallup polls going back to the mid-1960s describe a negative relationship between holding office and maintaining support among citizens. Whenever one or more parties from the left side of the spectrum are governing, the left bloc as a whole is punished in the poll ratings. Supported by the Socialist Left Party and the agricultural Centre Party, The Labour Party has now lead a majority red-green coalition in Norway for eight consecutive years. Even though more seasoned voters can recall both majority governments and long periods of Labour party reign, the norm in recent decades has been minority governments and fairly frequent changes of government – to be sure more often than every eighth year. For this reason, the sitting government is paddling against the current.

Out of sync with other European countries, Norway is experiencing an oil-induced economic boom almost unprecedented in the history of the nation. One might think that this would help the sitting government gain reelection, but for a red-green coalition, economic prosperity is not good news when it comes to winning votes at the ballot. In the research field of economic voting, it is known that voters punish failing governments, but do not necessarily reward successful ones. Therefore, the incumbent parties cannot expect to reap benefits in the form of vote shares when election day comes. What is more, voters do not fear for their jobs, something which could have helped the parties on the left win over the electorate in September. As paradoxical as it may seem, the economic situation is not likely to help the red-green coalition get reelected.

The structural situation thus leads us to expect a change in government after the next election. This is also the current consensus among pundits and polls. Nevertheless, there is still plenty of time for the centre/right parties to lose their lead by September – just like they did four years ago, as a matter of fact. In the 2009 election the opposition parties were ahead in the polls around this time of the year, yet the incumbent government parties fought back first by fending off the international financial crisis, and second by pointing to the opposition parties’ lack of unity.

In 2009, the four opposition parties were not able to establish a truly convincing coalition alternative to the red-green government. For instance, with only days of the election campaign remaining, the leader of the Liberal Party refused to support any government that involved the Progress Party, effectively blocking a four party centre/right coalition. Whenever the left bloc has held the majority in parliament during the post Second World War era, there has been a left party in government. The non-left parties, on the other hand, have held parliamentary majorities and often failed to retain the executive branch. The Norwegian centre/right bloc is hence arguably distributed on a wider range of the ideological spectrum than the left bloc is. Indeed, one may speak of not two, but three party blocs in Norway, namely left, centre, and right. For the non-left opposition, it is therefore imperative that they find some common ground this time from which they can all shoot their arrows towards the left, without running the risk of striking each other in the back. They do seem better coordinated this year, yet the election campaign has not started.

Depending on the election outcome, the Liberals, the Christian People’s Party, the Conservatives, and the Progress Party will look to form a coalition government in one form or another. The party that works as a necessary component in that coalition is the Conservative Party. It has historically been the largest party among them, has been involved in most non-left governments, and is also able to bridge the gap between the centrist Liberal and Centre parties and the far right Progress Party. Plausible coalitions are all four together, any combination of three parties where the Conservative Party is one of them, and finally the Conservatives in combination with the Progressives.

Forming expectations about the future is always tricky in the social sciences. An unforeseen economic or political shock may drastically change the context in which the election takes place. Moreover, the incumbent parties will not go down without a fight, and there is a full election campaign ahead of us with the potential for twists and turns that we cannot foretell. That said, after two full election periods, it looks likely that the left coalition will be succeeded by a centre/right government after the election in September.

For a longer discussion of the topic covered in this article see: Arnesen, Sveinung (2012) ‘Forecasting Norwegian elections: Out of work and out of office’, International Journal of Forecasting, 28 (4): 789–796.

Please read our comments policy before commenting.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/18I6KqG

_________________________________

About the author

Sveinung Arnesen – University of Bergen
Sveinung Arnesen is a senior researcher at the UNI Rokkan Centre for Social Research, and holds a PhD in comparative politics from the University of Bergen. His research interests include electoral behavior and election forecasting, civil society and the voluntary sector, and the legitimacy of collective decisions. You can follow Sveinung on Twitter @sveinungarnesen

In the wake of the EU brokered agreement, Serbs in Northern Kosovo are more likely to pursue pragmatic co-existence with Pristina

Blog Admin — Wed, 15 May 2013 06:30:01 +0000

On 19 April, the EU brokered a deal to normalise relations between Serbia and Kosovo. This deal has been opposed by leaders in the majority Serb area of Northern Kosovo, but this view may not be shared by the population, argues Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik. She writes that the potential for EU membership and a pragmatic coexistence with Kosovo means that North Kosovo Serbs may have greater job and economic opportunities; opportunities which may become more important than already weakening political loyalties.

