Rethinking the European Union and its global role from the 20th to the 21st Century E-Book

Jean-Michel De Waele

• Herausgeber: Editions de l'Université de Bruxelles
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 658

Beschreibung

Discover the various scientific debates that Mario Telò has been involved.

This edited volume, which has been drafted in honour of Professor Telò’s research career, offers the reader an overview of the various scientific debates that he has been involved in throughout his distinguished career. The aim was to highlight, contextualise and build on his most innovative contributions to each of these debates.

This book revolves around four thematic areas, each of which brings together a number of contributions that offer timely reflections on a given question or challenge covered by Professor Telò’s research.

EXTRACT

We wanted to have a personality of international calibre, espousing different political systems across the world. But we also wanted to bring a good teacher into the fold filling students with enthusiasm, able to lead them to develop their study projects, to establish their vocation as researchers and even to train personalities active in every day life, in fact to promote a European conscientiousness.
We know that Mario Telò has perfectly fulfilled these many wishes, in particular through his commitments towards his colleagues as well as his very active role as member and President of the Institut d’études européennes – Institute of European Studies (IEE-ULB), but also through the support that he has given numerous researchers who have completed brilliant doctoral theses under his supervision.
It is difficult to pay him tribute, however, as Mario Telò has engaged in and still engages in multiple and international academic activities. We have lost count of the number of foreign invitations that have been extended to him as well as his numerous speeches to defend and to explain the need for a European area.
Mario Telò knows better than anyone that European values still need to be defended, that European studies cover several aspects, not just the political integration process in Europe but also the analysis of the behaviour of actors, decision-makers and citizens.
We know that the ‘EU acquis’ is often temporary and several times the work has to be redone, as the difficulties of functioning with twenty-eight member states, and soon to be twenty-seven member states, show. The European Union does not always respond to the democratic deficit, the political integration approach needs to show the usefulness and expected benefits of European cooperation essential to its existence in a very tense global context.
The energy of Mario Telò, his creativity, his international engagement, his academic openness will always be essential to the ULB. A member of the Académie Royale de Belgique [Royal Academy of Belgium], in the Classe des Lettres et des Sciences morales et politiques [section of letters and moral and political sciences], Mario Telò will always find the opportunity to express his analyses and proposals to get through the currently very troubled time of Europe’s and the world’s evolution.

Leseprobe

S E R I E S « E T U D E S E U R O P E E N N E S »

Jean De Ruyt. L’Acte unique européen. Commentaire. 2e édition. 1989.

Le Parlement européen dans l’évolution institutionnelle. Ed. Jean-Victor Louis et Denis Waelbroeck. 2e tirage. 1989.

Mário Marques Mendes. Antitrust in a World of Interrelated Economies. The Interplay between Antitrust and Trade Policies in the US and the EEC. 1991.

L’espace audiovisuel européen. Ed. Georges Vandersanden. 1991.

Vers une nouvelle Europe ? Towards a New Europe ? Ed. Mario Telò. 1992.

L’Union européenne et les défis de l’élargissement. Ed. Mario Telò. 1994.

La réforme du système juridictionnel communautaire. Ed. Georges Vandersanden. 1994.

Quelle Union sociale européenne ? Acquis institutionnels, acteurs et défis. Ed. Mario Telò et Corinne Gobin. 1994.

Laurence Burgorgue-Larsen. L’Espagne et la Communauté européenne. L’Etat des autonomies et le processus d’intégration européenne. 1995.

Banking Supervision in the European Community. Institutional Aspects. Report of a Working Group of the ECU Institute under the Chairmanship of Jean-Victor Louis. 1995, 304 pages.

Pascal Delwit. Les partis socialistes et l’intégration européenne. France, Grande-Bretagne, Belgique. 1995.

Démocratie et construction européenne. Ed. Mario Telò. 1995.

Jörg Gerkrath. L’émergence d’un droit constitutionnel européen. Modes de formation et sources d’inspiration de la constitution des Communautés et de l’Union européenne. 1997.

L’Europe et les régions. Aspects juridiques. Ed. Georges Vandersanden, 1997.

L’Union européenne et le monde après Amsterdam. Ed. Marianne Dony. 1999.

Le nouveau modèle européen. II. Les politiques internes et externes. Ed. Paul Magnette et Eric Remacle. 2000.

Olivier Costa. Le Parlement européen, assemblée délibérante. 2001.

La reconnaissance mutuelle des décisions judiciaires pénales dans l’Union européenne. Ed. Gilles de Kerchove et Anne Weyembergh. 2001.

L’avenir du système juridictionnel de l’Union européenne. Ed. Marianne Dony et Emmanuelle Bribosia. 2002.

Quelles réformes pour l’espace pénal européen ? Ed. Gilles de Kerchove et Anne Weyembergh. 2003.

Paul Magnette. Contrôler l’Europe. Pouvoirs et responsabilité dans l’Union européenne. 2003.

Sécurité et justice : enjeu de la politique extérieure de l’Union européenne. Ed. Gilles de Kerchove et Anne Weyembergh. 2003.

Anne Weyembergh. L’harmonisation des législations : condition de l’espace pénal européen et révélateur de ses tensions. 2004.

La Grande Europe. Ed. Paul Magnette. 2004.

Vers une société européenne de la connaissance. La stratégie de Lisbonne (2000-2010). Ed. Maria João Rodrigues. 2004.

Aides d’Etat. Ed. Marianne Dony et Catherine Smits. 2005.

Commentaire de la Constitution de l’Union européenne. Ed. Marianne Dony et Emmanuelle Bribosia. 2005.

La confiance mutuelle dans l’espace pénal européen/Mutual Trust in the European Criminal Area. Ed. Gilles de Kerchove et Anne Weyembergh. 2005.

The gays’ and lesbians’ rights in an enlarged European Union. Ed. Anne Weyembergh and Sinziana Carstocea. 2006.

Comment évaluer le droit pénal européen ?. Ed. Anne Weyembergh et Serge de Biolley. 2006.

La Constitution européenne. Elites, mobilisations, votes. Ed. Antonin Cohen et Antoine Vauchez. 2007.

Les résistances à l’Europe. Cultures nationales, idéologies et stratégies d’acteurs. Ed. Justine Lacroix et Ramona Coman. 2007.

L’espace public européen à l’épreuve du religieux. Ed. François Foret. 2007.

Démocratie, cohérence et transparence : vers une constitutionnalisation de l’Union européenne ?. Ed. Marianne Dony et Lucia Serena Rossi. 2008.

L’Union européenne et la gestion de crises. Ed. Barbara Delcourt, Marta Martinelli et Emmanuel Klimis. 2008.

Sebastian Santander. Le régionalisme sud-américain, l’Union européenne et les Etats-Unis. 2008.

Denis Duez. L’Union européenne et l’immigration clandestine. De la sécurité intérieure à la construction de la communauté politique. 2008.

