Public Economics:
Welfare states and inequalities
University of Castellanza
Session #1(introduction)
Europe in the World
26 March 2014
Three sessions

The European Social Model (ESM)
» Europe in the world
» The European Social Model
» Employment in Europe
» Varieties of welfare state
Blocked Societies
 Europe 2020

» Income inequality
» Poverty, social inclusion and/or growth?
Learning Objectives
By Friday lunch-time you should be able to…

Identify key differences between the social
structure of Europe and the USA

Identify the different forms of labour market
participation and non-participation

Differentiate between the main groups of
European societies and welfare states

Explain different employment rates across Europe

Understand the concepts of income distribution
and poverty

Evaluate possible relationships between economic
growth and European social policy
Reading for today



Anthony Giddens, Europe in the Global Age,
Cambridge: Polity Press,2007, Chapter 1.
James Wickham, ‘Potential and weaknesses of the
European Social Model’, Employment Research
Centre, Trinity College Dublin. Briefing paper for
Infowork Project. Available at
http://www.tcd.ie/ERC/symposiainfowork.php
T.R. Reid, ‘The European Social Model’, Chapter 6 of
The United States of Europe (2004).
This first lecture
What is distinctive about Europe?
 The EU and nation states
 Boundaries of Europe: Russia, Islam?
 Wealth
 Population
 War and peace
 Multiple boundaries
Europe invented the
nation state – the lines
on the map are meant
to mark out different
national ‘societies’
But where
does
‘Europe’
end?
The Mediaeval European world
» Overlapping jurisdictions (Church, feudal lord, monarch)
» Institutions claiming ‘imperial’ authority – Papacy, Holy
Roman Emperor
» So rulers do not have absolute authority within their
territory; boundaries are porous
» In global terms very unusual – a political system rather
than a single polity
The Westphalian European world
» 1648 Treaty of Westphalia
– Ends Thirty Years War in Europe fought partly over religion
» States are autonomous
– Effectively recognise no external authority (e.g. Holy Roman
Emperor)
» Monarch is sole internal authority (cuius religio
principle)
– State has the monopoly of legitimate force (Weber)
State-nations and nation-states

States create nations
» Peasants into Frenchmen (E. Weber)
» Tax, military conscription, elementary schooling
» ‘We have made Italy, now we have to make Italians’
(Garibaldi)

National histories
» ‘Nos ancêtres, les Gaulois’
» Construct the story of ‘we’ the nation

National societies
» National societies with national civil organisations (the
Irish Labour Party, the Sociological Association of
Ireland...).

The border between states is a border
between societies
A post-Westphalian Europe

Overlapping jurisdictions
» Regional, national, European without complete hierarchy
» ‘Multi-level governance’

Recognition of external authorities
» EU (European Court of Justice)
» ECHR European Court of Human Rights

Multiple boundaries
» Different organisations have different boudnaries

Inter-governmental organisations
» ECMT, ESA, EBU (Eurovision!), etc
Boundaries (1) Russia

Iron Curtain
» Russian occupation of Hungary, Poland etc. from 1946
creates ‘Eastern Europe’ of satellite states
» 1989 Fall of Iron Curtain: ‘Eastern Europe’ becomes
Mitteleuropa - East ‘comes home’

Components of the lost Russian ‘ empire’
» Baltic states
» Ukraine

Really European?
» Europe ‘from the Atlantic to the Urals’ (de Gaullle)
» Our ‘common European home’ ‘We are Europeans’
(Mikhail Gorbachev, 1987)

Self-definition
» Both Russian and Turkish intellectuals often debate
whether their country is ‘really’ European
Boundaries (2) Islam

732 Battle of Poitiers
» Islam ‘hides’ Europe from more advanced societies to the East
(Pirenne)

The emergence of Europe in the Middle Ages
» Byzantine empire shields Europe from Islam : ‘Without Byzantium,
Europe as we know it is inconceivable’. (Herrin, 2008:87)
» ‘Reconquista’ of Iberian peninsula by end 15c.

1453 Fall of Constantinople
» Turkish conquest of Balkans

1572 Battle of Lepanto
» Then both Turkey and Spain turn away from the Mediterranean

Emergence of Austria-Hungary
» 1683 Turkish siege of Vienna lifted
» 1686 ‘Liberation’ of Budapest
» ‘European’ expansion into Balkans reaching Bosnia (1878)

2005 Turkey-EU negotiations begin
Europe, the Balkans and Islam

732 Battle of Poitiers
» Islam ‘hides’ mediaeval Europe from more advanced
societies to the East
» ‘Reconquista’ of Iberian peninsula

1453 Fall of Constantinople
» Turkish conquest of Balkans

1572 Battle of Lepanto
» Turning away from the Mediterranean

Emergence of Austria-Hungary
» 1683 Turkish siege of Vienna lifted
» 1686 ‘Liberation’ of Budapest
Expansion
into Balkans
from Ljubljana
»2005
Turkey-EU
negotiations
begin....to Sarajevo
Europe and the world population 1650-2000
7,000
6,071
6,000
5,000
4,000
27.3%
21.9%
3,000
World
Europe
Europe as % of total (right axis)
2,521
2,000
1,650
1,000
0
12.0%
1,262
556
112
791
127
163
978
203
276
408
547
803
1600 1700 1750 1800 1850 1900 1950 2000
Left axis: population (millions)
Right axis: Europe as % of world
Europeans
amount to a
rapidly
declining
proportion of
the
population of
the globe
Old Europe
In EU28 c5% of the
population are under 5
years old, in the USA
6.5%, in the world over 9%
10
9
8
Percentage of population
7
6
EU28
5
USA
4
World
3
2
1
0
0-4
5-9 10-14 15-19 20-24 25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44
Age 45-49
group50-54 55-59 60-64 65-69 70-74 75-79 80-84 85-
Percentage of total population in 5 year age groups (0-4 to 85-)
The End of European economic dominance
40
35
30
25
WE
20
USA
15
10
5
0
1900
1950
2001
GNP as proportion of world total: Western Europe and USA
In 1900 over a third
of the world’s wealth
was produced in
Western Europe; a
hundred years later
this proportion had
fallen to about one
fifth
Learning the costs of war: Europe and USA
5,000
4,500
4,000
3,500
3,000
WWI Military
2,500
WW2 Military
2,000
WW2 Civilian
1,500
1,000
500
0
USA
UK
France
Italy
Germany
From the
European wars,
did Europeans
learn that they
die, Americans
learn that others
die?
Note that this excludes the holocaust, civilian and military deaths in
Poland, Soviet Russia…all of which were a multiple of US deaths.
German civilian deaths probably should include German Vertriebene
deaths to 1947, variously reckoned at between one and two millions
Russian war losses: Stalingrad 1942-43 470,000; summer 1943: Kursk 70,000 and 183,000 in
subsequent advance ‘In two months of fighting the Red Army lost almost as many men as the
United States or the British Empire did in the entire war’ (Overy, 1999: 212).
A European civil society?

Civil society
» Social activity that is not the market, not the state and not
purely personal or familial

European lobby groups
» ETUC, UNICE, etc
» Oriented to ‘Brussels’ but often different boundaries to EU

European commercial, professional and sporting
organisations
» UEFA
» European Sociological Association
» And thousands more….


Thick institutional linkages crossing national
borders
But NOT a single European ‘society’ – not a big
national society