Last month, Serbia and Kosovo reached an agreement on ‘normalisation’ of their relations, following protracted EU-led talks. No official version of the agreement appears to have been published yet – but most analysts have been referring to this leaked version. The highlights of this agreement include a provision for a ‘Community/Association of Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo’, created by statute, and which will have ‘full overview of the areas of economic development, education, health, urban and rural planning’ as well as ‘other powers’. Other important points include the agreement on one police force in Kosovo, as well as a promise to that neither side will block each other’s EU entry.

On the one hand, the agreement appears pretty comprehensive, but on the other hand, it has puzzled some observers: what, if anything, will actually change as a result of it? As many will point out, Serb majority municipalities, under Kosovo’s decentralization laws, already have significant powers to run their own affairs in e.g. education. However, as it is also evident, most of the Northern municipalities do not seem to be using these competencies as much as they rely on Serbian financing, Serbian laws and Serbian institutions to run their affairs. Being largely beyond the control of Kosovo and Serbia, the North, in many ways, already acts as an independent ‘Community/Association’ with no clear rules.

As a number of observers have already pointed out, the North Kosovo Serbs are a crucial factor in implementing the agreement. So far, the community leaders have opposed the agreement. Recently, they declared that the agreement is ‘unacceptable for Serbs in Kosovo’, and that it should not be implemented until the Serbian Constitutional Court weighs in. But, according to the Serbian media, the agreement is endorsed by Serb community leaders South of the Ibar.

What emerges from the North is often alarming, or alarmist. As the Kosovo-Serbia negotiations unfolded earlier this year, there were a string of minor explosions throughout the North, followed by protests composed of the residents of the northern municipalities of Zvecan, Mitrovica, Zubin Potok and Leposavic, and the creation of a ‘Civilian Defence Corps’. These have also been accompanied with strong, nationalist rhetoric from the Mayor of Mitrovica, Krstimir Pantic, whose anti-EU narrative is strongly reminiscent of the Milosevic era. He has recently stated that “We are sending a message to the enemies of the Serbian people that we will not surrender and allow them to seize Kosovo’. Much of this rhethoric is directed at both the Kosovan state and authorities as well as Serbia and its participation in the EU-led talks.

But, as a recent article correctly points out, the Northern Kosovo population itself is far from their usual representation as ‘extremists’ and ‘criminals’. Yet, surprisingly little is known about the political loyalties of North Kosovo Serbs. Are they really likely to boycott implementation of the agreement? Whilst their leaders – whose legitimacy is disputed - may push for this, it is far more likely that the population of the North will adapt to the new realities in order to facilitate a more pragmatic (co)existence with Pristina. This has been increasingly the case with Serbs south of the Ibar river, who are much more isolated from other Serb communities.

Some evidence of North Kosovo Serbs’ political loyalties can be seen in the votes they cast in the 2012 Serbian parliamentary and presidential elections (they generally do not vote in Kosovo elections). First, as the official results indicate, shown in Figure One, the participation levels of Kosovo Serbs in Serbian elections seem to be dropping.

Figure 1 – Falling voter turnout in elections in regions of Northern Kosovo

Another key trend, shown in Figure 2, is the relatively improved performance of Boris Tadic’s Democratic Party (as part of the Choice for a better life coalition) and the almost complete lack of votes for non-mainstream and extremist parties (such as the cleric-nationalist ‘Dveri’) is interesting – it demonstrates that support is moving away slowly from parties which make strong claims about Kosovo and emotional appeals to Kosovo Serbs. The political support of Kosovo Serbs voting in the Serbian elections is still concentrated amongst the conservative parties (Serbian Renewal Movement; Democratic Party of Serbia and Dacic’s Socialist party), but it is beginning to fragment. In short, Kosovo Serbs’ loyalties to Serbia’s nationalist parties, are not as strong as they may first appear.

Figure 2 – Election outcomes in Northern Kosovo-Mitrovica District 2008 – 2012

* Boris Tadic’s Democratic Party is a component of the ‘Choice for a better life’ coalition of parties

What, then, does this mean for the Kosovo-Serbia agreement? The narrative in Serbia at least, has moved towards discussing implementation. This is a key puzzle in the agreement itself, as it is not clear how many of those points will work in practice. Clearly, much of the ground will have to be prepared by political elites in Belgrade and Pristina. Local elites such as the Northern mayors may block implementation in various ways. However, the local populations are those that stand to benefit from any agreement which unblocks Kosovo-Serbia relations. Northern Kosovo Serbs may, politically, prefer to be a part of Serbia, but this may change soon as the agreement is largely interpreted by Serbian critics as a ‘sell out’ and an abandonment of Kosovo Serbs.