Rethinking the European Union and its Global Role from the 20th to the 21th Century

Liber Amicorum Mario Telò

EDITED BY JEAN-MICHEL DE WAELE, GIOVANNI GREVI, FREDERIK PONJAERT, ANNE WEYEMBERGH

S E R I E S « E T U D E S E U R O P E E N N E S »

L’Union européenne : la fin d’une crise ?. Ed. Paul Magnette et Anne Weyembergh. 2008.

The evaluation of European Criminal Law : the example of the Framework Decision on combating trafficking in human beings. Ed. Anne Weyembergh & Veronica Santamaria. 2009.

Le contrôle juridictionnel dans l’espace pénal européen. Ed. Stefan Braum and Anne Weyembergh. 2009.

Les députés européens et leur rôle. Sociologie interprétative des pratiques parlementaires. Julien Navarro. 2009.

The future of mutual recognition in criminal matters in the European Union/L’avenir de la reconnaissance mutuelle en matière pénale dans l’Union européenne. Ed. Gisèle Vernimmen-Van Tiggelen, Laura Surano and Anne Weyembergh. 2009.

Sophie Heine, Une gauche contre l’Europe ? Les critiques radicales et altermondialistes contre l’Union européenne en France. 2009.

The Others in Europe. Ed. Saskia Bonjour, Andrea Rea and Dirk Jacobs, 2011.

EU counter-terrorism offences: What impact on national legislation and case-law?. Ed. Francesca Galli and Anne Weyembergh. 2012.

La dimension externe de l’espace de liberté, de sécurité et de justice au lendemain de Lisbonne et de Stockholm : un bilan à mi-parcours. Ed. Marianne Dony, 2012.

Approximation of substantive criminal law in the EU: The way forward. Ed. Francesca Galli and Anne Weyembergh, 2013.

Relations internationales. Une perspective européenne. Mario Telò. 3e édition revue et augmentée. 2013.

Le traité instituant l’Union européenne: un projet, une méthode un agenda. Francesco Capotorti, Meinhard Hilf, Francis Jacobs, Jean-Paul Jacqué. Préface de Jean-Paul Jacqué et Jean-Victor Louis, Postface de Giorgio Napolitano, 2e édition revue et augmentée sous la coordination de Marianne Dony et Jean-Victor Louis. 2014.

Des illusions perdues? Du compromis au consensus au Parlement européen et à la Chambre des représentants américaine. Selma Bendjaballah. 2016.

When Europa meets Bismarck. How Europe is used in the Austrian Healthcare System. Thomas Kostera. 2016.

L’Union européenne et la promotion de la démocratie. Les pratiques au Maroc et en Tunisie. Leila Mouhib. 2017.

Governing Diversity. Migrant Integration and Multiculturalism in North America and Europe. Ed. Andrea Rea, Emmanuelle Bribosia, Isabelle Rorive, Djordje Sredanovic, 2018

C O M M E N T A I R E J . M E G R E T

Third edition DROIT COMMUNAUTAIRE DE LA CONCURRENCE Contrôle des aides d’Etat, 2007. Contrôle des concentrations, 2009.

MARCHE INTERIEUR Libre circulation des personnes et des capitaux. Rapprochement des législations, 2006. Environnement et marché intérieur, 2010. Politique agricole commune et politique commune de la pêche, 2011. Introduction au marché intérieur. Libre circulation des marchandises, 2015.

ORDRE JURIDIQUE DE L’UNION ET CONTENTIEUX EUROPEEN Les compétences de l’Union européenne, 2017. Le contrôle juridictionnel dans l’Union européenne, 2018.

POLITIQUES ECONOMIQUES ET SOCIALES Intégration des marchés financiers, 2007. L’Union européenne et sa monnaie, 2009. Politique fiscale, 2012.

RELATIONS EXTERIEURES Politique commerciale commune, 2014. L’Union européenne comme acteur international, 2015.

    EDITIONS DE L’UNIVERSITE DE BRUXELLES

Rethinking the European Union and its Global Role from the 20th to the 21th Century

Liber Amicorum Mario Telò

EDITED BY JEAN-MICHEL DE WAELE, GIOVANNI GREVI, FREDERIK PONJAERT, ANNE WEYEMBERGH

E-ISBN 978-2-8004-1690-8 ISSN 1378-0352 D/2019/0171/2 © 2019 by Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles Avenue Paul Héger, 26 – 1000 Brussels (Belgium)[email protected]

About the book

This edited volume, which has been drafted in honour of Professor Telò’s research career, offers the reader an overview of the various scientific debates that he has been involved in throughout his distinguished career. The aim was to highlight, contextualise and build on his most innovative contributions to each of these debates. The volume revolves around four thematic areas, each of which brings together a number of contributions that offer timely reflections on a given question or challenge covered by Professor Telò's research. The first section, ‘Reflections on the Future of Social Democracy in Europe’, brings together chapters on the efficiency and legitimacy crisis facing contemporary social democracies, be it at the European or national levels. The second section, ‘Reflections on the Prospects for European Governance’, offers the reader a cross-section of assessments on the state of the European polity, its politics and the policies that it produces, notably in the light of recent institutional reforms and crises. The third section, ‘Reflections on the Implications of Multilateralism and Multipolarism for Europe’, explores how both regional experiences in general and the EU's external action in particular have reacted to a rapidly changing international environment. The fourth and final section, ‘Reflections on the Lessons drawn from Engaged Research in Europe’, takes a step back and considers the role of the researcher in the evolving and challenging environment sketched out in the preceding sections. It focuses both on how to approach such a complex area of research as the EU as well as how to reconcile academic distance with societal engagement when working on controversial topics.

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

Table of Contents

Foreword

List of Abbreviations

Tribute to Professor Mario Telò

Françoise THYS-CLÉMENT

Mario Telò’s Contribution to International Relations

Andrew GAMBLE

Introduction

Jean-Michel DE WAELE, Giovanni GREVI, Frederik PONJAERT, Anne WEYEMBERGH

IReflections on the Future of Social Democracy in Europe

Parties and Democracies in Southern Europe after the ‘Great Recession’

Leonardo MORLINO

The Transformations of the Socialist Family: Organisational Aspects

Pascal DELWIT

The Dilemma of Social Europe

Thomas MEYER

The Pursuit of Another Version of Socialism: From the Nation to Europe and beyond Europe

Christophe SENTE

Still the Century of Social Democracy?

Mimmo CARRIERI

The Evolution of European Welfare State Systems in Relation to National Socioeconomic Circumstances

Chun DING

IIReflections on the Prospects for European Governance

Contemporary and Past Crises: The Historical Dimension

Donald SASSOON

Europe’s ‘Machiavellian Moment’ How Can Europe Deal with the Risk of Falling Apart?

Paul MAGNETTE

The Governance of the Union and the Merging of the Roles of President of the European Council and of the European Commission

Marianne DONY

EU Governance and the Crisis of Legitimacy: What Future for Integration?

Vivien SCHMIDT

Differentiated Integration: A Formula Tested over Time

Ferdinando Nelli FEROCI

European Social Policy (1957-2017): A Long Quest for Recognition

Janine GOETSCHY

Is the EU a Proper Successor to the European Community?

