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2. "Transnations" Among "Transnations"? The Debate on Transnational History in the United States and Germany
- Author:
- Kiran Klaus Patel
- Publication Date:
- 01-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Comparing the rise of transnational history in the United States and Germany is difficult, mainly because of the many connections between these historiographies. Still, the article argues that the paths into a transnational historiography were quite different on both sides of the Atlantic. Apart from similarities and connections, the text therefore highlights the intellectual as well as institutional differences of the debates in the U.S.A. and Germany.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Political Theory
- Political Geography:
- United States, America, Europe, and Germany
3. “Transnations” Among “Transnations”? The Debate on Transnational History in the United States and Germany
- Author:
- Kiran Klaus Patel
- Publication Date:
- 01-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Comparing the rise of transnational history in the United States and Germany is difficult, mainly because of the many connections between these historiographies. Still, the article argues that the paths into a transnational historiography were quit e different on both sides of the Atlantic. Apart from similarities and connections, the text therefore highlights the intellectual as well as institutional differences of the debates in the U.S.A. and Germany.
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and Germany
4. Mobility of Labor and Services across the Baltic Sea after EU Enlargement: Trends and Consequences
- Author:
- Jon Erik Dølvik
- Publication Date:
- 01-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The enlargement of the EU / EEA area on 1 May 2004 to comprise 28 countries – including eight Central and Eastern European countries, in 2007 followed by Bulgaria and Romania – was a milestone. The subsequent opening of the markets for labor and services between countries with gaps in wages and living conditions comparable to those along the U.S./Mexican border has no modern precedent, prompting new patterns of competition, migration and adjustment in national labor market regimes. This paper reviews developments in labor migration after enlargement and the implications for the labor markets in the Baltic states and Poland, which have accounted for a predominant share of the intra- EU / EEA migration flows since 2004. Besides the UK and Ireland, where almost one million EU 8 citizens had registered in 2007, the booming Nordic economies have become important destinations, having granted more than 250,000 permits and seen sizeable additional flows of service providers and self-employed from the Baltic states and Poland. In the sending countries, rising demand for labor has, alongside strong outmigration – especially among young and well-educated groups – engendered falling unemployment, soaring wage growth, and made shortages of skills and labor an obstacle to further economic recovery. Yet, while better paid temporary work abroad may weaken the incentives for employment, mobility and training in the home country, aging will lead to shrinking working-age populations in the coming years. Unless the Baltic states and Poland can entice a larger share of the population to work in their home countries – and/or can attract substantial labor migration from third countries – the declining work force may easily entail economic stagnation and reinforce the outflow of human resources. These countries are thereby facing a critical juncture in their economic and social development. In the recipient Nordic countries, the growing labor and service mobility, low cost production, and competition for labor in Europe, as well as emerging lines of division in the labor markets, have, on the other hand, raised new questions as to how the principles of free movement and the egalitarian Nordic models can be made reconcilable in the open European markets.
- Topic:
- International Political Economy and Markets
- Political Geography:
- United States, United Kingdom, Europe, Eastern Europe, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, and Ireland
5. Criminal Justice and Democratic Systems: Inclusionary and Exclusionary Dynamics in the Institutional Structure of Late Modern Societies
- Author:
- Nicola Lacey
- Publication Date:
- 01-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- It is generally agreed that the humanity, fairness and effectiveness with which a governments manages its criminal justice system is a key index of the state of a democracy. But the constraints on realization of democratic values and aspirations in criminal justice are markedly variable. In the last two decades, in the wake of both increases in recorded crime and a cluster of cultural and economic changes, criminal justice policy in both Britain and the U.S. has become increasingly politicized: both the scale and intensity of criminalization, and the salience of criminal justice policy as an index of governments' competence, have developed in new and, to many commentators, worrying ways. These developments have been variously characterized as the birth of a "culture of control" and a tendency to "govern through crime"; as a turn towards the "exclusive society"; and in terms of the emergence of a managerial model which focuses on the risks to security presented by particular groups. In the U.S., we witness in particular the inexorable, and strikingly racially patterned, rise of the prison population, amid a ratcheting up of penal severity which seems unstoppable in the face of popular anxiety about crime. In the context of globalization, the general, and depressing, conclusion seems to be that, notwithstanding significant national differences, contemporary democracies are constrained to tread the same path of penal populism, albeit that their progress along it is variously advanced. A significant scaling down of levels of punishment and criminalization is regarded as politically impossible, the optimism of penal welfarism a thing, decisively, of the past.