Serbia does not have the financial means to keep supporting North Kosovo (perhaps one of the key reasons for its unexpected support of this agreement?). As it now hopes that the agreement will unlock EU membership – something on which the current government has suddenly made its priority, having been, in the past, somewhat more ambivalent about accession – it is likely that it will start to meet other demands, such as the dismantling of parallel institutions in the North. The absences of these – schools, hospitals, municipality offices – and the jobs and finances it provides, will also translate into Serbia’s lessening influence on the ground. Eventually, it is envisaged that Kosovo or ‘Community/Association’ institutions will replace these. Either way, the Serbian population of North Kosovo, is much more likely to approach the issue with pragmatism and look to the instructions providing them with jobs and real prospects, than follow any rhetoric of Northern mayors, for the sake of political loyalties.

Please read our comments policy before commenting.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/12rLulC

_________________________________

About the author

Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik – Aston University
Jelena Obradovic-Wochnik is a Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Aston University. Before joining Aston, Jelena held visiting fellowships at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki and the European Union Institute for Security Studies. Her research interests include Serbia-Kosovo relations and transitional justice. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for European Studies, Harvard University.

France has almost entirely failed in its strategy to prevent English taking over as the lingua franca of the EU.

Blog Admin — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:30:42 +0000

Prior to the accession of the United Kingdom to the European Economic Community in 1973, the French language held a privileged position as a lingua franca of the Community. David Fernández Vítores assesses the demise of the French language’s status and the failure of France to develop an effective strategy for preventing the advance of English. He notes that the country is now refocusing its efforts on consolidating the position of French in the legal sphere, one of the few areas where it still enjoys a privileged position in comparison to other official languages.

France is not only one of the founding members of the European Community, but also one of the main drivers of the integration process. However, this does not necessarily mean that France has systematically allowed the erosion of its political identity as a result of European integration. In fact, it has done the opposite. France’s attitude regarding the position of the French language in the EU is a good example of its savoir-faire. Since the early years of the Community, France’s strategy for safeguarding its language has focused solely on adopting measures aimed at promoting the language or strengthening the privileged position it previously enjoyed in the institutional arena.

Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Public Domain)

The main challenge to this privileged position came in 1973 with the accession of the United Kingdom, as well as Ireland and Denmark. In addition to concerns about the French language losing its importance on the European stage as a result of English becoming an official Community language, this first enlargement brought with it a proposal to reform the EU language regime. Interestingly enough, the proposal for reform did not come from the states in which French and English were spoken, but from one with a minority language in the Community: Denmark.

On its entry into the Community, Denmark proposed not to use its national language, Danish, in an effort to help reduce the number of official Community languages to just two – English and French – thus streamlining institutional functioning. To avoid favouring native speakers of these languages, the only condition put forward by Denmark was that French members spoke English and English members spoke French. However, both the United Kingdom and France rejected this proposal, which is altogether surprising, especially in the French case, since the measure would have involved legally recognising the predominant role of the French language that France had been advocating up until that point. Opposition from the Italians and Dutch also influenced the stance of the French. However, from a rational standpoint, France’s refusal can be understood because if it accepted the criterion of functionality as an excuse for reducing the number of languages to two, this same criterion could be used in the future to suppress French permanently, leaving English as the single working language.

Rejection of the Danish proposal also implied validation of the safeguarding strategy for the French language that France had adopted up to then. In fact, after the addition of English as an official language of the European Community, France continued to implement institutional measures to protect and promote French, by creating organisations to defend the French language. An example of this approach was the establishment in 1979 of the Comité pour la langue de l’Europe. This committee had two, somewhat conflicting, objectives. On the one hand, it defended “the development of all European languages in all countries within the Community, without giving preference to English” and, on the other, it suggested that the European Community have a single official language: French.

Despite the progressive deterioration of the privileged position of French in the European Union, this was not a critical issue until 1992, which was the turning point after which French began to give way to English as the main lingua franca of the EU. This situation triggered the development of an urgent strategy to rescue French, based on the joint promotion of French and multilingualism. The aim of this policy was to curb the threat to French and the other languages, which had been clearly identified in various French institutional documents.

