David Hanley

Christian Democracy and the Paradoxes of Europeanization Flexibility, Competition and Collusion

Europeanization is seen as a two-way interaction between developments at European Union (EU) and national levels. Applied to the European Peoples Party (EPP), it is discussed with reference to ideological/programmatic and organizational changes. Ideologically, EPP has kept its perennial federalism, but on the left/right axis, has shifted towards liberal economics at the expense of traditional Christian Democrat values. Organizationally, this shift has been complemented by moves to incorporate liberal-conservative parties, especially in areas where Christian democracy has been historically weak, including EU candidate states. This flexible approach has nevertheless encountered limits and also created tension between purists and realists concerned with number rather than quality. Europeanization appears as a dynamic, unruly and sometimes contradictory process.

Compromise, Party Management and Fair Shares The Case of the French UDF

The French UDF has failed in its attempt to become a party capable of dominating the right at the expense of the Gaullist RPR. It is best regarded as an underdeveloped party which has difficulty in acting as a unitary organization. This failure is due to the exceptional historical and institutional context of its birth but also to the preference of its leaders for their existing organizations. To preserve these they have elaborated a sophisticated and measurable system of compromise between themselves and with the RPR which guarantees significant rewards. This underdeveloped status will probably continue indefinitely. In a wider context the UDFs failure sheds light on the difficulty of creating genuinely new partisan organizations.

Squeezed from Above and Pressured from Below: The Nation State in the Era of Globalisation

Proudhon believed that the history of political community could be seen as a constant dialectic of centralisation and decentralisation, with first one tendency gaining the upper hand, then the other. He wrote in the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the first traces of what we today recognise as a global economy were beginning to emerge. Well over a century later, his analysis retains much truth. The central executives of nation states, whether young or centuries old, struggle increasingly to preserve autonomy in all spheres where it was long taken for granted. In the area of economic policy, the increasing impotence of national governments in the face of bond markets and capital movements is the most obvious sign of erosion of state authority. But even policy domains involving the repressive or social roles of the State are subject to erosion also; how in an era of rapid population movement and demographic change can governments control what happens inside their territory in the way that they used to? As well as being subject to pressure from outside, states have to cope with challenges from above and below. European states have for over half a century slowly begun to pool various aspects of their policy in the framework of the European Union, which can be seen, historically, as a contributory cause of globalisation. But the increasing pressure of the global economy, particularly the financialisation of that economy, is now forcing them to cede even more policy autonomy in the shape of the various fiscal compacts now being worked out around the eurozone. States will thus in the future have to conform to agencies which they have contributed to create, but which now exert pressure on their creators. At the same time, pressure from below has increased. Many European states still have unresolved issues from what Rokkan called the centre/periphery cleavage. As states such as Spain or the UK developed modern economies and societies, centred on key regions of the country, peripheral zones, possessing if not a distinct culture or language then certainly a strong identity, were swept along in the process of development. So long as enough results of this trickled down, as it were, to the periphery, then the latter could accommodate, more or less, the bruising of traditional identities and practices. To be sure, cultural and political forces always existed on the periphery which resented the process of

Géopolitique de la France: entre déclin et renaissance

Proudhonian mutualism and Durkheimian notions of collective morality, whose advocates sought reformist policies which could diffuse social conflict without subverting the existing socio-economic system. InFrench legal circles, LéonDuguit and the public service school of administrative law emphasised the obligation of the state to provide services which would cultivate social solidarity. Laroque, mixing in these circles in the 1920s, accepted this solidarist line, arguing as such in his 1933 doctoral thesis. By then he had first-hand experience in this domain, having contributed to the 1928–30 social insurance legislation as a member of the Conseil d’État in 1930. In the mid-1930s, Laroque came to champion administrative decentralisation, believing that French collective bargaining legislation was ineffective. Like many others, he turned to corporatism as a promoter of social solidarity, although his admiration for fascist corporatism and eventually corporatism tout courtwanedby the end of the decade. In this period, Laroque participated in intellectual debates within discussion groups such as the Groupe du 9 Juillet and X-Crise, and his thought changed rapidly: he believed the Third Republic was undergoing a prolonged crisis, but perceived a radical transformation under the Popular Front, whosewelfare policies he supported. Yet he moved away from a dirigiste approach, feeling that French social tensions were primarily of a ‘psychological’ nature, thus they could not be remedied through legal means alone. His wartime activities saw little intellectual development, yet the idealistic spirit of the Liberation spurred the policy review he initiated (as the newly appointed director of social insurance), culminating in the social security ordinances of October 1945. The Laroque Plan sought to rationalise the administrative infrastructure of social insurance while incorporating the family allowance and industrial accident programmes into a unified system of benefits. Yet this universal system was not to be: de Gaulle vetoed the inclusion of family allowances, and the law of January 1948 saw old-age security divided along occupational lines. Jabbari argues convincingly that the pursuit of the universal system of social security actually resulted in the creation of a systemreflecting the social fragmentation of post-war France. This study has some minor flaws: it occasionally contains tensions between the biographical and contextual approaches, and the content can feel overly repetitive. An engagement with the development of welfare (and Laroque’s life) after 1948 would be a welcome addition, but perhaps that is for another book. As it is, this is a solid work of history based on impressive research, useful for anyone interested in welfare in France.