- Topic:
- Government
- Political Geography:
- United States and Iran
6. Non-Working Time, Income Inequality and Quality of Life Comparisons: The Case of the U.S. vs. the Netherlands
- Author:
- Ellen Verbake and Thomas A. DiPrete
- Publication Date:
- 06-2007
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The distribution of well-being in society and comparisons of well-being across societies depend both on the amount of inequality at the national level and also on the national average level of well-being. Comparisons between the U.S. and western Europe show that inequality is greater in the U.S. but that average GDP/capita is also greater in the U.S., and most Americans have higher standards of living than do Western Europeans at comparable locations in their national income distributions. What is less well-known is that (depending on the country) much or all of this gap arises from differences in the level of working hours in the U.S. and in Western Europe. Crossnational comparisons of well-being have typically relied on the methodology of generalized Lorenz curves (GLC), but this approach privileges disposable income and cash transfers while ignoring other aspects of welfare state and labor market structure that potentially affect the distribution of well-being in a society. We take an alternative approach that focuses on the value of time use and the different distributions of work and family time that are generated by each country's labor market and social welfare institutions. We show that reasonable estimates of the greater contribution to well-being from non-market activities such as the raising of children or longer vacations overturn claims in the literature that the U.S. offers greater well-being to more of its citizens than do Western European countries.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States, America, Europe, and Netherlands
7. Natural Unemployment, the Role of Monetary Policy and Wage Bargaining: A Theoretical Perspective
- Author:
- Stefan Collignon
- Publication Date:
- 05-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- This paper models unemployment as a general equilibrium solution in labor and capital markets, while the natural rate hypothesis explains unemployment simply as a partial equilibrium in the labor market. It is shown that monetary policy can have long-run effects by affecting required returns on capital and investment. If monetary policy is primarily concerned with maintaining price stability, the interaction between wage bargaining and the central bank's credibility as an inflation fighter becomes a crucial factor in determining employment. Different labor market institutions condition different monetary policy reactions. With centralized wage bargaining, a central bank mandate focusing primarily on price stability is sufficient. With an atomistic labor market, the central bank must also consider output as a policy objective.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, Economics, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- United States, United Kingdom, and Europe
8. The Spread of Neoliberalism: U.S. Economic Power and the Diffusion of Market-Oriented Tax Policy
- Author:
- Duane Swank
- Publication Date:
- 03-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- I offer an explanation for the widespread diffusion of neoliberal tax policies in the developed democracies. Specifically, I argue that the highly visible 1980s market-conforming tax reform in the United States, the late twentieth century's dominant political economy, creates significant incentives for adoption of neoliberal tax policies by decision makers in other polities. As such, I stress a dominant actor model of the diffusion of neoliberalism that is grounded in asymmetric competition for mobile assets and policy learning. However, while the incentives to follow U.S. tax policy are substantial, the relative weight assigned the costs and benefits of reform and, in turn, the pace and degree of neoliberal policy adoption by other nations is fundamentally contingent on features of domestic political and economic environments. I assess these arguments with empirical models of 1981-to-1998 tax rates on capital in sixteen nations. I find that changes in U.S. tax policy influence subsequent reforms in other polities; in the long-term, all nations move toward the U.S. neoliberal tax structure. Analysis also shows, however, that the responsiveness to US tax reforms is notably greater where linkages with U.S. markets are stronger, where domestic economic stress is deeper, and where uncoordinated market institutions are dominant. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of the present analysis for the volume's central questions: are dominant. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of the present analysis for the volume's central questions: of international policy interdependence and domestic political economic forces in shaping policy change?
- Topic:
- Economics and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
9. Special Education and the Risk of Becoming Less Educated in Germany and the United States
- Author:
- Justin J.W. Powell
- Publication Date:
- 02-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Over the twentieth century, a growing group of students has been transferred into considerably expanded special education systems. These programs serve children with diagnosed impairments and disabilities and students with a variety of learning difficulties. Children and youth “with special educational needs” constitute a heterogeneous group with social, ethnic, linguistic, and physical disadvantages. An increasingly large percentage of those students at risk of leaving school without credentials participate in special education, a highly legitimated low status (and stigmatizing) school form. While most countries commit themselves to school integration or inclusive education to replace segregated schools and separate classes, cross-national and regional comparisons of special education's diverse student bodies show considerable disparities in their (1) rates of classification, (2) provided learning opportunities, and (3) educational attainments. Analyzing special education demographics and organizational structures indicates which children and youth are most likely to grow up less educated and how educational systems distribute educational success and failure. Findings from a German-American comparison show that which students bear the greatest risk of becoming less educated depends largely on definitions of “special educational needs” and the institutionalization of special education systems.