However, a mere change of mentality does not necessarily imply the adoption of policy measures to safeguard the language in the European context. It was also necessary to create a policy framework for action that would result in policy decision-making aimed at defending linguistic diversity and, by extension, the French language. Moreover, these decisions had to be supported by the other Member States; something extremely difficult to achieve if we consider that the strategy to defend diversity was driven almost exclusively by French interests. In Europe, this policy framework was defined by the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992. The Treaty introduces two essential elements that facilitate the new French strategy: a reference to linguistic diversity and the principle of subsidiarity, which stipulates that “the Community shall take action… only if and in so far as the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States and can therefore… be better achieved by the Community”.

Thus, as the introduction of subsidiarity meant an extension of the competencies of Member States, it also ensured that the rest of the Member States supported the safeguarding of linguistic diversity advocated by France. This strategy has been unsuccessful, however, judging by the relentless advance of English as the supranational language of communication since the introduction of the principle of subsidiarity up to the present day. In fact, the current stance of French political leaders and academics suggests certain dissatisfaction with the results of the strategy initiated in 1992. Perhaps it is this dissatisfaction that, in recent years, has led to France adopting measures aimed at consolidating the position of the French language in an area in which it still enjoys a clear privilege in comparison to other official languages: the legal sphere.

Please read our comments policy before commenting.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/YF9eSq

_________________________________

About the author

David Fernández Vítores - Universidad Complutense, Madrid
David Fernández Vítores is a researcher in the project The economic value of the Spanish Language: Challenges and Opportunities and a Lecturer at the Complutense University. He has published in the Journal of Language and Politics and other academic journals and is the author of several books (in Spanish) including: The Europe of Babel (2011), and The Multilingual Europe (2010). His work focuses on the role of language as a political instrument in international relations. His latest book, Spanish Language in International Relations (2012) can be downloaded here.

The EU’s fading influence over Turkey is weakening the country’s democratic reform processes.

Blog Admin — Tue, 14 May 2013 06:30:11 +0000

The EU and Turkey have been in dialogue over the country’s potential accession since the 1980s. As Firat Cengiz notes, however, the EU’s influence has diminished following the accession of Cyprus in 2004, and the on-going Eurozone crisis. She argues that fading EU influence is weakening current reform processes aimed at drafting a new constitution and recognising the cultural and linguistic rights of Kurdish minorities.

Turkey is currently going through two historically significant reform processes. If successful, the reform processes will profoundly affect the country’s future governance. On the one hand, the Turkish Parliament is drafting a new constitution for the country. On the other hand, peace talks between the Turkish government and the Kurdish PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) are underway. In a breakthrough development, the Kurdish PKK has initiated the process of withdrawing its armed militants from Turkish territory.

Since the EU’s recognition of Turkey’s candidateship in 1999, constitutional reform and the Kurdish issue have constituted the two key pillars of the democratic conditionality relationship between Turkey and the EU. Turkey’s current constitution is essentially authoritarian, as it came into force as a direct result of the 1980 coup. The Turkish Parliament has amended the constitution more than a hundred times so far, primarily in response to EU demands. Those reforms improved the protection of fundamental rights and freedoms and limited the leverage of non-majoritarian institutions over daily politics. Nevertheless, the authoritarian approach is largely still alive, particularly in the constitutional definition of citizenship that takes Turkishness as its basis, thus denying Turkey’s cultural and linguistic diversity. Similarly, the state’s military approach to the Kurdish issue since the 1980s has exacerbated fundamental rights violations. Consequently, the Kurdish issue has received extensive critical treatment by the EU.

Credit: earthprod (CC BY 2.0)

Despite the key position of the two issues in the conditionality relationship, the EU’s role in the on-going reform discourses has been limited. The EU’s conditionality on Turkey has become gradually weaker since Cyprus’ EU accession as a divided island in 2004 caused a stalemate in Turkey’s accession negotiations with the EU. Since then other factors have contributed to the deterioration of Turkey-EU relations: some EU Member States, particularly Austria, France, Germany and the Netherlands have continued to voice their increasingly sceptical rhetoric against Turkey’s EU membership. The EU’s financial crisis and bail-outs have also rendered EU membership a much less desirable prospect for Turkey. After the Arab Spring and the Syrian Crisis, the focus of Turkish foreign policy increasingly shifted to the Middle East in light of the Turkish government’s primary objective of establishing itself as the leader of its region.

Following this fading of EU conditionality, the Turkish government has adopted EU backed reforms selectively and strategically to extend the governmental powers vis-à-vis the veto players in the domestic political system, most notably the military and the judiciary. Recent empirical studies confirm the essential influence of EU conditionality on Turkey’s reform processes, as well as the changing dynamics of the reform processes in the shadow of fading EU conditionality.