Nicolas LEVRAT

The Coordination of Macroeconomic Policies in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Crisis : Shaping Policies Through Executive Politics

Ramona COMAN

IIIReflections on the Implications of Multilateralism and Multipolarism for Europe

The Relationship between the History of Political Thought and Comparative Analysis of Regional Organisations

Annamaria LAZZARINO DEL GROSSO

Putting Principles into Practice: A Continued Multilateral Regime for EU-ACP Relations after the Expiration of the Cotonou Partnership Agreement in 2020

Nico SCHRIJVER

Federica Mogherini Four Years Through Her Mandate as the High Representative and Vice-President of the Commission (HRVP)

Tereza NOVOTNA

IVReflections on the Lessons Drawn from Engaged Research in Europe

Europe as a Research Topic and a Lifeworld Dimension

Furio CERUTTI

An Innovative Understanding of Intellectual Commitment in the Twenty-First Century: Combining High Level Research, Policy Recommendation and Large Scale Outreach

Maria João RODRIGUES

From the Twentieth to the Twenty-First Century: Between Two Major Historical Junctures?An Interview with Mario Telò Covering his Research Career from 1975 to 2017

Frederik PONJAERT

Bibliography

Publications by Mario TELÒ

List of Authors

← 6 | 7 →

Foreword

A first version of texts published in this Liber Amicorum was submitted by the authorities of the Institut d’études européennes – Institute of European Studies (IEE) to Mario Telò on 18 December 2017 during his last lesson of the course on Relations internationales [International relations]. At the same ceremony, speeches were given by the following professors: Andrea Rea, Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences, Jean-Benoit Pilet, Director of the Department of Political Sciences, Anne Weyembergh, President of the IEE-ULB, Didier Viviers, Permanent Secretary of the Académie Royale de Belgique, Paul Magnette, Professor at the ULB and former President of Wallonia, Leonardo Morlino, Vice-Rector of LUISS and former President of IPSA, Andrew Gamble, University of Cambridge, Maria João Rodrigues, President of FEPS, Jean-Michel De Waele, former Vice-Rector of the ULB and Frederik Ponjaert, Executive Director for Research, IEE-ULB.

Professor Pilet read out a number of messages that came from all over the world, in particular from the following leading figures: Prof. Qin Yaqing, President of the China Foreign Affairs University, Beijing; Prof. Robert O. Keohane, University of Princeton, former President of the American Political Sciences Association; Prof. Renato Flores, Director of the Fundação Getulio Vargas [Getulio Vargas Foundation], Rio de Janeiro; Prof. Thomas Meyer, Director of the review Neue Gesellschaft [New Society], Berlin and Professor at the University of Dortmund; Prof. Richard Higgott, former Vice Chancellor, University of Perth, Australia and Vesalius College VUB; Dr. José Luis Sales Marques, President IEEM Macao, China; Prof. Balver Arora, former Rector, J. Nehru University, New Delhi; Prof. Lucio Levi, University of Turin and Director of the review The Federalist Debate, CSF Turin; Prof. Louise Fawcett, Director of the Department of Politics, Oxford; Prof Anne Deighton, Wolfson College, Oxford; Prof. Karen Smith, London School of Economics; Prof. André Sapir, Bruegel, Brussels; ← 7 | 8 → Joaquín Almunia, Madrid, former European Commissioner; Prof. Josep Borrell, former President of the European Parliament, Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs; Prof. Petros Mavroidis, University of Geneva; Pascal Lamy, former Secretary General of the WTO and President of the Fondation J. Delors [Jacques Delors Foundation], Paris; Philippe Busquin, former European Commissioner, Brussels; Ambassador Laura Basile, Italian Embassy, Brussels; Ambassador C. Bisognero, Italian Embassy to NATO, Brussels; Prof. Frank Vandenbroucke, University of Amsterdam; Nathalie Tocci, Special Advisor to the High Representative for the CFSP, Ms F. Mogherini; Ambassador Ferdinando Nelli Feroci, Rome, President of the IAI; Prof. Louis Belanger and Prof. Gordon Mace, University of Laval, Quebec, Canada; Prof. Donald Sassoon, Queen Mary University, London; Prof. Giacomo Marramao, University of Rome 3; Prof. G. Sandri, University of Lille; Dr Silvia Menegazzi, LUISS Rome; Geoffrey Harris, former representative of the European Parliament to Washington; Prof. Pïerre Vercauteren, Université Catholique de Louvain; Prof Sebastian Santander, President of the Department of Political Sciences, University of Liège; Prof. Stuart Croft, Vice Chancellor, University of Warwick; Prof. Georges Christou, Prof. Shaun Breslin, University of Warwick; Prof. F. Cerutti, University of Florence; Marcelle Padovani, Le Nouvel Observateur; Vanna Vannuccini, La Repubblica; Prof. Philippe Vincke, former Rector at the ULB; Jean-Louis Vanherweghem, former Rector and honorary President at the ULB; Prof. Nicolas Levrat, University of Geneva; Dr Bahadir Kaleagasi, Istanbul, Secretary General, Turkish Industry & Business Association, Istanbul; Prof. Christian Lequesne, CERI Sciences Po Paris and Director of European Review of International Relations; Prof. Aylin Unver Noy, Istanbul Gedik University and John Hopkins University.

← 8 | 9 →

List of Abbreviations

ACP

African, Caribbean and Pacific Group of States

ADGB

Allgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund (Confederation of German trade unions)

AFET

European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs

ASEAN

Association of Southeast Asian Nations

ASEM

Asia-Europe Meeting

BRICS

Emerging national economies (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa)

CDU

Christian Democratic Union (German political party)

CFAU

China Foreign Affairs University

CFDT

French Democratic Confederation of Labour

CFSP

Common Foreign and Security Policy

CGIL

General Confederation of Italian Workers

CJEU

Court of Justice of the European Union

CONT

European Parliament’s Committee on Budgetary Control

DG

Directorate-General

DG DEVCO

Commission’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development

DNA

Labour Party (Norway)

EAEC

European Atomic Energy Community

EBA

Everything But Arms

← 9 | 10 →

EC

European Community

ECB

European Central Bank

ECJ

European Court of Justice

ECPR

European Consortium for Political Research

ECSC

European Coal and Steel Community

EDA

European Defense Agency

EDF

European Development Fund

EEAS

European External Action Service

EEC

European Economic Community

EFSF

European Financial Stability Facility

EFSM

European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism

EMU

European Monetary Union

EP

European Parliament

EPAs

Economic Partnership Agreements

EPP

European People’s Party

ESM

European Stability Mechanism

ETUC

European Trade Union Confederation

EU

European Union

EU FP7

European Framework Programme 7

EUGS

European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy

FAC

Foreign Affairs Council

FGTB

General Federation of Belgian Labour

GATT

General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade

GDP

Gross Domestic Product

GNI

Gross National Income

HQ

Head Quarter

HRVP

High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy / Vice-President of the Commission