Mapping the Extreme Right in Contemporary Europe: From Local to Transitional

provisions of Lithuanian Civil Service Law were improved in 2002, taking into consideration the ideas of NPM. Kerstin Jacobsson and Charlotte West analyse the Europeanization of the decision-making process of labour market policy. The authors admit that after the entrance of the Baltic states to the EU, labour market policy has not become significant. In their opinion, labour market policy has to be strict and with strong monitoring. Jacobsson and West indicate that the old member states exported the co-ordination problems of labour market policy to the Baltic states. This means that nobody in the EU learns from the earlier lessons, while the new members totally trust in the old ones because of the inquisitional nature of labour policy. Ann-Cathrine Jungar investigates the involvement of national parliaments of the Baltic states into the EU decision-making process. The author indicates that at the EU level, nobody cared about this process. Even though the Northern European countries suggested the engagement model, however, the approaches chosen by the parliaments of the new member states were inevitably selective by organizing seminars, conferences and making bilateral agreements. It seems that this indicates the low trust index of the parliaments of the new EU member states, and the EU does not intend to invest in chaos because this way it would be increased. The research by Karl Magnus Johansson shows that the western political parties provided various help for colleagues from new member states. The research does not indicate whether such help was provided for the parties representing all ideologies; only the case of Estonian social democrats is analysed. The research reveals that the western parties have clear procedures and methods of integrating partners into their structures. Estonian social democrats copied the dominant values and programme provisions of western social democrats, while party functionaries absorbed the best practices and integrated into international networking. In conclusion, B. Jacobsson and Anders Nordström indicate that the Baltic states have chosen the way of assimilation by voluntary mechanisms. The doctrines, ideas and insights, dominating in the world, reconstruct and standardize public management, labour market policy and parliamentary and party structures of the small countries. On the other hand, closeness is still common for transition societies, which is still not revealed by Europeanization. The research is carried out in a qualitative and scientific way; it reflects, reveals, articulates and generalizes the defined topic. Therefore, it can be viewed as valuable from academic, research and methodological perspectives.

No Enemies on the Right? Competition and Collusion between Conservatives, Moderates and Extreme Right Parties in Europe

We are used to putting parties of the Right into tidy boxes. On the one hand stands the established family of the mainstream right. Its parties have various names—moderates, centre-right, conservatives—but their origins and profile are easily recognisable. They derive from what Rokkan identified as the owner/non-owner cleavage and their main raison d’être is to cater for the interests of those with some kind of asset. Adepts of the market economy and electoral democracy they may show some variation in the importance which they assign to certain themes (religion, nationalism) but these are subordinate to the task of winning office in order to protect the interests of their core groups and any others whom they have persuaded to ally with them. They have long occupied the major share of space on the right wing of politics in all developed states. Yet they have also long been subject to challenges from a different subset of the Right. Political science has found numerous concepts to classify this angrier sort of Right, ranging from fairly neutral terms like ‘far right’ or ‘extreme right’ to more explicit and emotive ‘fascism’. The current favourite ‘populism’ is an attempt to stretch a longestablished term so as to encompass as wide a variety as possible of this sort of party, for it is true that this family also shows considerable variation within its ranks. While extremeright parties invariably carry a strong current of nationalism and are generally authoritarian by instinct, they do show considerable variation on issues such as market regulation, lifestyle issues, high policy or the role of religion. Their following is also quite distinct. In the 1930s such movements tended to attract victims of the depression; today their appeal—clearly growing—is to the victims of globalisation. Traditional right-wing parties knew that in normal times economic prosperity would mean that their extreme-right competitors would enjoy a limited audience. They had no incentive to encourage such forces, which were bidding for their share of the political market. In the past two decades, however, the terms of trade have changed somewhat. As it becomes clear that globalisation produces a substantial number of losers and that