Government and Politics in Europe November 13, 2014 By Hung-jen Wang 王宏仁

Today’s Outline I. Party Systems and Party Politics II. European Welfare States

I. Party Systems and Party Politics

Party Politics in the Netherlands:  Like politics in Sweden, but, unlike that in Britain and former West Germany.  Dutch politics is highly fragmented.  Three large parties but none in a position to win a majority on its own: Labor Party ( Pvd A), Christian Democratic Appeal ( CDA ), and Liberal Party ( VVD ).  Two dimensions: (1) A left-right opposition: the Liberals will work with the CDA; (2) a religious-secular divide: the Liberals with work with Labor  the result is a shifting pattern of coalition government  Other small parties: Green Left, the Socialist Party, the Christian Union, and the right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn List (LPF)

Party Politics in Italy:  “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold”  Still a two-dimension divided system: a left-right opposition, and, a religious-secular divide  what is distinguishing for the Italian party system is/ was the depth of the ideological divisions: more fragmented and polarized system than others.  The party system has been reshaped to a new form based on three factors: 1) The New Democrats of the Left (DS) moved toward a more conventional social democratic position; 2) A far-right populist movement and the Northern League; 3) Corruption and the break-down of the old party system

Party Politics in France:  The Fourth Republic ( ): many similarities to that of pre-1990s Italy.  The current Fifth Republic (1958-):  Two key changes: (1) the emergence of a much more clearly defined bipolar pattern of competition; (2) a shift in the balance of forces within both left and right

II. European Welfare States

European Welfare States: Diversity, Challenges, and Reforms Welfare states: values and ideas concerning solidarity, social rights and equal social worth. Changes in the world economy and in Europe itself. A paradigm shift: from emphasis on protection from the market towards labor market (re)integration for both men and women; from a “politics against markets” social-protection perspective towards more of a “politics with markets”, social-investment strategy. There is no uniform European “model”

Classifying Europe’s welfare states: four families or five? 1) The Scandinavian welfare states (Denmark, Finland and Sweden); 2) The Continental welfare states (Austria, Germany, France and the Benelux countries); 3) The Southern European welfare states (Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Greece); 4) The Anglo-Irish welfare states (UK and Ireland; ); 1)~4)  Different levels of social expenditure and taxation 5) The Eastern Europe new EU member states?

Late twentieth and early twenty-first century challenges (1) Welfare State: Europe‘s Economic Armageddon The pros and cons of the welfare state: Germany Is the UK Welfare System in danger of disintegrating?

Late twentieth and early twenty-first century challenges (2) Four challenges: economic internationalization, demographic change, the service-sector revolution, and the problems of reorienting traditional welfare-state spending These common pressures generate distinctive problems in different systems

What role for “Europe”? The desirable role for “Europe” in European welfare reform is anything but clear. A new attempt began with “employment”: European Employment Strategy in White Paper on ‘Growth, Competitiveness and Employment’ (1993) Employment Chapter in the Amsterdam Treaty (1997); Lisbon summit (2000) Lisbon treaty: the Open Method of Coordination (OMC); however, the OMC practices have been poorly integrated into domestic policy process. Conclusions: obstacles to creating a new arena of effective EU policy: (1) the complexity of welfare-state policies, still strong claims to national sovereignty, and the absence of a strong consensus; (2) the nature of the ‘employment strategy’ and ‘open coordination’ still lacks the capacity to mobilize reform coalitions and drive true policy innovation.