IDA

International Development Association

IFC

International Finance Cooperation

JHA

Justice and Home Affairs

LHS

Left Hand-Side

LO

Swedish Trade Union Confederation

LTROs

Long-term Refinancing operations

M5S

Five Star Movement (Italian political party)

MEPs

Members of the European Parliament

← 10 | 11 →

MERCOSUR

Southern Common Market

MP

Member of Parliament

NIEO

New International Economic Order

OMC

Open method of cooperation

OPEC

Organisation of the Petroleum exporting Countries

PASOK

Panhellenic Socialist Movement (Greek political party)

PCF

French Communist Party

PCI

Italian Communist Party

PD

Democratic Party (Italian political party)

PDR

Democratic Republican Party (Portuguese political party)

PIIGS

Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (Five of the most economically weak Eurozone nations during the European debt crisis)

POB

Belgian Labour Party

PS

Socialist Party (French political party)

PSB-BSP

Belgian Socialist Party

PSOE

Spanish Socialist Workers’ party

PTB-PVDA

Workers’ Party of Belgium

RCEP

Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership

REFIT

European Commission’s regulatory fitness and performance

RHS

Right Hand-Side

RPR

Rally for the Republic (French political party)

SADC

Southern African Development Community

SAP

Swedish Social Democratic Party

SD

Social Democratic party (Denmark)

SDGs

Sustainable Development Goals

SDP

Social Democratic Party (Finish political party)

SFIO

French Section of the Socialist International

SMP

Securities Market Programme

SPD

Social Democratic Party (Germany)

SPÖ

Social Democratic Party of Austria

SPS

Socialist Party of Serbia

STABEX

System for the Stabilisation of Export Earnings

SWSI

Socialist Workers’ Sport International

TEU

Treaty on the European Union

TFEU

Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union

← 11 | 12 →

TPP

TransPacific Partnership

TSGC

Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance in the Economic and Monetary Union

TTIP

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

TUC

Trade Union Congress

UK

United Kingdom

UN

United Nations

UNCTAD

United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

UNDP

United Nations Development Programme

USA

United States of America

USSR

Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

VP

Vice President

WTO

World Trade Organisation

← 12 | 13 →

Tribute to Professor Mario Telò

Françoise THYS-CLÉMENT

Paying tribute to Professor Mario Telò makes me happy to be able to express my admiration for him and my thanks for the role that he plays in the intellectual community.

However, expressing this gratitude is both an easy and a difficult thing to do.

It is easy to do because, during his recruitment in 1988, the Université libre de Bruxelles and its faculty of social and political sciences at the time had placed a lot of hope in his arrival from Italy as Professor of Political Sciences.

We wanted to have a personality of international calibre, espousing different political systems across the world. But we also wanted to bring a good teacher into the fold filling students with enthusiasm, able to lead them to develop their study projects, to establish their vocation as researchers and even to train personalities active in every day life, in fact to promote a European conscientiousness.

We know that Mario Telò has perfectly fulfilled these many wishes, in particular through his commitments towards his colleagues as well as his very active role as member and President of the Institut d’études européennes – Institute of European Studies (IEE-ULB), but also through the support that he has given numerous researchers who have completed brilliant doctoral theses under his supervision.

It is difficult to pay him tribute, however, as Mario Telò has engaged in and still engages in multiple and international academic activities. We have lost count of the number of foreign invitations that have been extended to him as well as his numerous speeches to defend and to explain the need for a European area.

Mario Telò knows better than anyone that European values still need to be defended, that European studies cover several aspects, not just the political integration process in Europe but also the analysis of the behaviour of actors, decision-makers and citizens. ← 13 | 14 →

We know that the ‘EU acquis’ is often temporary and several times the work has to be redone, as the difficulties of functioning with twenty-eight member states, and soon to be twenty-seven member states, show.

The European Union does not always respond to the democratic deficit, the political integration approach needs to show the usefulness and expected benefits of European cooperation essential to its existence in a very tense global context.

The energy of Mario Telò, his creativity, his international engagement, his academic openness will always be essential to the ULB. A member of the Académie Royale de Belgique [Royal Academy of Belgium], in the Classe des Lettres et des Sciences morales et politiques [section of letters and moral and political sciences], Mario Telò will always find the opportunity to express his analyses and proposals to get through the currently very troubled time of Europe’s and the world’s evolution.

← 14 | 15 →

Mario Telò’s Contribution to International Relations

Andrew GAMBLE

Mario Telò and I have enjoyed a friendship and intellectual cooperation that goes back more than thirty years. We first met in Bologna at a conference held to discuss Thatcher and Reagan. Then as now it was the Anglo-Saxons who were causing problems.

Mario has established himself as a leading scholar in so many areas – political thought, comparative regionalism, international relations. He is the author of major monographs such as Europe as a civilian power; Regionalism in Hard Times; and International Relations: a European perspective, as well as many edited books and journal articles. Just before I set off for Brussels to attend the event organized in December 2017 for Mario, I met with a friend in Sheffield, the sociologist Professor Maurice Roche. When I mentioned the name, Mario Telò, he responded simply – I have all his books on my shelves.

But Mario’s contribution goes far beyond his published works. He has always been that rare and valuable colleague, an institution-builder. The range of the networks he has helped create while at the Institut d’Études Européennes has been extraordinary. He has helped to make the Institute the leading centre of European Studies in the world. He has encouraged a constant flow of practitioners, academics, and policy experts, as well as students from Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa. He has been a leader in promoting Europe’s intellectual engagement with China. He has fostered collaboration in so many different ways, such as GARNET, GREEN, and GEM, as well as the many conferences and research programmes he has initiated. The Institute has become known as a model of multilateral academic cooperation, and that owes much to Mario’s vision. He has always emphasised the need for pluralism and the value of multiple perspectives in the study of any problem. He has consistently applied this approach to international relations. For Mario the various schools of ← 15 | 16 → international relations theory, such as realism, institutionalism and constructivism, all illuminate different aspects of a complex reality. The focus on one to the exclusion of others leads to error. Instead they need to be considered as complementary. He uses the analogy of an early twentieth century cubist painting.

Mario is known for his many and diverse contributions to International Relations. I will single out two. The first is his work on comparative regionalisms. Mario was one of the first to draw attention to the phenomenon of the new regionalism, which he argued was very different from the regionalism of the 1930s. It was open not closed and fostered cooperation rather than conflict. The new regionalisms which he saw emerging around the world were potentially the building blocks of an inclusive multilateral global order. Mario has been a strong critic of theories of hyper-globalisation and saw regional associations like the EU as a counterweight. But although he regarded the EU as a very significant example of the new regionalism he did not think it should be treated as a prototype or a model to be copied by the rest of the world.

