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Begin New Search Political Geography Europe Content Type Journal Article Publication Year within 25 Years

1301. Housing and Quality of Life for Migrant Communities in Western Europe: A Capabilities Approach

Author:
Dermot Coates, Paul Anand, and Michelle Norris
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal on Migration and Human Security
Institution:
Center for Migration Studies of New York
Abstract:
Housing is an important determinant of quality of life and migrants are more likely to encounter poor quality housing than natives. This paper draws on the capabilities approach to welfare economics to examine how issues of housing and neighborhood conditions influence quality of life and opportunities for migrants in Western Europe. The analysis utilizes data from the second European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) to explore variation in life and housing satisfaction between migrants and non-migrants (natives) in Western Europe and whether being a migrant and living in an ethnically diverse neighborhood contribute to lower satisfaction. The results show that migrants are more likely to experience lower levels of life and housing satisfaction and that living in a diverse neighborhood is negatively associated with life and housing satisfaction. While diverse, inner-city neighborhoods can increase opportunities for labor market access, social services and integration, the tendency towards clustered settlement by migrants can also compound housing inequality. Conversely, migrant homeowners are on average substantially more satisfied with the quality of public services and of their neighborhood and have lower material deprivation than both migrant and non-migrant renters. The findings draw attention to the need to address housing and neighborhood conditions in order to improve opportunities for integration and well-being.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Europe

1302. Moving On: Iberia's New Muslims

Author:
Marvin Howe
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
LISBON—Mamadu Indjai has given up on Europe and is heading home to the former Portuguese colony of Guinea-Bissau. The 55-year-old West African has spent the past 19 years in Portugal. Yet all he has to show for his labors are the house he was building for his family back in his ancestral village of Caio. "I haven't got the strength to struggle anymore," Indjai sighs.
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, and Portugal

1303. The Euro Crisis: Mission Accomplished?

Author:
Zsolt Darvas
Publication Date:
03-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
World Policy Journal
Institution:
World Policy Institute
Abstract:
BRUSSELS—High unemployment, bleak economic outlook, high public and private debts, dysfunctional banks, weak competitiveness, and an unfavorable external environment are just a few of the challenges facing southern members of the euro zone. Despite these hurdles, the ever-optimistic European Council and other leaders said in January that the euro crisis had bottomed out. Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, proclaimed, "The worst is behind us, in particular the existential threat to the euro." Then there was Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), who declared that "the darkest clouds over the euro area [have] subsided."
Political Geography:
Europe, Portugal, and Ireland

1304. Diminishing Quality of Fiscal Institutions in the United States and European Union

Author:
Thomas Grennes
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
The value of government debt relative to the size of the economy has become a serious problem, and the problem is likely to grow in the future. Total debt of the U.S. government relative to gross domestic product increased substantially since the financial crisis and the Great Recession that began in 2007, but the debt ratio has been increasing since 2001. Gross debt relative to GDP increased from 55 percent in 2001 to 67 percent in 2007 to 107 percent in 2012. Comparable figures for debt held by the public (net debt or gross debt minus debt held by various government agencies) were 80 percent in 2011 and 84 percent in May 2012 (IMF 2012). As a result, the debt ratio is now the highest in U.S. history, except for World War II, when it reached 125 percent of GDP (Bohn 2010). U.S. debt is also high relative to the debt of other high-income countries, and projections of future debt place the U.S. government among the world's largest debtors (IMF 2011, 2012; Evans et al. 2012). Gross debt consists of all the bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury, but a broader measure that includes contingent debt results in a much larger debt (Cochrane 2011). Contingent debt includes unfunded obligations related to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and loan guarantees to agencies such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and these obligations are so large that they have been described as a “debt explosion” (Evans et al. 2012). The sovereign debt crisis of the European Union has similarities to the U.S. debt problem, but it also has significant differences, as will be shown below. Interestingly, the poorer countries of the world that have frequently experienced debt problems in the past, have avoided major debt problems so far.
Topic:
Financial Crisis
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

1305. Incredible Commitments: Why the EMU Is Destroying Both Europe and Itself

Author:
George Selgin
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Cato Journal
Institution:
The Cato Institute
Abstract:
When the merits of a European Monetary Union were first being debated, many skeptics fell into one of two camps. The first camp consisted of “Keynesians” (for example, Eichengreen and Bayoumi 1997, Salvatore 1997) who, referring to the theory of optimal currency areas, doubted that Europe constituted such an area, and believed that the proposed monetary union would eventually fall victim to country-specific (“idiosyncratic”) shocks. Unemployment and other burdens stemming from such shocks would, these critics argued, eventually force the monetary authority to either abandon its commitment to price-level stability in order to offer relief to adversely affected members, or cause the members to abandon the union so as to be able to realign their exchange rates.
Political Geography:
Europe