- Topic:
- Development and Education
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and Germany
10. What Constitutions Can Do (But Courts Sometimes Don't):Property, Speech, and The Influence of Constitutional Norms on Private Law
- Author:
- Oliver Gerstenberg
- Publication Date:
- 05-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Against the background of the ECtHR's recent decision in Appleby v UK (a European “counterpart” to the well-known US Supreme Court decision in Marsh v Alabama) the paper addresses, first, the issue of the influence, often perceived as dilemmatic, of human rights norms and constitutional norms on private law. In a second step, then, the paper discusses the promise—and a possible dilemma—of “comparative constitutionalism” as an engine of a more denationalized “constitutional patriotism”: the dilemma that we trade the “closure” of domestic exceptionalism against the new, systemic “closure” of “too much” judicial comity and professionalism, the closure of a new Juristenrecht.
- Topic:
- Human Rights and International Law
- Political Geography:
- United States, United Kingdom, and Europe
11. The Age of Welfare: Patronage, Citizenship, and Generational Justice in Social Policy
- Author:
- Julia Lynch
- Publication Date:
- 04-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Welfare states' redistribution of resources across classes, occupations, and genders is the subject of intensive scholarly analysis. Yet we know very little about how and why welfare states treat different age groups differently. This article demonstrates that seniors' demand for welfare does not determine age-orientation. Rather, the “age of welfare” is a largely unintended consequence of the interaction between the structure of social policies and the way that politicians use these programs to compete for votes. An implication for the policy feedback literature is that constituency demand may be less important than the unintended consequences of welfare state institutions.
- Topic:
- Human Rights, Human Welfare, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States
12. The “New World Order”: From Unilateralism to Cosmopolitanism
- Author:
- Jeffrey Herf and Jürgen Neyer
- Publication Date:
- 03-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- On January 26, 2004, the topic of the CES-Berlin Dialogues was “The 'New World Order': From Unilateralism to Cosmopolitanism.” It was the second in a series of four meetings organized in Berlin under the heading “Redefining Justice.” The session was intended to examine successful and failed arenas of cooperation between the US and Europe; political misunderstandings and conscious manipulation; and models for future transatlantic relations. The presenters were Jeffrey Herf, Professor of History, University of Maryland, and Prof. Dr. Jürgen Neyer, Professor of International Political Economy, Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, and Heisenberg Fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the Freie Universität Berlin. Jeffrey Herf was asked to speak on the basic tenets of U.S. foreign policy in the administration of President George W. Bush, and Jürgen Neyer focused on the European view of international relations and conduct in the period since the invasion of Iraq.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Iraq, Europe, and Berlin
13. European Anti-Americanism (and Anti-Semitism): Ever Present Though Always Denied
- Author:
- Andrei S. Markovits
- Publication Date:
- 01-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- There can be no doubt that the Bush Administration's policies have massively contributed to a hitherto unprecedented deterioration in European-American relations. However, European antipathies towards many things American date back at least to July 5, 1776, if not before. Following a conceptual discussion of anti-Americanism, the paper then turns to an account of these historical dislikes and anchors them particularly among Europe's elites. A discussion of anti-Semitism in relation to anti- Americanism follows in the subsequent section. A summary of an analysis of newspaper articles collected in the decade of the 1990s highlights the widespread nature of anti-American sentiments in Britain, France, Germany, Italy. Lastly, anti-Americanism's functionality as a useful ingredient in Europe's burgeoning state building process concludes the paper.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Nationalism
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, France, Germany, and Italy
14. Executive Leadership and the Role of “Veto Players” in the United States and Germany
- Author:
- Ludger Helms
- Publication Date:
- 10-2003
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- In recent comparative works on the constitutional structures of contemporary liberal democracies, the United States and Germany have been grouped together as examples of democratic systems with an exceptionally high degree of “institutional pluralism”. In other typologies both countries have even been classified as “semisovereign democracies”. Whereas such classifications are of some use, especially in the field of public policy research, they fail to pay reasonable attention to the fundamental difference between parliamentary and presidential government that dominated the older literature on comparative political systems. As the comparative assessments offered in this paper suggest, the difference between parliamentary government and presidential government does not only constitute very different conditions of executive leadership in the core executive territory and at the level of executive-legislative relations, but has also a strong impact on the role and performance of the various “veto players” that characterize the political systems of the United States and Germany, and which are at the center of this paper.
