Political Science

The European Commission has initiated a series of conferences in all member states of the European Union on fundamental political and social rights. The basic idea is to start a European-wide civil dialogue which should eventually lead to a revision of the Treaty on the European Union at a next Intergovernmental Conference. This volume documents the Austrian conference which was hosted by the Institute for Advanced Studies and held on 23 and 24 May 1997. In addition to the full text of some core statements at the meeting we report about the discussions in five parallel workshops and reprint the theses of keynote speakers. Before the conference a questionnaire had been sent out to government agencies, NGOs and independent experts. We document the main findings of this survey and the proceedings of two discussion fora which focused on how to promote and implement political and social rights in the Union. The programme of the conference and the list of participants is documented in the Annex.

The paper examines the role of »democracy« in the process of European integration. In the first part the author traces the development of a formal legitimacy deficit that turned into a material deficit when the European Union was established. At this point the question of democracy came to the fore and very likely is to influence the prospects of any further move towards greater unity in the European Union. The European Union falls short of traditional democratic standards in many respects. A comprehensive account of the diverse deficiencies forms the bulk of the second part of the paper. The democratic quality of the EU’s political system is not measured by any specific organizational blueprint but draws on a structured inventory of critiques found in the literature. The last part of the paper examines if the European Union with its singular political structure qualifies at all for a democratic transformation. By critically discussing the applicability of the concept of statehood to the European Union, the role of community and citizenship as a presumed prerequisite for democracy, and the relationship between economic and democratic development the author argues that both the underlying concepts as well as the political structures and processes have to be adapted to further democratize the European Union.

The process of European unification, which some call a ›myth‹, yet others an ›illusion‹, gives rise to important questions about national membership and citizenship rights. This article examines recent developments in Europe from the background of the history of political thought about citizenship. Citizenship involves three salient aspects: collective identity, privileges of political membership, and a bundle of rights and entitlements which accrue to the citizen. T.H. Marshall has analyzed this last aspect of citizenship through his famous categorization of civil, political, and social rights. What we are observing in contemporary Europe is a »dissociation« or »disaggregation« of these various aspects of citizenship. Migrant workers and third country nationals often enjoy civic and social rights, while their political rights are limited. The article challenges the »coupling« of nationality and the privileges of political citizenship. I argue that ›jus sanguinis‹' and ›jus soli‹ are not alone justifiable, from a normative viewpoint, to confer citizenship rights and that consent is the only principle which is wholly consistent with the selfunderstanding of liberal democracies in the granting of citizenship rights. I plead for a decentered model of the polity, in which membership and participation in the institutions of civil society are steps toward the acquisition of the status of citizen.

Once again, Carl Schmitt is en vogue. The reappearance of his theoretical framework within the New Right in order to criticize liberal democracy is the starting point of this paper. The introductory chapters put Schmitt in the intellectual context of the Weimar Republic, especially the so-called “Conservative Revolution”. Nonetheless, the main part of the paper deals with various aspects of Schmitt´s critique of liberal democracy. The paper tries to work out six different elements of this critique: Political Catholicism, liberalism, parliamentarism, democracy, modernity and economy. Finally, it indicates that Schmitt’s arguments can also be placed within the communitarian way of criticizing liberal democracy though this fact is almost neglected by the scientific community so far.

Although it is widely accepted that a basic task of schooling is to prepare each new generation for their responsibilities as citizens, the appropriate form and content of citizenship education is often controversial. This paper discusses some of these controversies. I begin by arguing that citizenship is more complicated than is often realized, and that even ‘minimal’ conceptions of citizenship impose significant obligations and constraints on individual and group behaviour. I then consider three inter-related areas of debate: whether citizenship education requires common schooling; whether promoting responsible citizenship requires promoting personal autonomy; and whether promoting a shared civic identity requires teaching not only shared political values or principles but also promoting particular national or cultural identities. These three issues help illustrate the centrality of education for citizenship to both political theory and educational philosophy.

The paper approaches the question whether a distinctive European answer to the challenges of globalization, neo-liberalism, and social disintegration is both available and feasible. After describing the influence the American model of capital accumulation exerted on Europe's economic, social, and cultural development, the paper argues that, in spite of the hegemonic project the United States pursued after WW II, viable national variants of capitalism developed in Western Europe and Japan. With the exhaustion of the Fordist model of accumulation in the 70s and 80s a new constellation arises that threatens the social compromise the European welfare state is based upon. The globalization of production and the politics and ideology of neo-liberalism work hand in hand, producing a shift in the balance of social forces, decreasing national capacities of economic regulation, growing inequality, and the marginalisation of a growing number of social groups. Although there is a convergence of fundamental trends in regard of the modes of accumulation, we are stuck in a highly ambiguous and indeterminate situation. The erosion of national particularities does not lead to total homogeneity, neither inside the triad of USA, Japan and Europe nor inside the European Union. The crises of the traditional welfare state in Europe can only be overcome if a new, independent model of »Social Europe« will be constructed. In doing so Europe faces a dilemma: Only if it manages to overcome neo-liberal policies and develop a common vision of the future it will gain the freedom of action that is needed for such an endeavor and that is lacking at the national level.

The essay starts from the assumption that institutions can be conceived of as patterns of expectation and thus that changing institutions requires changing expectations. According to its central hypothesis, the key to such expectational changes reads credibility: People correct their predictions about the ways others behave only when they have good reasons to do so. It suggests that three conditions must be fulfilled to render institutional reforms credible and thus effective: First, institutional reformers have to devise sound incentives compatible with the assumption that actors are self-concerned utility maximizers. Second, institutional reformers need sound moral credentials. They have to build solid images of moral integrity. Third, new institutions have to be built upon sound material bases. They demand skills, money, and technology. Yet, as the paper lines out in its conclusion, the ultimate proof of any institutional cake is eating it. Inconsistent performance devalues ex post any investment of trust eventually granted ex ante.

The break-up of the communist Eastern Bloc in 1989 was followed by intense efforts to reform the countries of the region politically, economically and socially. Parallel to this a sometimes heated debate arose about how to analyze these processes of change scientifically. This essay tries to adapt the actor-oriented approach called transitology and consolidology, which was formulated in the context of regime changes in Southern Europe and Latin America, so as to make it compatible with the differing experinces of systemic changes in Eastern Europe. The aim of this endeavor is to facilitate intra- as well as interregional comparisons of different instances of democratization. Focusing on a discussion of various versions of the concept of democratic consolidation, the author reconceptualizes this central term and clarifies its relationship to the as well reformulated overarching concept of regime change. The concluding chapter contains a typology of different versions of the concept of democratic consolidation to be found in the relevant literature. In an annex the paper is supplemented by a collection of various definitions of democratic consolidation by the most important and most often cited theorists in this field.

In Austria, until 1990 public debates about migration policy were rare events. In march 1990, however, the search for accommodations for Rumanian asylum seekers in a small provincial town created the perception of an immigration problem (“Ausländerproblem”) from one day to another. From that time onwards, immigration and policies towards foreigners have become one of most salient issues in Austrian politics. Many observers explain the rise of the immigration issue by the breakdown of the Iron Curtain and/or the xenophobic campaign waged by the Austrian Freedom Party. This paper puts these common interpretations into question. It argues, first, that the problems resulting from the open borders were different from the concerns that dominated the public debate. And, second, it claims that it was the Social Democratic Party and its Minister of Internal Affairs (and not the Freedom Party) who put the immigration issue on the political agenda, also shaping its concrete form and expression.