*** EROL KULAHCI: La social-démocratie et le chômage. Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles (26 av. Paul Héger, B-1000 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 6503799 - Fax: 6503794 - email: editions@admin.ilb.ac.be - Internet: http://www.editions-universite-bruxelles.be ). "Science politique" series. 2008, 205 pp, €21. ISBN 978-2-8004-1430-0.
The vast majority of European citizens would not be able to understand these days, any more than they did back in 2004, why the stressful question of employment, and more specifically unemployment, is not at the centre of the election campaign ahead of the June 2009 European electricians for a new European Parliament. Hence the utility of this scientific study by a researcher at the 'Université Libre de Bruxelles' who has a PhD in politics, in which he looks at whether European political parties are capable of truly taking on the challenge in the light of a single example, the European social democratic members of the Party of European Socialists (PES), and its policies to combat unemployment. Only distinguished political analysts and Socialist leaders would not fall prey to the temptation to skip some pages of this detailed academic work which would be tedious for the non-initiated. It is based on published and internal PES documents and "focussed interviews" with protagonists from each Member State.
In the first section, Erol Kulahci starts by looking at the nature of European parties before providing a taxonomy highlighting their three dimensions, namely partisan components, structure and functions. Using this theoretical basis, he then studies the European institutions' attitude to European federations of political parties, distinguishing four separate phases in this connection - indifference from 1951 to 1969, informal recognition from 1969 to 1991, constitutional recognition from 1992 onwards and regulatory recognition since 2003, describing the adoption of the regulation on the funding and rules of European political parties that followed the Nice Treaty as a 'qualitative leap' in terms of Europeanisation from above. The author beavers away on the action of the founding parties of the social democratic federation, from the Socialist International to the creation of the Party of European Socialists in 1992 via the 'Union of Socialist Parties of the European Community' through the various rounds of EU enlargement and the expansion of the socials federation itself. In terms of the international operation of the federation, he then examines the extent to which the autonomy of the national parties has been mitigated to the benefit of the structural development of the European socialist party, enabling it to move from a contact phase into a cooperation phase. This leads to a positive answer to the question, although one "cannot discern the assertion of representative democracy rules in the functioning and development of this supranational structure". In the second part of the book, Erol Kulahci looks more specifically at the role of the Party of European Socialists in tackling the problem of unemployment. He looks in great detail at its role during the Luxembourg Presidency, which laid the basis in 1997 for policy to fight unemployment and precarious working conditions, and then under the German and Portuguese Presidencies that produced the Lisbon Strategy at the turn of the century.
In the general conclusions, the author observes that the Party of European Socialists played an important role ahead of the Luxembourg and Lisbon European Summits, putting the nail in the coffin of the theory that the European Socialists are incapable of getting their members on board and only come up with ideas in the form of statements. It is nevertheless true that unemployment (and how to fight it) is an issue that divides the party, as national interests restrict the PES' parties' ability to work together, although the scale of unemployment in the different countries has been decisive in consideration of the issue by Socialist elites. On more than one occasion, “internal democracy was damaged". The problem is that the "different party stakeholders have not been integrated into the European party," because the European project is still not a priority for national parties, which keep control over election campaigns and continue to bypass the attempts by the Party of European Socialists - and this comment applies to all European parties - to address Europeans and relay their concerns. In the future perhaps, this diagnosis will be set against the backdrop of the turnout for the upcoming European elections…
Michel Theys
*** JEAN-PIERRE CHAMOUX (Ed.): Comment retrouver croissance et emploi? Modernité de Jean Fourastié. Editions Publisud (15 rue des Cinq-Diamants, F-75013 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 45807850 - Fax: 45899415 - email: publisud.editions@cegetel.net - Internet: http://www.editionspublisud.hautefort.com ). 2008, 223 pp, €15. ISBN 978-2-86600-669-3.
It was a leading economist, Jean Fourastié, who came up with the idea of the "Trente glorieuses" ('thirty glorious years') to describe the post-war boom from the end of the Second World War to the 1975 oil crisis. Following on from an international conference in 2007 to celebrate a hundred years after the birth of Jean Fourastié, this book is a collection of essays which, as Michel Albert explains in the preface, "demonstrate the relevance of a philosophy and method which the modern world needs if it is to understand and master an economy whose mechanisms, scope and terrain are currently being overhauled". The unprecedented crisis the world is undergoing at the moment makes it more urgent than ever to discover (or rediscover) ways out of the crisis. Pierre Tabatoni writes that Fourastié's approach was that of a "committed methodical empiricist," sticking stubbornly to the experimental method in the teeth of fashion, as Prof. Chamoux points out in the prologue, using the approach to discern “facts" rather than "rationality" generated by abstract reasoning that "runs the danger of encouraging the intellectual to describe the world he or she imagines rather than the world as it is in fact". The full meaning of these words is clear today in relation to the views of pseudo-scientific experts, who were until so recently still backing the scheming of the financial world. Three factors are at the heart of Jean Fourastié's economic analysis: technical progress, which was the engine of the economy from the eighteenth century onwards; productivity, which increased the spending power of wages and spread social progress; and demographics, which impacts on manufacturing capacity, people's state of mind and their view of the future. All these fundamental principles are examined by the authors of this book - who include the Nobel economics prize winner Robert Solow and Michel Pébereau - demonstrating their total validity in the modern world.