EU conditionality is an imperfect external governance tool: it follows a colonial logic in which similar conditions are imposed on countries with different socio-political histories; at times it is applied strategically to protect the EU’s own security and political interest, rather than with the aim of structurally improving democracy in EU candidates; and it fails to engender a grass roots transformation, particularly when socially embedded norms are at stake. Nevertheless, the on-going reform processes in Turkey still suffer from significant caveats in the shadow of fading EU conditionality.

The constitutional reform process suffers from a secretive non-participatory process. A conciliatory committee comprised of four political parties represented in the Parliament is drafting the new constitution. So far there has not been any significant attempt to engender public participation in constitution-making. Likewise, the substance of the new constitution, as drafted by the committee, is a complete enigma. Additionally, different political groups perceive the constitution-making process as a strategic opportunity to push their own individual agendas. This results in asymmetrical treatment of substantive issues in the reform discourse. The governing AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi) wants to replace Turkey’s current parliamentary democracy with a semi-presidential regime to strengthen the executive’s role and powers. The AKP’s institutional ambitions, and more recently the Kurdish issue have dominated the reform discourse, while other equally important issues, such as fundamental rights and freedoms, minority rights in general and gender equality have barely been mentioned. Had the EU’s conditionality been stronger, these issues would have received more significant treatment in the reform discourse under EU oversight.

The Turkish government has initiated the Kurdish peace process primarily due to its regional policy ambitions. Since the beginning of the Syrian crisis, the government has been a vocal opponent of the Assad regime. In retaliation, the Syrian government left the control of Syrian regions bordering Turkey to the PKK’s Syrian wing PYD (Democratic Union Party), significantly increasing the security threats in Turkey’s largely Kurdish populated southeast. This has shown once again that Turkey will not be able to take a strong stance in regional politics, let alone achieve its much-desired regional leadership role, as long as the Kurdish issue continues to be its Achilles’ heel. Hence, the government’s initiation of peace talks with the Kurdish PKK. Although the EU has released a declaration in support of the peace talks, this has not received any media coverage in Turkey. Under fading EU conditionality Turkey has started to look to alternative sources for inspiration. Northern Ireland’s peace process as reflected in the Good Friday Agreement has so far received the greatest attention.

Turkey’s Kurdish issue does not only have a terrorism dimension: it is also inextricably linked to the poor accommodation of Kurds’ and other minorities’ cultural and linguistic rights. The on-going peace talks are naturally expected to result in improvements in the constitutional accommodation of Kurdish minority rights. Nevertheless, in the shadow of the secrecy surrounding both reform processes, it is not entirely certain to what extent the two processes feed into each other. Similarly, under fading EU conditionality and the Turkish government’s strategic approach to reform processes, one cannot help but question the prospects for the processes engendering a public debate on minority rights and improving their constitutional accommodation. Thus, despite its fundamental drawbacks and contradictions, the weakening of EU conditionality still appears a caveat for the reform processes’ prospects for improving democracy in Turkey’s governance.

Please read our comments policy before commenting

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1265Oal

_________________________________

About the author

Firat Cengiz – University of Liverpool
Dr Firat Cengiz is lecturer in law at the University of Liverpool. Her primary research interests are in Europeanisation and multi-level governance. She is the author of Antitrust Federalism in the EU and the US (Routledge, 2012) and the co-editor of Turkey and the European Union: Facing New Challenges and Opportunities (with Lars Hoffmann, Routledge, forthcoming in 2013).

Five minutes with Theda Skocpol: “Even those on the American centre-left are now viewing Europe in a negative sense because of austerity”

Blog Admin — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:30:55 +0000

Should the organisations of the state be seen as independent actors, or are they simply reflective of groups within society? EUROPP’s editors spoke to Theda Skocpol about her contribution to ‘state theory’ and the effect of European integration on EU states. She also outlines some of her recent research on climate change legislation, and addresses the parallels between the Tea Party movement in the United States and populist movements in Europe.

You’ve written extensively on the concept of ‘state theory’ and the role of the state. What are the main components of state theory?

Well I didn’t create an entirely new theory, the work that I did with colleagues that was embodied in the book, Bringing the State Back In, was in many ways drawing on the traditions of Max Weber, and other – especially German – theorists who in dialogue with Marxists argued that we need to take the organisations of the state more seriously in their own right. In particular this refers to the administrative, military and policing organisations, which are at the core of almost all modern states, but also the institutions of representation, where they exist.