This is the second signal contribution which Mario has made to the study of International Relations. In his major book, International Relations: a European Perspective Mario sets out a European theory of international relations but not a Eurocentric one. He has always argued that Europe is best thought of as an institutional laboratory of the new regionalism, an advance workshop of the general trend towards regional cooperation between neighbouring states. He has written eloquently about Europe as a civilian power, but he has always warned against European integration being seen as a new universal European project. He is keenly aware of the limitations of the EU. Rather than regard the EU as a new power in the making he sees it instead as an example of a new form of multilateral cooperation which offers the best chance of building a peaceful and prosperous world order.

The key question which Mario poses in his work is what will come after the Westphalian paradigm of international order, with its focus on nation-states. He argues that the practical and theoretical weakening of the state centric foundations of the Westphalian paradigm cannot be reversed. But he thinks that pooled and shared sovereignty is not an end to sovereignty as many fear, but rather the first step towards the construction of a better order. He poses as an urgent question of our time – can the world order evolve beyond the Westphalian paradigm?

In his foreword to International Relations: a European Perspective, Robert Keohane argues that the essence of good international relations research is problem solving: ‘If theory is treated as an ornament to be admired for its own sake it will be worse than useless. If it is employed creatively to understand major problems it may help human beings, as a species, to figure out how to survive.’

Mario more than passes that test in his own work. He has always been focused on big problems and how better understanding of them may help to find solutions to them. He has also followed the advice of Gunnar Myrdal who argued that each author should declare the values and subjective factors that inevitably influence his work. Mario’s own commitments and values have always been clear.

A final word on Mario and Brexit. Many of us are sad about the outcome of the Referendum. The political situation in Britain and the outcome of the negotiations ← 16 | 17 → is very confused. For citizens of the UK like myself who voted Remain (the 48 per cent), we have become the traitors and saboteurs according to the Brexit press. Internal exile beckons. The cheerleaders for Brexit want to see 2016 as a decisive date in English history (The Scots and Irish want no part in this) like 1534 or 1688, the rebirth of national sovereignty. After 1688 those unreconciled to the Hanoverian succession took to toasting their king ‘over the water’. Maybe those unreconciled to the loss of their European citizenship will have to find something similar. What is becoming increasingly clear however is that there is no majority for a hard Brexit, either in the Cabinet, in Parliament, or in the electorate. Some kind of Brexit seems certain to take place, but Brexit is not an event but a process and as it unfolds it will become a test case of European integration, another experiment in the institutional laboratory which Mario describes so well. Will Brexit ultimately signal a return to the Westphalian paradigm of narrow national sovereignty, as its proponents want, or will it rather demonstrate that that is a blind alley and will it instead underline by the choices Britain makes after Brexit the resilience of the multilateral cooperative order of which Mario has been such a fine analyst and advocate?

I salute my old comrade from Bologna. Pessimism of the intelligence, optimism of the will. ← 17 | 18 →

← 18 | 19 →

Introduction

Jean-Michel DE WAELE, Giovanni GREVI, Frederik PONJAERT, Anne WEYEMBERGH

This edited volume was compiled with an eye to highlighting both the many scientific contributions and the numerous achievements that have marked Mario’s career at the Institut d’études européennes [IEE, Institute for European Studies].

As a young man, Mario Telò, who was very politically committed, could have opted for a political career. However, fortunately he opted for an academic one. Special thanks are due to Professor Françoise Thys-Clément, former Rector of our university and emeritus President of the IEE, who played a key role in bringing Mario Telò to the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB) in 1988 as Professor of Political Sciences. Since then and throughout all these years, Mario has made his mark on generations of students and encouraged lots of people to become researchers and politicians.

Holder of an ad personam Jean Monnet chair and Director of the IEE’s political section, Mario would ultimately become the President of the institute between 2005 and 2009 and then Vice President in charge of international relations for several years thereafter. He generously invested considerable amounts of his dynamism and energy in the Institute. As anybody who knows him will confirm, two of his strengths were particularly crucial in what he did for the Institute: internationalisation on the one hand and interdisciplinarity on the other. These two strengths are symptomatic of his considerable openmindedness.

Mario has a quite extraordinary network of contacts throughout the world, reaching as far as Asia and the Americas. The very large number of supportive and laudatory messages received from across the globe on the occasion of his last lecture, (on the 18th December 2017) reflect Mario’s global reach. As such, ULB and Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli (LUISS) students and researchers are far from being the only ones to have benefited from his mentoring and his skills. For example, one of his former PhD students, Professor Xiaotong Zhang, ← 19 | 20 → Deputy Dean of the Department of International Relations at Wuhan University, expressed his considerable gratitude to the ‘mentor’ that Professor Telò was to him. As he put it:

“Mario has successfully established partnerships with several Chinese universities, including Wuhan University. Mario’s tireless efforts in bridging the gap between China and Europe is a significant step forward in building an intellectual partnership between China and Europe, as two great civilizations.”

Several other messages from colleagues attested to Mario’s numerous scientific achievements. For example, Professor Louis Bélanger from Laval University commended Mario for having become a

“pillar of research on regional integration and a great scientific entrepreneur who has contributed in an exceptional way to the development of the rich cooperation that is taking place today between our two institutions”.

Professor José Luís de Sales Marques, President of the Institut d’études européennes of Macau and current Mayor of Macau, thanked Mario for helping to set up a number of institutionalised international ties via ambitious research projects linking Europe and Asia. A true scientific entrepreneur, Mario has been the driving force behind several projects, including the Garnett network of excellence, the GREEN EU FP7 (Framework Programme 7) research project, the GEM Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate and the GEM-STONES European Joint Doctorate. All of the institutions involved in these projects benefit greatly from the resulting opportunities, exchanges and networks.

Another of Mario’s core convictions, namely the importance of interdisciplinarity, is part of the very DNA of the IEE. Following in the footsteps of his predecessors (Jean-Victor Louis, André Sapir, Ginette Kurgan and Françoise Thys), as President, Mario Telò continued to develop the interdisciplinary orientation of the institute’s research and teaching. This interdisciplinary agenda was reflected in the aforementioned European research projects as well as in the publication of collective works linking the various disciplines on offer for study at the IEE.

Over the years, Mario has also shown his unwavering pro-European commitment while of course also showing himself to be critical of European integration and its gaps. He has been an advisor to and expert for the European Commission’s DG Research (High Level Group on social sciences and humanities, 2002-2007), DG Culture (responsible for the network of Jean Monnet Chairs working together on the White Book on EU Governance), for the European Parliament (2003: Rasmussen Report on Mastering Globalisation) and for the presidencies of the Council (in 2000 and in 2007). In this respect, Lucio Levi, emeritus Professor of Comparative Political Science and Politics at Turin University, stated:

“His rigorous analyses are always associated with practical conclusions, particularly important for guiding us in the context of the contemporary world and of the globalisation process. To oppose the unchecked race towards the abyss of nationalism, protectionism and war that are coming back, he warns us that there is only one remedy: regionalism, understood as a necessary move towards strengthening ← 20 | 21 → and democratising the United Nations and other international organisations. That is the path to pursue to create a new world order.”