- Topic:
- Government and Politics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and Germany
15. Building the Dual Earner/Dual Carer Society: Policy Developments in Europe
- Author:
- Marcia Meyers and Janet Gornick
- Publication Date:
- 10-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- A new model of work and family life is emerging out of contemporary debates on social citizenship and the characteristics of the “woman-friendly” welfare state. The dual-earner/ dual-carer model refers to a social and economic arrangement in which men and women engage symmetrically in both paid work in the labor market and in unpaid work in the home. Parents' ability to balance family and market responsibilities, and to allocate employment and childcare-giving equally between mothers and fathers, could be facilitated by a package of state policies. Three areas of supportive policy – all invarious states of development across Europe – include: (1) family leave schemes that provide job protections and wage replacement for parents of young children; (2) affordable, high quality early childhood education and care, to a limited extent for very young children and to a much larger extent for children aged three to school-age; and (3) labor market regulations aimed at shortening the standard work week and strengthening re-muneration for reduced-hour employment. In this paper, we review European policy provisions, and then turn our attention to the United States case. We suggest that embracing the vision of the dual-earner/ dual-carer society may help to draw diverse but unified support for family policy development in the United States.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, and Human Welfare
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
16. Three Worlds of Working Time: Policy and Politics in Work-time Patterns of Industrialized Countries
- Author:
- Brian Burgoon and Phineas Baxandall
- Publication Date:
- 09-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Given the underdeveloped attention to political and policy origins of aggregate work time patterns in the work-time literature, and the lack of any significant attention to work-time in the broader comparative political economy literature, this paper has pursues a broad mandate: to bring more politics into the study of work-time, and work-time into the study of politics. Using data allowing better comparison among OECD countries, we argue that study of working time needs to consider annual hours per employee and per working-age person, shaped by a range of social as well as direct work-time policies. We also argue that union interest in work-time reduction is more ambiguous than customarily supposed, with union interests likely mediated by a range of other conditions, especially female labor market participation and female union membership. Finally, we argue that attention to party systems and policy clusters should begin with consideration of Social Democratic, Liberal and Christian Democratic worlds of work time. We support these arguments with cross-section time-series study of 18 OECD countries, and brief qualitative studies of work-time in Finland, the United States, and the Netherlands.
- Topic:
- Economics and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and Netherlands
17. Continuity as the Path to Change: Institutional Innovation in the 1976 British Race Relations Act
- Author:
- Erik Bleich
- Publication Date:
- 03-2002
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Institutional innovation can, paradoxically, be a product of institutional continuity. New institutions often emerge in a bifurcated manner in which formal institutions (such as laws and written rules) are accompanied by informal institutions (such as ideas that motivate and help determine the precise nature of specific policies). When informal institutions include ideas that track policy developments in other spheres or other countries, they can influence innovations in formal institutions. The development of the 1976 British Race Relations Act illustrates this dynamic. When British race institutions were established in the 1960s, they reflected the prevailing idea that British policies should incorporate lessons learned from North America. When Britain revisited its anti-racism provisions in 1976, policy experts looked again to North America and found that much had changed there in the interim. They subsequently altered Britain's formal institutions to include U.S.-inspired “race-conscious” measures.