So my contribution along with others was to say that there are two ways to think about the impact of the state on politics and policy. One is to say that under certain conditions state elites and bureaucracies can be independent actors, with their own organisational interests which are not simply reflective of class groups – although they may be aligned with them. The second point is that, drawing on the Tocqueville tradition, the pattern of state organisation – both the administrative and representative institutions, if they exist – creates an opportunity structure for groups that influences which groups will organise and what roles they will follow. Sometimes it can even create a pattern that groups imitate in civil society.

Could the EU be viewed as a new type of state?

When I look at the EU I see it as an attempt at creating a federalised governing structure. This structure could be approached in the same way that many emerging federated structures throughout history, including the United States, have been approached. You can come up with all kinds of problems about how you’re going to share out the levels of sovereignty: in this case between EU organisations (representative and bureaucratic) and the organisations of the nation states. Then you have to deal with the issue of which levels of authority are going to have to deal with which kinds of problems.

Now the EU might be stalling and reversing. It has this interesting characteristic which is that in theory nations can withdraw from the organisation: that didn’t happen in the United States, or it did but it created a civil war. So the EU is much more fragile than some of the other federations throughout history. But rarely are there brand new political structures. The EU is a voluntary federation and there have been voluntary federations before: there were voluntary federations of city states; you could even argue that the United States was formed as a voluntary federation.

Even empires, which have this element of conquest attached, nevertheless had a multi-level structure and constant jostling about what’s going to be settled at each level. Of course it’s new for Europe, but you could go as far back as Charlemagne and talk about different attempts that have been made throughout history to paste the pieces together.

You’ve conducted substantial research on climate change legislation. Do you think Europe is doing enough to tackle climate change?

Certainly not. I’ve recently written a report about why efforts to create an emissions cap and trade system in the United States in 2009/10 failed. It definitively failed, and the rise of ultra-conservatism in and around the Republican Party is really blocking any effort to create strong national regulatory or tax based solutions that would raise the price of carbon energy and encourage the emergence of green energy sources. That’s a transition the United States has to make, and I think the rest of the world has a stake in that.

Now we have seen some real changes in the energy economy happening through the discovery and exploitation of natural gas. If that’s handled correctly it can be a cleaner source of energy than oil or coal. But the United States has stalled right now in its ability to deal with a whole series of national problems that have international consequences. Meanwhile, the European emissions cap and trade system isn’t working so well. My own personal preference would be for carbon taxes, and I’ve been arguing for a carbon tax with dividend payments back to the citizenry so that ordinary middle income, and lower income people, who have seen no income growth over the last four decades, would gain a stake in the contribution to the green economy.

I think environmentalists were looking to Europe for leadership on climate change, but the problems with Europe’s emissions cap and trade scheme have undermined that to an extent. And of course in American politics in general it’s not a major winning strategy to look abroad for leadership on an issue. Indeed in the era of the Tea Party and its influence on the Republican Party, Europe becomes almost a negative. This doesn’t have anything to do with Europe in reality; it’s about debates inside the United States and who points to Europe about what. But it’s quite often the case that Europe is brought up in a negative sense. So in terms of American conservatives it’s a big negative for Europe to adopt taxation policies to deal with climate change, but even those on the American centre-left are now pointing to Europe in a critical sense because of the austerity policies currently being implemented.

You’ve recently co-authored a book on the Tea Party movement in the United States. Do you think the success of the Tea Party has parallels with populist movements in Europe?

In our book we argue that the Tea Party is a generational movement incorporating a large amount of resentment against immigrants. It’s nativist, and the United States has a long history of nativist movements: they break out from time to time, and they’re not always on the right, though this one is. I think that there are parallels in a lot of European nations with native born populations reacting to economic stress through the resentment of foreigners. The US version of this, incidentally, also involves older citizens resenting younger citizens, and I don’t know if that’s true in the European versions.

But here’s what I’d say, as an institutionalist – and this is where the state gets brought back in. The US variant of this depends on two features of our public policy and our political institutions that are different from some countries in Europe. The policy context is that you can have grassroots Tea Party members engaging in right-wing, populist resentment politics, but at the same time they are very willing to celebrate Social Security and Medicare, which are generous social welfare programmes for the older part of the population. They don’t want these programmes to be cut; they only want to cut spending that would go to younger citizens. This is a feature of the United States, where our welfare policies are generationally uneven. They’re universal and relatively generous for the old folks, but either non-existent or not very generous for everybody else.