1306. Caribbean development alternatives and the CARIFORUM–European Union economic partnership agreement

Author:
Anthony Payne, Matthew Louis Bishop, and Tony Heron
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
The Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) signed in October 2008 between the Caribbean and the European Union has been the subject of much controversy. There has been a marked split within the Caribbean between the officials and politicians who negotiated — and thus championed — the EPA and the wider academic and civil society community that subjected it to heavy criticism. The paper examines these debates in detail and situates them within the broader intellectual and practical panorama of Caribbean development alternatives. Specifically, it discusses how the terrain upon which development has been both theorised and practised in the region has narrowed significantly since the 1980s, with the EPA being the latest manifestation of this evolving trend. The paper consequently goes beyond an analysis of the short-term politics of the EPA to elucidate the deeper, structural explanations for the divisions over the EPA between the policy and academic communities and the wider implications of the Agreement for contemporary Caribbean development.
Topic:
Development
Political Geography:
Europe and Caribbean

1307. The Common Agricultural Policy Health Check: time to check the health of the theory of the reform?

Author:
Marko Lovec and Emil Erjavec
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Relations and Development
Institution:
Central and East European International Studies Association
Abstract:
In 2008, the ministers of agriculture of European Union member states made a political agreement on the Common Agricultural Policy reform, also known as the Health Check. The reform coincided with three things: the ongoing Doha round of the World Trade Organization negotiations; political pressures to limit the costs of the policy financed from the common budget; and various 'new' policy issues. Rational institutional and constructivist approaches, which are often viewed as theoretical alternatives with each explaining some aspects of the reform, have employed simplified and narrow abstractions in conceptualising the role of these policy contexts. In order to identify the mechanisms facilitating the Health Check, a critical realist approach is proposed here, arguing that the relationship among the trade negotiations, budget bargaining, new issues and the policy reform can be explained by theoretically endorsing the asymmetrical development of the agricultural production factors and of production relations. A qualitative analysis is used to determine which of these three approaches seems to be better able to explain the empirical evidence.
Topic:
Development and Reform
Political Geography:
Europe

1308. Coaxing Climate Policy Leadership

Author:
Steve Vanderheiden
Publication Date:
01-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Abstract:
With the failure of the international community to negotiate a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol in late 2011, and with little prospect of U.S. ratification of any treaty framework that includes binding green¬house emission targets, hope for a sustainable and effective international climate policy appears dim. As of 2012, only Australia, New Zealand, and the European Union continue to endorse binding post-Kyoto greenhouse emissions targets, with countries representing half the emissions controlled under Kyoto rejecting any further binding mitigation commitments in the absence of a treaty framework that includes the United States. Further, the remaining commitments are likely to be tested by political and economic turmoil that strains the ability of the governments to maintain them. While the "roadmap" that emerged from the seventeenth session of the Conference of the Parties (COP-17)of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)-held in Durban, South Africa-calls for a post-Kyoto treaty to be negotiated by 2015 and to take effect by 2020,ongoing reluctance by China, India, and the United States to accept binding emissions caps threatens to frustrate progress toward any such future agreement. Given the rapidly closing window of opportunity to begin reversing current trends of increasing global emissions and to eventually stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at levels that would prevent the dire consequences predicted by "business as usual" trajectories, significant mitigation action remains urgently needed, with climate change adaptation programs becoming increasingly important.
Political Geography:
United States, China, Europe, India, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand

1309. The Rise of Latin America : Public Innovation for Good Governance

Author:
Ania Calderón and Sergio Fajardo
Publication Date:
05-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of International Affairs
Institution:
School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University
Abstract:
The vision of an academic-turned-politician has brought a stream of creativity to local public administration in Colombia. It is said that disruptive innovation occurs at the edge of disciplines. And Sergio Fajardo, mathematician and former journalist, has managed to leverage such cross-discipline dialogues and energize communities to engage with public planning objectives. As mayor of Medellín in Colombia from 2004 to 2007, he "introduced transparency fairs, broke clientelistic political networks, raised tax receipts, improved public services, established civic pacts and restored citizens' sense of hope," and the Inter-American Development Bank recognized the city as an exemplary case of good public administration in Latin America. Furthermore, Medellín was recently named the world's most innovative city in a competition organized by the non-profit Urban Land Institute. In the following interview with Ania Calderón of the Journal, Dr. Fajardo highlights the importance of building trust in society to face the public management challenges of developing countries in Latin America and explains how, as governor of the state of Antioquia, the scale of impact he now faces at a regional versus local level can be tackled with the same mission, but carried under a different leadership role.
Political Geography:
Europe, Colombia, and Latin America

1310. Economic and Industrial Cooperation Between France and Germany: Assessment and Future Prospects

Author:
Jean-Marc Trouille
Publication Date:
04-2013
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
Economy and industry have traditionally been major stakes within the Franco-German relationship. This article examines French and German economic and industrial relations, and their importance for these countries' joint leadership in Europe. It investigates the level of economic interdependence and of macroeconomic convergence between the two largest Eurozone economies, industrial cooperation between French and German companies, discrepancies in their trade relations and investment flows, divergences in their respective economic and industrial policies, and the dichotomy between partnership and rivalry in their long-standing relationship. Finally, this article assesses the risk of increasing fiscal and industrial imbalance between the two economies and draws conclusions on its implications for the Franco-German entente in Europe.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Europe, France, and Germany