- Topic:
- Government and Human Rights
- Political Geography:
- United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and North America
18. On Incentives in Technology Policymaking: What the EU can learn from the U.S. developments
- Author:
- Wolfgang Gick
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- This paper focuses on the incentives political and bureaucratic actors face in the institutional setting of EU technology policy. In examining the implications and assumptions of neoclassical and evolutionary theories of technological change, it tries to answer why some approaches are difficult to translate into policy designs. By focusing on positive policymaking the paper examines why policy learning does not occur in certain institutional settings. A special focus is on the informational constraints that limit policy design. Since evaluation and oversight mechanisms have not been sufficiently developed and accepted within EU settings, there is much room for inefficiency, as a basic agency model with hidden information shows. If political planners have incomplete information about the state of the world, programs cannot be designed efficiently. Hence, a better link between evaluation and program design could reduce inefficiencies. Regarding this point, current discussions in U.S. policymaking seem to focus increasingly on program design effects and policy implementation.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
19. Decentralized Cooperation and the Future of Regulatory Reform
- Author:
- Pepper D. Culpepper
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Faced with the fact of sweeping regulatory reform, how do companies decide how to respond to a new set of policies? This paper argues that this problem requires a new conception of policymaking: a conception that recognizes the analytical primacy of achieving coordination under uncertainty. I call this challenge the problem of securing decentralized cooperation. Negotiated reforms are a common leitmotif of the current wave of reforms taking place in various European countries, whereas American attempts to reinvent government opt to replace the state with the market. There are general lessons in this approach for both strategies. Unlike the earlier attempts to establish neo-corporatist bargains at the national level in European countries, the success of bargained pacts in Europe will depend increasingly on allowing private actors to design the best solutions to centrally identified problems. The challenges of bringing private information to bear on public policy will increase in the future, and not only in supply-side economic policy reforms. One such area is environmental regulation, which is typically viewed as an area of pure state regulation. This is also an area where market-based solutions are frequently proposed as the most efficient solution to problems of pollution. As I demonstrate through the initiative of the Chesapeake Bay Program in the United States, the challenges identified above for areas of economic policymaking are now relevant to environmental initiatives, even in liberal market economies such as the US and the UK. The extent of government success in such initiatives will be determined by the ability of governments to understand the importance of private information and their capacity to develop private sector institutions that can help procure it. Attempts to replace a malfunctioning state with a market solution, currently very much in vogue in certain quarters in the United States, will fail, as long as they do not recognize the distinctive problems inherent in securing decentralized cooperation.
- Topic:
- Economics and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States, United Kingdom, and Europe
20. The Legal Construction of Membership: Nationality Law in Germany and the United States
- Author:
- Mathias Bös
- Publication Date:
- 01-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The argument of this paper is that several empirical puzzles in the citizenship literature are rooted in the failure to distinguish between the mainly legal concept of nationality and the broader, political concept of citizenship. Using this distinction, the paper analysis the evolution of German and American nationality laws over the last 200 years. The historical development of both legal structures shows strong communalities. With the emergence of the modern system of nation states, the attribution of nationality to newborn children is ascribed either via the principle of descent or place of birth. With regard to the naturalization of adults, there is an increasing ethnization of law, which means that the increasing complexities of naturalization criteria are more and more structured along ethnic ideas. Although every nation building process shows some elements of ethnic self-description, it is difficult to use the legal principles of ius sanguinis and ius soli as indicators of ethnic or non-ethnic modes of community building.
- Topic:
- Government and Nationalism
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and Germany
21. When Labour and Capital Collude: The Varieties of Welfare Capitalism and Early Retirement in Europe, Japan and the USA
- Author:
- Bernhard Ebbinghaus
- Publication Date:
- 01-2000
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The institutionalisation of early retirement has become a universal feature of postwar industrial economies, though there are significant cross-national variations. This paper studies the impact of different types of welfare regimes, production systems and labour relations on early exit from work. After an analysis of the main trends, the paper discusses the costs and benefits of early retirement for the various actors — labour, capital and the state — at different levels. The paper outlines both the “pull” and “push” factors of early exit. It first compares the distinct welfare state regimes and private occupational pensions in their impact on early retirement. Then it looks at the labour-shedding strategies inherent to particular employment regimes, production systems and financial governance structures. Finally, the impact of particular industrial relations systems, and especially the role of unions is discussed. The paper finds intricate “institutional complementarities” between particular welfare states, production regimes and industrial relations systems, and these structure the incentives under which actors make decisions on work and retirement. The paper argues that the “collusion” between capital, labour and the state in pursuing early retirement is not merely following a labour-shedding strategy to ease mass unemployment, but also caused by the need for economic restructuration, the downsizing pressures from financial markets, the maintenance of peaceful labour relations, and the consequences of a seniority employment system.
- Topic:
- Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Japan, Europe, and East Asia