The second thing that’s important is that in the US two-party political system, with winner takes all elections, this populist resentment politics is always about leveraging one of the two major parties. The Tea Party is about leveraging the Republican Party: to keep them from compromising, and to enable them to block a whole series of things, including global warming remedies. In Europe, in contrast, a lot of these movements manifest themselves in minority parties. This generally gives them less leverage because they can be overlooked by the parties in government.

Please read our comments policy before commenting.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/10tmRRr

_________________________________

About the author

Theda Skocpol – Harvard University
Theda Skocpol is the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. She is also the Director of the Scholars Strategy Network. Her publications include, The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (Oxford University Press, 2011), Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge University Press, 1985), and States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia and China (Cambridge University Press, 1979).

European solidarity may be the real casualty in the dispute over German war reparations to Greece.

Blog Admin — Mon, 13 May 2013 06:30:57 +0000

In recent weeks Greece has resurrected claims against Germany for reparations from World War Two, claims which have been comprehensively rejected by Berlin. Vassilis Paipais argues that claims to historical justice should be viewed in the context of the ethical, political and emotional responses they provoke. He writes that while Greeks wish Germany to display the historical magnanimity that it was shown after World War Two, many Germans feel that the claim is in essence, an accusation that the country has not adequately addressed its war failings.

Crises are often described as moments in which the barriers between normality and its exception break down. The controversial German jurist of the previous century, Carl Schmitt, argued that during exceptional times when given definitions, established habits and standard procedures are called into question, every issue -be it social, economic, juridical or even aesthetic- can assume a political quality. The dispute between Greece and Germany over the issue of World War Two reparations is beset not only by the complexity inherent in judging claims to historical justice by contemporary standards but also by its association with debt-related political controversies which evoke strong emotional responses from both sides.

Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-779-0003-22 / Segers (Seegers) / [CC-BY-SA-3.0-de], via Wikimedia Commons

Recent weeks have revealed that Greece is planning to pursue its long-dormant claim over World War Two reparations from Germany. This adds a further strain on relations with Berlin which already carries most of the burden for Greece’s €240 billion rescue. According to reports by Greek weekly newspaper To Vima, also picked up by German magazine Der Spiegel, the Greek Finance Ministry has compiled a secret report that takes stock of all relating available data over the course of six decades. The report documents Greece’s claim of €108 billion for damage to its infrastructure and €54 billion for a loan the Greek National Bank was forced to provide for Hitler’s Germany during the war, both adjusted for inflation. The total sum of €162 billion is the equivalent of almost 80 per cent of Greece’s current annual gross domestic product. To give a sense of scale, were Germany to pay the full amount, it would reduce Greece’s public debt to more than half.

Offsetting the country’s debt against German war reparations is not a claim openly made by Greek officials but it is apparently one that irritates Berlin, which was quite adamant in dismissing it. According to Deutsche Welle, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble was quoted by the Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung saying:

“I consider such comments irresponsible. Much more important than misleading people with such stories would be to explain and spell out the reform path. Greece has already accomplished a lot but also still has a longer way ahead of it. One should not divert attention from that”.

Mr. Schäuble’s statement was diplomatically rebutted by Greek Foreign Minister, Dimitris Avramopoulos, who did not deny the necessity of budgetary restraints and structural reforms but insisted that “that does not change the fact that reparations claims remain in place.” For Avramopoulos, it is wrong to link the issue to the debt crisis: “This has been an open issue for 60 years, it is too large an issue to fit into the confines of the fiscal crisis”, he said.

At first glance, Avramopoulos is right to make this distinction. The issue is primarily a legal dispute and both countries, while not officially engaged in litigation, hold specific legal views on the matter. The documents collected by the Greek Finance Ministry reportedly confirm that, in 1960, Germany paid 115 million German marks in reparation payments to victims of Nazi terror in Greece in accordance with a bilateral reparation agreement. From Germany’s perspective, that payment settled all claims definitively. Greece in turn makes mention of the 1953 London Agreement on German External Debts, a treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and creditor nations stipulating that payment obligations from World War II were to be deferred until “after the signing of a peace treaty.” In 1990, Germany was unified and peace was brokered with the four occupying powers. Yet, Germany refused to discuss with its former victims and present allies the legitimacy of their claims to compensation for war losses. The second part of the war reparations issue relates to the occupation loan that a starving Greece was obliged to provide to the Nazis in 1942. On this matter, the government of the Third Reich had started repaying the loan in instalments, but post-war Germany reneged on further payments. According to Professor Emeritus of the University of Athens, Hagen Fleischer, on this latter issue Greece could make a better case as the occupiers recognised their loan debt of 476 million Reichsmarks and had actually started repayment shortly before the end of the war.