(MT)
*** ULRIKA MÖRTH: European Public-Private Collaboration. A choice between efficiency and democratic accountability? Edward Elgar Publishing (Glensanda House, Montpellier Parade, Cheltenham, Glos, GL50 1UA, UK. Tel: (44-1242) 226934 - Fax: 622111 - email: info@e-elgar.co.uk - Internet: http://www.e-elgar.com ). 2008, 141 pp. ISBN 978-1-84542-981-2.
As governments the world over are bailing out their financial economies, we are realising the extent to which the public and private are intertwined. Phenomena like the liberalisation of market economies have brought the state closer to the private sector in order to introduce policies that can make the EU the best performing economy in the world, which is one of the objectives of the Lisbon Strategy (and also a priority for the European Commission). As far as the Commission is concerned, privatisation is one of the best ways of reaching this aim, but it is also relying on public-private partnerships. At EU level, there is growing porosity between the public and private spheres, and rather than vertical relations (which are supposed to follow a chain of command in democracies that ensure the state has control of the private sector), we are seeing horizontal relations where powers tend to be shared and therefore given up, undermining the state's supervision of the private sector and at times making it impossible to make players responsible for the consequences of their action. This has been amply demonstrated by the banking crisis. The author of this book made an empirical analysis of three dossiers - starting with the European satellite navigation programme, moving on to the European Investment Bank and healthcare and, finally, the European financial market - in order to determine the extent to which public-private partnerships can make the various players democratically accountable, and examining the relationship between accountability and the economic efficiency so sought after these days. A very interesting book for our time, although its highly technical nature may be rather offputting.
(NDu)
*** FINN ROAR AUNE, ROLF GOLOMBEK, SVERRE A. C. KITTELSEN, KNUT EINAR ROSENDAHL: Liberalizing European Energy Markets. An Economic Analysis. Edward Elgar Publishing (see above). 2008, 315 pp. ISBN 978-1-84376-374-1.
The recent oil price hikes and the gas dispute between Ukraine and Russia that disrupted gas supplies to several countries in the European Union and elsewhere in Europe have shed further light on the EU's weaknesses in the field of energy and highlighted the need for measures to increase energy independence. As far as the Commission is concerned, one way of reducing energy dependence on countries outside the EU is to liberalise energy markets, particularly the natural gas and electricity markets, in order to make the stakeholders more productive and therefore also (in theory) bring prices down for the end consumer. The authors of this study look at the impact of this privatisation of energy markets on European consumers, and also the environmental consequences of the expected hikes in production. Using the latest digital simulation models, the researchers try to determine the quantitative future impact on West European markets in the short and long-term of full liberalisation - the Commission's final goal for the gas and electricity market and also for the consumption of energy generated from coal, nuclear power and other forms of electricity generation. The study shows that if the liberalisation process continues as the Commission has planned, the end user would benefit in the short and long-term from lower prices, which would lead to gains in consumer well-being and the socio-economic stability of Europe, but these gains would damage the environment because greater generation and consumption of electricity would inevitably lead to a rise in CO2 emissions, which would contravene the European Union's Kyoto promises.
(NDu)
*** DORETTE CORBEY, DAVID HAMMERSTEIN, SIRPA PIETIKÂINEN, VITTORIO PRODI, GRAHAM WATSON: Making the Green Energy Switch at a Time of Crisis. Bagehot Publishing (Bagehot's Foundry, Beard's Yard, Langport, Somerset TA 10 9PS, UK) and Alliance des Démocrates et des Libéraux pour l'Europe (Tel: (32-2) 2842111 - Fax: 2309674). 2009, 51 pp.
Some challenges transcend party differences, as is shown by this publication by five MEPs from different political parties, who join forces to call for urgent action to deal with the unprecedented issue of climate change. A shared conviction emerges from their messages that the most urgent action to be taken is to diversify sources of energy, turning one's back on fossil fuels in favour of renewable energy, as Graham Watson puts it.
(MT)
*** CLAIRE NAUWELAERS, RENE WINTJES (Eds.): Innovation Policy in Europe. Measurement and Strategy. Edward Elgar Publishing (Cheltenham, Glos, GL50 1UA, UK. Tel: (44-1242) 226934 - Fax: 262111 - email: info@e-elgar.co.uk - Internet: http://www.e-elgar.com ). 2008, 295 pp. ISBN 978-1-84542-759-7.
Based on the latest research in innovation, this book formulates conclusions that can be used by governments. The authors develop quantitative and qualitative approaches to assess the prospects of a Europe of innovation in the future. The first section of the study makes use of indicators to improve the decision-making process, while the second section looks at the preconditions for effective innovative policies in Europe. Claire Nauwelaers and René Wintjes point out that high-quality political governance will be crucial in dealing with the new problems generated by innovations in knowledge in Europe. A rich analysis that will be useful for political decision-makers and academia alike.
(EPi)
*** MIGUEL A. PEREYRA (Ed.): Changing Knowledge and Education. Communities, Mobilities and New Policies in Global Societies. Peter Lang (1 Moostrasse, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3471727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Comparative Studies Series", No. 18, 2008, 367 pp, €37.20. ISBN 978-3-631-57016-6.
This book publishes the proceedings of the twenty-first conference of the Association of Comparative Education in Europe, along with analysis by international experts. Examining the state of knowledge and education, and the changes they are undergoing at present, the authors examine their subject in the light of globalisation, new trans-national identities, post-colonialism and new terminology. In terms of education, the focus is placed on e-learning, new forms of knowledge management, skills training systems, etc. This research looks at the big picture and the way we understand the world of new mobilities in face of old stability and beliefs. The essays cover subjects like international and regional developments in education, old and new empires, new policies and knowledge-based economies, the danger of social exclusion, and culture in the globalised world. (EPi)