Professor Telò is also a generous and successful transmitter of knowledge. His success as a teacher owes a lot to his considerable availability and the ease with which he engages in dialogue with others. This comes across in particular in a message received from one of his very first students, Bahadır Kaleağası, who has become, among other things, President of the Bosphorus Institute that is working on rapprochement between France and Turkey. He recalls Mario being

“the most crucial person for forming my academic thinking and my professional life […]. Your intellectual impact and your sincere personality have influenced several generations of students […]; we all have something of Mario Telò in us”.

Besides contributing to ongoing debates surrounding the EU and its global role in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this publication is also an opportunity for Mario’s colleagues and friends to express their gratitude and appreciation, in particular with regard to his unfaltering commitment to raising awareness in Europe about faraway cultures. Above all, this publication is just one more contribution to the debates fostered by Mario. We trust that it will lead to further discussions with and contributions by Mario as, in the words of Professor Balveer Arora, former Rector of the Jawaharlal Nehru University of New Delhi: “Mario’s intellectual energy will not allow him to stay away from academic initiatives spanning cultures and continents.”

Serving as a stock-taking exercise of the varied contributions that Mario has made to intellectual debates in the fields of political philosophy, comparative politics, international relations and European studies, this edited volume gathers a non-exhaustive cross section of personal contributions from a series of Mario’s colleagues. Resolutely international in outlook, contributions were gathered from across Europe, North America and Asia. Moreover, with an eye to reflecting the different strands of Mario’s research, the chapters were structured along three axes: (1) reflections on the future of social democracy in Europe; (2) reflections on the prospects for European governance; as well as (3) reflections on the implications of multilateralism and multipolarism for Europe. A final and more open-ended section returns to Mario’s body of work, offering some concluding reflections on the lessons learnt from a career as an engaged researcher in Europe.

The first section of the book explores the prospects for social democracy in Europe and beyond in the early twenty-first century. After having been one of the driving forces of the twentieth century, the institutions and principles of social democracy are under increasing pressure in today’s world. Exploring the significance of social democracy and the nature of the challenges that it faces has proven to be one of the central concerns of Mario’s work. The chapters compiled in this book touch upon some of the questions that Mario explored alongside his fellow philosophers and political scientists.

The second section explores the prospects for European governance, notably following the upheavals wrought by the 2010 Eurozone crisis. Speaking to some of the central questions facing the process of European integration as it faces numerous and simultaneous crises, the various chapters unpack the implications for a variety of ← 21 | 22 → European policy fields ranging from socioeconomic governance, international trade and external action. Ultimately, each of the chapters offers a novel outlook on the ever-present dilemma of the relative efficiency and legitimacy of European governance, a concern that has been consistently reflected in Mario’s research and teaching on Europe.

The third and final section is a topical one that offers a few reflections on the implications of multilateralism and multipolarism for Europe’s global position in the twenty-first century. Contributions include assessments of the EU’s foreign and diplomatic action, reflections on comparative regionalism and inter-regionalism. Together, these sketch a nuanced picture of the EU’s unique and oft over-looked role in global affairs.

The concluding contributions offer the reader a set of more personal and open-ended conclusions seeking to reposition Mario’s work within the broader context of the times and the significance of ongoing intellectual engagement with the world. Two of Mario’s oldest collaborators reflect on the significance of both theoretically driven but empirically informed discussions, on the one hand; and real-world problem solving through intellectual commitment, on the other. As such, one is again reminded of the multifaceted nature of Mario’s work. In conclusion, an interview with Mario as well as an overview of his published work leave the reader with a final insight into a life spent asking challenging questions about and conducting research on European and global affairs.

← 22 | 23 →

I

Reflections on the Future of Social Democracy in Europe

← 23 | 24 →

← 24 | 25 →

Parties and Democracies in Southern Europe after the ‘Great Recession’1

Leonardo MORLINO

Mario Telò has worked for a long time in the area of comparative European politics and especially on the subject of the social democracies of Northern Europe and Italy. This piece that I am dedicating to him makes reference to some of the questions he has also had in mind and has been developed with reference to southern European countries, focusing on the political consequences of the ‘Great Recession’, which started in 2008 and went on until at least 2014.

Figure 1: Trend of GDP in South Europe (1995-2015)

Source: International Monetary Fund, World Economic Outlook Database (2016) ← 25 | 26 →

The main questions

When we consider the analyses published on the impact of the 2008 economic crisis, which can be observed in Figure 1 via some of the usual indicators, we realise that most of the attention have been on voting behaviour and parties and that the impact of the crisis has been underestimated. If we consider the question of how to analyse the impact of the economic crisis, the best solution seems to be to adopt an analytical framework that is more focused on the consequences of the crisis for citizens’ lives.

As a result, here we will only focus on political participation and on competition between political parties. We can sum up some of the hypotheses in relation to participation:

1)marked decline in electoral participation and in other forms of conventional participation;

2)marked decline in interest group activism ;

3)marked growth in non-conventional participation ;

and in relation to competition:

1)marked radicalisation and formation of new protest parties;

2)affirmation of the tripolar party system, that is of a party system based on three major electoral parties or three groups of parties that are close with regards to values and programmes;

3)crisis of intermediation interests and end of consultation between governments, trade unions and business associations.

With these hypotheses in mind, when we look at the 2008 economic crisis, our main initial question related to the political impact of the crisis on southern European democracies, that is on four of the five PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain but not Ireland).

In this context, we should also assess the rebalancing or relative stability of the different means of political expression. This is about whether, during the span of time that we are considering, there was a change in or adaptation or continuation of the main patterns within parties and party systems, social movements and interest groups and what happened to the connections between these channels.

Two final concluding questions are, first, whether the Great Recession can effectively be considered as a case of ‘critical juncture’ because of a few existing background conditions and its subsequent impact on our democracies and, second, whether and how these changes contributed to either worsen southern European democracies from the perspective of participation and competition, or ironically deepening and improving them. ← 26 | 27 →

Figure 2: Votes for the main incumbent and protest parties in Southern Europe: national and European elections

Source: Official data.

What we learned

Our analysis has singled out a set of changes in the various channels of expression, some of them possibly becoming long term, permanent changes. Before going back to the main empirical results of our analysis, let us recall that, in our opinion, the best approach to conducting research on this topic was to adopt the analytical framework which was developed to assess the quality of democracy by only focusing on two dimensions (participation and competition) of the three main channels of expression. Here we sum up the aspects that we considered in our analysis with reference to electoral participation, other forms of conventional partisan and non-partisan participation, interest group activism, participation through protest and a few aspects of political competition. Figure 2 immediately displays the votes for the main incumbent and protest parties in southern Europe for national and European elections.