However, one should not be distracted by the complexity of the legal dispute. The periodic revival of the Greek claim for reparations against Germany is not just a legal matter; it also has an ethical and political dimension that is hard to disentangle under the debris of emotional responses surrounding it. In fact, sentimental outbursts demanding the reparations are almost the rule in the Greek media these days. A top-selling daily Ta Nea described the situation as a ‘Cold War’ between Athens and Berlin. What was seen as Mr. Schäuble’s disdainful dismissal of the Greek claims provoked equally sentimental reactions from the Greek side with SYRIZA parliamentary spokesman Dimitris Papadimoulis tellingDeutsche Welle that Schäuble presents Greeks with a crude ultimatum, ‘reform or reparations’. Similarly, Manolis Glezos, a veteran leftist icon and former SYRIZA MP, railed against what he termed the current German government’s ‘policy of subordination of Greeks’.

Part of the Greek fury can be explained by what they understand as modern Germany’s ungratefulness and lack of historical memory. Having learned from experience, the Allies in 1945 did not impose reparations upon Germany. Rather than hold on to a moral right to exploit enemy resources, as had been done previously, the victors underscored future reconciliation and assisted its defeated enemies to re-establish themselves. In hindsight, this policy is widely celebrated as it turned out to be one of the cornerstones of post-World War Two reconstruction and reconciliation. Thanks to the write-off of its debts in 1953, a defeated and destroyed Germany was able to get back on its feet and achieve its post-war economic miracle. Yet, now that Germany’s former enemy and current debt-strapped ally is suffering under belt-tightening policies, Greeks are inevitably making historical comparisons demanding that their historical magnanimity be reciprocated. No wonder that Mr Schäuble’s blunt cynicism only helps to further inflame an already hostile mood among the Greek people and a feeling of mutual suspicion between the two nations.

That said and despite the fact that a number of German media and politicians did not seem to share Mr Schäuble’s outright rejection of the Greek claim, ordinary German citizens tend to interpret it as a direct attack to their deeply embedded conviction that post-war Germans have proven to be committed and responsible Europeans. In fact, any claim about Germany’s outstanding debts is immediately perceived as a deeply resented accusation that the country has not adequately addressed its world war failings. That in itself is enough to stir strong self-defensive reactions in the German population. Some German bloggers, for example, sarcastically wondered whether Greece is justified to demand reparations for the Ottoman occupation, or the Persian invasions in antiquity or the Frankish rule during the Middle Ages.

On the other side, frustrated with Germany’s persistent refusal to settle what they see as decades-long pending WWII German reparation obligations, ordinary Greek citizens have organised an ongoing petition and are collecting signatures (over 188,000 so far) to demand the long-delayed settlement . Few could disagree with the motivations behind such an initiative given the ferocity of Nazi atrocities in Greece during the war such as the massacre of 218 people in the village of Distomo. However, beyond these perfectly justifiable sentiments and accompanying legal claims, one should not underestimate the domestic motivations supporting Greek reactions. A reluctant political elite with no effective vision for reform and a frail legitimacy finds itself fighting rear guard battles in a desperate attempt to boost a dispirited nation, even if it may not mean any money coming into the state coffers. The real danger here is turning a real issue into a smokescreen to hide incompetence and lack of political will for painful reforms. It won’t be the first time grandiose and self-righteous speech is employed to justify inaction and ignite agitation for lack of real policy. Between Mr Schäuble’s arrogance and Greek political elite’s mischievousness the casualty is probably once more going to be the rule of law and European solidarity.

This article originally appeared on the LSE Euro Crisis in the Press blog.

Please read our comments policy before commenting.

Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics.

Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/ZRTfS8

__________________________________________

About the authors

Vassilios Paipais – LSE Euro Crisis in the Press
Vassilios Paipais holds a PhD in International Relations from the LSE where he teaches social sciences methodology. He has published in the Review of International Studies and International Politics and held various teaching posts at the LSE, SOAS, UCL and the University of Edinburgh. His work focuses on International Relations theory and the conditions of self-reflexivity surrounding critical discourses in international relations. He also works on political theology and the role of post-secular ideas in international political theory. Follow Vassilis on twitter @v_paipais or visit Vassilios’ academic profile.