The EU in 2013 finds itself at the crossroads of either something considerably better or something much worse than the status quo; in other words, in a crisis. That much is nearly universally ...understood, both within Europe and widely beyond. So I am certainly not alone in believing that the current crisis, a crisis that is the cumulative outcome of a financial market, sovereign debt and EU integration/democratic deficit crises, is an extremely serious and unprecedented one, frightening due to its complexity and uncertainty. If it cannot soon be resolved (but nobody knows how soon is 'soon enough') through a major institutional overhaul of the EU, both the political project of European integration and the global economy will suffer badly-to say nothing about the massive social suffering it has caused already in the countries of the European periphery.
The paper provides a multi-disciplinary overview of normative and empirical issues concerning labor markets and inequalities in contemporary capitalist democracies. It begins with a discussion of ...philosophical controversies in relation to issues of distributive justice. This is followed by a review of peoples' attitudes and opinions, as revealed in surveys and experiments, concerning inequality and fairness. In regard to contributions from economics, the question is discussed whether the relationship between equality/equity and efficiency should be seen as a trade-off. Finally, the thesis is advanced that most of the inequalities (for example in relation to income, job quality, job and income security) are reflected in but not caused by labor markets; instead, the institutional framework in which the labor market is embedded (labor law, education, training, wage determination, social security etc.) is responsible for the (in)equality of outcomes, as are managerial strategies positioning jobs and their holders in firms and other organizations. In his brief conclusion, the author refrains from advocating a normative solution to the issue of distributive fairness; instead, he highlights two axes of controversy that structure the debate.
This essay proceeds in three steps. First, it will briefly outline the often invoked “crisis” of representative democracy and its major symptoms. Second, it will discuss a popular yet, as I shall ...argue, worryingly misguided response to that crisis: namely, the switch to plebiscitarian methods of “direct” democracy, as advocated, for example, by rightist populist forces in many European Union member states. The United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum of June 2016 illuminates the weaknesses of this approach. Third, it will suggest a rough design for enriching representative electoral democracy with nonelectoral (but “aleatory,” or randomized) and nonmajoritarian (but deliberative and consultative) bodies and their peculiar methods of political will formation (as opposed to the expression of a popular will already formed).
En este trabajo, el autor introduce una importante consideración en el análisis de la barbarie. A su juicio, no hay únicamente una constelación dicotómica con un sujeto actor, el perpetrador, y un ...sujeto paciente, la víctima, sino una constelación triangular en la que se desoculta al espectador que calla u omite, insensibilizado moralmente, las acciones que «más allá del bien y del mal» realiza el perpetrador contra la víctima. In this paper the author introduces one important consideration related to the analysis of barbarity. According to him there is no only one two sided constellation shaped by the acting subject, the perpetrator, and an subject transformed in an object upon which is done violence, the victim, but a «triangular constellation in which the observer, morally neutralized, who wilfully forgets actions that «beyond good and evil does the perpetrator against the victim, is unhide.
Los detentares del poder político pueden elegir entre la infinidad de posibilidades institucionales que existen entre capitalismo y socialismo. Después de explicar por qué cualquier sistema de ...producción es mixto, este ensayo explora ambas cuestiones: por qué los mercados frecuentemente se consideran preferibles a otros arreglos y cuáles son los males "simples" asociados a las economías capitalistas de mercado. Entre estos males "simples", encontramos la tendencia de los mercados a la autosubversión, de permear toda la vida social, y de infligir daño cuando se permite a los mercados abarcar los factores de la producción, como el trabajo, los recursos naturales y el dinero. A pesar de estos "simples" males, los socialistas democráticos y los demócratas sociales creen que el poder político movilizado al interior de las democracias liberales puede lidiar con estos efectos laterales al recurrir a instrumentos tales como legislación antimonopolio, las políticas que constriñen el mercado, y a la protección de los factores de producción. Por último, este ensayo explica por qué los demócratas sociales y los socialistas democráticos creen que la democracia liberal, con su énfasis en libertad e igualdad, por un lado, y en representación, impugnación y responsabilidad, por el otro, es el arreglo institucional que mejor puede superar las patologías inherentes a las sociedades capitalistas de mercado.
Offe ponders the concept of governance, providing observations relating to the pragmatics, semantics and syntactic structure of the concept. He then goes on to discuss how governance relates to thte ...logics of market and state. In addition, he reviews criticism regarding the concept of governance and how it relates to social science.
Anheier's five recommendations suggest valuable steps in the right direction. Yet let me add a sixth one – the comparative institutional analysis of what I have termed ‘agency gaps’, or structural ...governance deficiencies and ‘hindrances’.
The Europolis experiment took place at a time when the worst crisis in the history of the EU began to unfold. There is little confidence that the year 2014 (or any later year in the near future) will ...bring its definitive resolution that would also have to minimize the risk of the crisis repeating itself. The crisis can be understood as consisting of three interrelated components: the political economy of the Euro zone and its dynamics, an inadequate institutional shell of the EU polity and its deficient democratic quality, and the widespread disenchantment of publics in Europe with the narratives about what 'Europe' is good for and what the finalite might be that would make its further integration intrinsically desirable. Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Ltd., copyright holder.
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