Thus, our analysis has first detected an additional deepening of the crisis of traditional electoral behaviour and of parties, with a fading degree of organisation and greater electoral volatility. At the same time, the well-known notion of institutional inertia and the addition of the new to the old, by mixing them, were confirmed as recurring aspects of politics. This means that, in all cases, old parties are adapting to a new context and continue to coexist with the new protest parties, which were successful in all our cases except Portugal. Ironically, however, the new, apparently radical, protest parties, such as Syriza, the Five Stars Movement and Podemos, attracted a large numbers of dissatisfied voters and opinion and actually transformed the protest into institutionalised electoral participation, parliamentary action and, in some cases (particularly Syriza) into government action. In addition to the new actors, ← 27 | 28 → new tentative forms of direct participation emerged as the opportunities provided by technological advances were exploited.

Deepening this analysis, we can detect that the economic crisis actually exercised pressures acting in different directions. On the one hand, there was an evident broadening of salient technocratic or ‘non-majoritarian decisions’ aimed at achieving economically efficient solutions, such as abstract austerity policies. On the other hand, there was a widespread demand for more democracy, which played out in different directions. Taking advantage of the opportunities provided by the so-called digital revolution and following the example of Pirates in some central and northern European countries (e.g. Austria, Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium) there was a request for stronger direct democracy with the enlargement of the space for participation and a growing demand for accountability and transparency. In this context, it is no surprise if, in accordance with a long-established practice of manipulating electoral law, Tsipras made the Greek parliament approve a bill by lowering the voting threshold (to seventeen years) and repealing the fifty-seat bonus for the party with the most votes with the aim of achieving greater representativeness.2

Moreover, because of their characteristics, the new parties brought about a change in party systems towards a new tripolar structure in three countries, but again not in Portugal. Although it is still unclear if this tripolarism will stabilise, the most likely result is that this phenomenon will last for some time until the new parties are transformed once they become governmental parties. However, a possible stabilisation of dissatisfaction because of the lasting economic difficulties may even make the tripolarism stable.

Among the most relevant changes we should include the partial reshaping of cleavages. First, there are transformations in the centre-periphery cleavage and the pro-/anti-Europe cleavage, complemented by a strong recasting of the pro-/anti-establishment divide. In terms of the centre-periphery one, the economic crisis and the consequent cuts in public expenditure have been pushing towards greater centralisation, counteracting the previous trend that had been going in precisely the opposite direction of giving a major political role to the periphery. This has been happening not so much in the already highly centralised smaller countries such as Portugal and Greece but in Spain and Italy. In Spain the growing conflict between Catalonia and Madrid because of this new trend is complemented by freezing of the center-periphery relationships in all the other regions, with the previous level of decentralisation remaining frozen in Galicia and the Basque Country. In Italy, the centre-periphery issue disappeared from the political agenda and the Northern League, which had been built around a programme of decentralisation, changed its leadership and programme to become a right wing party. Moreover, a centralising drive has been emerging, even in the most recent Italian constitutional reform (2016). The consolidation of the pro-/anti-European Union cleavage achieved a central position on domestic political agendas and was an obvious result of the austerity policies imposed by the European Union. At the same time, the new protest parties strongly exploited the pro-/anti-establishment divide, which overlapped with anti-European positions. The left-right cleavage has ← 28 | 29 → been coming to the fore again as a result of the Great Recession. Although, as we saw in Chapter 3 (see especially Figure 3.5), it is relatively weaker in Spain and this can account for the partial failure of the alliance between Podemos and Izquierda Unida [United Left] in the June 2016 elections. The new centrality of the left-right divide stems directly from the austerity policies and the cutting of welfare budgets, which in one way or another took place in all four countries. One of the main consequences is a split within the left between a moderate pro-European Union component and a radical Eurosceptic one3.

To these elements we should add the basic change in the very meaning of a cleavage in the context of southern European party systems, interest expression and manifestations of dissatisfaction. When we reconsider this issue on the basis of the empirical research, we simply realise that the cleavages have lost their structuring role. More precisely, when we recall the vast literature on cleavages, we learn that each cleavage has three components (a socioeconomic basis, ideological justification, organisation)4 and its basic function is to structure the divisions that are at the core of party unity and even that of movements and interest organisations, whose leaders benefit from it to stabilise the political competition. Thus, a cleavage divides political actors who are in conflict against one another and at the same time unifies each actor by making them an internally compact group or party. Now, on the one hand, the previous fragmentation of the socioeconomic basis, the fading away of ideologies and the disappearance of organisation pave the way for a basic weakening of the unifying role of these cleavages. On the other hand, cleavages are still at the core of political competition as they give content to it. But the result is that they also crosscut each party and group and consequently the necessary unifying role is lost. From a division of the system complemented by a unification of the political actors we have definitely achieved a division of the system, which is now also compounded by a fragmentation of the actors. In fact, with the important exception of the anti-establishment divide inside protest parties which is still able to unify anti-establishment actors, all the other cleavages mentioned also divide parties and the other actors inside them so that, for example, the pro-/anti-European cleavage exists within Spain’s Podemos and Italy’s five Star Movement, and also in the Italian Democratic Party. The same applies to the left-right cleavage in terms of bringing division within each political actor. If this assessment of a fading role of cleavages is empirically correct, then we are in the presence of a salient structural instability of our democracy and another source of stronger salience of leaders against the declining relevance of collective actors. Let it be recalled that, with regard to a different context, that is, the institutionalisation of the European Union5 was already stressing the salience of political structuring and the role of intermediary actors in reducing uncertainty and increasing system predictability. When political structures are weak or even missing, the only way ← 29 | 30 → to make up for this instability becomes reference to a leader and to his or her personal skill in unifying voters around and in support of his/herself and possibly of a declared political programme. Accordingly, the electoral party channel which articulates and transmits the different interests – not only the economic ones – become characterised by a form of ‘plebiscitarianism’, to recall a Weberian expression, where identification between and a direct relationship between the leader and the electors are the distinguishing features6. One of the consequences of this feature is a growth in uncertainty because of (electoral) vulnerability and a (political) attrition of leaders in post-modern contexts without socially-rooted parties.

In our democracies, faced with such a complex picture characterised by fragmented and fragmenting bases of conflicts, we can try to simplify and consider that ultimately the effective divisions stem from economic and demographic developments during these years. From this perspective, we could envisage a redefinition of the political cleavages around the division between those included and those excluded from the benefits of globalisation and become aware that this divide has been becoming more intense precisely during times of crisis and austerity. This is even more the case when austerity policies shrink resources and social rights, which leads to the welfare state being dismantled – even if to a more limited extent in some countries than in others. In this situation, the likely growth in social and economic inequalities may no longer take place with adequate institutional shock absorbers, thus magnifying the effects of economic crisis7.

However, the effective salience of this divide becomes more evident when we consider that political leaders propose solutions to solve the key problems that our democracies have to cope with, such as creating new conditions for economic growth, managing waves of immigration and defending our societies against terrorist attacks. In fact, two policy options always emerge: we can point, on the one hand, to inclusive, integrative and cooperative solutions, or, on the other hand, to exclusive solutions of closure and control. To achieve some results on inclusiveness we would need the traditional action of intermediary structures such as parties and interest associations, which are missing.

This kind of situation has to be dealt with by protest parties and their leaders once they have success and even become mainstream parties. For those parties keeping the reference to the pro-/anti-establishment divide is essential as it is the only issue that is able to unify them. The other simplified divide (in vs. out) is not able to do so, but can also, on the contrary, have fragmenting effects.

Such a situation is especially evident in Greece, Spain and Italy, but, as already mentioned, not in Portugal. In these three countries we can see the crisis of established traditional parties that are challenged by the new protest parties. When they became the mainstream parties at the national level in Greece and in some of the main municipalities in Spain and Italy they achieved their successful electoral results mainly at the expense of Socialist parties in Greece and Spain and a centre-right party (Forza Italia) in Italy. Of course, behind the electoral results there are deeper dynamics that ← 30 | 31 → concern the very reshaping of cleavages and a sort of stabilisation of the instability of electoral markets. Here, the catalysing effect of the crisis has been quite evident. In fact, not all these parties are children of the crisis or are actually new. Only six of those considered here are new ones in a proper sense (M5S, Podemos, Ciudadanos, Livre, PDR and Golden Dawn). The others come from the internal dynamics of already existing parties at the local and national levels (Syriza, and the Northern League). However, all of them attempted to mobilise the dissatisfaction and the resentments of citizens hit by the economic crisis and the consequent perception of deep uncertainty about their future lives, and three of them had such electoral success as to change the mechanisms of the party system (Syriza, Podemos and M5S).

Moreover, when the protest leaders and parties become incumbent, also at the local level, on the wave of electoral success then four new problems have to be confronted. First, the unifying effect of the pro-/anti-establishment divide is considerably weakened because of the need to make specific decisions that unavoidably affect some interests. Second, although the protest parties were much more radical in their style of communication than in their more moderate programmes, the ‘overpromising game’ is over when they have to govern, which results in citizens being disappointed. Third, these parties still lack a professional political class, which, of course, takes time to develop. And fourth, this brings in a paradox. The paradox is that the new leaders have to refer to old, experienced personnel who belonged to the previous traditional political groups that the new leaders ousted with the promise of change: a declared change implemented by people in continuity with the previous leaders. The basic mechanism we have here is that the cultural patterns remain and also influence the new party. In addition, let us not forget that policies are basically path dependent and strongly influenced by the logic of bureaucratic behaviour, which is an additional factor of ‘stickiness’ (i.e. policies not changing).

To complete the picture, we should recall what has been happening to the other two channels of expression, through interest groups and social movements. The set of empirical data shows the deep crisis of the functional (interest) channel characterised by the fading away of the previous social and institutional salience of interest associations, entrepreneur associations and trade unions. The decline of these agencies of collective mobilisation fuelled a fragmentation of interests compounded by a relatively stronger role accorded to more powerful economic actors and by a loss of representational capacity with the social polarisation of unions. During this Great Recession southern European democracies were not able to rely on the mechanisms of crisis management that were so necessary in the past, especially because of their economic and social structural weaknesses. In other words, they could not rely on the role of entrepreneur associations and unions, on the advantages provided by ‘neo-corporative’ agreements, or on the coordination role of incumbent parties, sometimes even of opposition parties when there was a coalition. From this perspective, the process of Europeanisation brought about two perverse effects. On the one hand, it fuelled a new conflict that also affected the relationships between countries belonging to the euro area and those outside it, between weak and strong countries within the euro area, between strong countries within that area such as France and Germany, and between western European countries and eastern countries. From the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU (June 2016) ← 31 | 32 → to policies on immigration, international security, thorny issues like terrorism and relationships with Ukraine, Russia and Turkey, the conflict brought fragmented and divisive polices when it did not bring prolonged stalemate. On the other hand, when considering austerity policies, the actual reality was one of democracies without any ability to choose, with the main fiscal, budgetary, public administration and labour reforms being decided by external actors and enforced on domestic ones. If we also recall that the shrinking of public resources due to the economic recession limited the possibilities of implementing distributive policies, we can understand how domestic decision-making was transformed into ‘non-majoritarian decision making’, which was actually detached from (short-term) responsiveness towards citizens. A type of rhetoric was developed by the governing elites to carry out some ‘blame shifting’, i.e. shifting responsibility for decisions from the political shoulders of the incumbent national leaders to the European Commission and, in the cases we are analysing, the European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund as well.

These considerations, however, should not lead us to lose sight of the positive feature of democracy, which is that non-violent but radical protest brings new legitimation to democracy. By giving an opportunity for action and social mobilisation the democratic procedures based on political and civil rights, such as elections and all other forms of peaceful competitive participation, ensure the possibility of change – although it is only declared but not implemented through the protest – and in this way they reconnect citizens to institutions. We are, of course, in a context where history and memory of the past continue to keep out political alternatives that continuously pop out in the most radical and usually violent political groups.

Figure 3: The Catalyst Effect of Economic Crisis

Other empirical results

Let us now come back to the basic explanation of how the economic crisis led to the consequences that we have summed up above. Figure 3 sums up in more detail the background conditions and the consequences as a combined result of dissatisfaction and the cut in resources that we have analysed. Thus, in the end, catalysation can be seen and account for the different results in the four countries. Namely, if there were different background conditions, different end results would take place, such as can be seen in the ironic apparent strengthening of traditional parties and the failure of protest parties in Portugal. ← 32 | 33 →

This analysis, however, leads us to resist thinking that we are now coping with a critical juncture, that is, with a phase of profound change. If there is a deep political change it will, as always, take place very gradually and step by step. In our field, the very notion of critical juncture was adopted by Lipset and Rokkan (1967, 37-38) and later applied systematically to unions in Latin America by Coller and Collier (1991). The success that the notion brought was due to its inclusion in the path dependency approach8. From our perspective it is difficult to see an effective critical juncture given that a more distinct view of a critical juncture can only be seen after years. The opposite position (‘almost nothing happened’) that we criticised at the beginning of this article is also wrong. As we have seen, there have been important changes but all of them are gradual and the result of a set of favourable contextual conditions that were magnified by the crisis.

To better trace the catalysation, we also need to recall the three patterns of change that we have singled out where the three channels of political expression are actually intertwined. They are three different patterns, which – allow us to stress it again – are very much consistent with the different political traditions of each country. The first one is alienation and continuity. Our best case is Portugal. Where there is economic crisis, the already existing citizen alienation and dissatisfaction become even stronger, but also, because of a lack of credible political alternatives compounded by a widespread passive political culture, citizens choose to distance themselves even more from political participation. The net effect of such non-behaviour strengthens the traditional parties. The second, more obvious and traditional pattern is mobilisation and stabilisation of movements. This is the case in Greece and Spain, where the dissatisfaction was translated into non-conventional or non-institutionalised participation with social protest, demonstrations and riots, with a difference in terms of degree between Spain and a more radical and active Greece. When the reasons for dissatisfaction persist and a leadership that supports and magnifies those reasons is formed, the protest behaviour turns into a stable protest party. In Spain the Indignados (the angry people) and other protest groups gradually became institutionalised into the two protest parties (Podemos and Ciudadanos