Europeanization of Inequality and Europeanization of Reference Groups

In this article we take advantage of the availability of European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data to address both weak and strong versions of the Europeanization of reference groups thesis. The former proposes that common standards of evaluation emerge as a consequence of knowledge of conditions in other societies. The latter argues that people increasingly perceive themselves as part of a larger European stratification system. Our analysis leads us to reject both versions of the thesis. Material deprivation rather than having a uniform effect is highly dependent on national context. If a process of convergence is underway, it is one that as yet has had a limited impact. In circumstances where the Europeanization of inequality is raising issues relating to both national and transnational forms of legitimacy, it is important to understand that there is no necessary relationship between such Europeanization and the Europeanization of reference groups.

Does the European Union have a reverse gear? Policy dismantling in a hyperconsensual polity

The financial crisis has triggered demands to halt and even reverse the expansion of European Union (EU) policies. But have these and previous demands actually resulted in policy dismantling? The existing literature has charted the rise of dismantling discourses such as subsidiarity and better regulation, but has not examined the net effect on the acquis. For the first time, this contribution addresses this gap in the literature through an empirical study of policy change between 1992 and 2014. It is guided by a coding framework which captures the direction of policy change. It reveals that, despite its disposition towards consensualism, the EU has become a new locus of policy dismantling. However, not all policies targeted have been cut; many have stayed the same and some have even expanded. It concludes by identifying new directions for research on a topic that has continually fallen into the analytical blind spot of EU scholars.

Suez 1956: A European Intervention

This article does not analyse events in the Middle East. It is concerned with the structural background of the Suez Crisis. The Cold War bargain of 1949-50, and thus the Western bloc architecture, was challenged in 1956 and 1962-63. The Suez Crisis and the SKYBOLT Affair are classic examples of intra-bloc conflict. This article focuses on inter-allied conflict during the Suez Crisis. The crisis year 1956 witnessed a European challenge to the bipolar order of the Cold War. It is the hypothesis of this article that the mystique of the Suez Crisis unravels, if the events are interpreted as a clash of conflicting world views. The article attempts to enhance our understanding of the crisis by exploring the impact of the formation of a European core on the transatlantic pluralistic security community. The article will thus re-evaluate the architectural debate within the Western partial system. It is the aim to shed new light on the almost unexplored European foreign-policy co-operation within the Western European Union (WEU) in the crisis year 1956

Welfare regimes and household income packaging in the European Union

This paper uses harmonized data for the member states of the European Union to analyse household income packaging from a 'welfare regimes' perspective. Using data from the third wave of the ECHP, it looks at how the role of welfare transfers in the income package varies across countries and welfare regimes, and assesses whether this is consistent with the predictions of welfare regime theory, having first elaborated some specific hypotheses in that regard. It finds that when one focuses on averages across countries categorized into regimes, many of these hypotheses about the role of transfers are in broad terms borne out by the evidence. However, when one focuses on individual countries rather than regime averages the picture is a good deal more complex and consistency with the range of hypotheses more limited. It is essential that this variation across countries is taken into account in interpreting and using welfare regime theory and typologies.

Multiple deprivation and persistent poverty in the European Union

The literature on Social exclusion has focused attention on the processes leading to exposure to multiple disadvantage. Despite the influence this perspective has had on both academic and policy discussions, conceptual analysis has remained imprecise and empirical evidence modest. We have made use of the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) in order to examine the extent to which persistent income poverty results in multiple deprivation. Our analysis shows that only a modest proportion of the persistently poor can he characterized as being exposed to such deprivation. While persistent poverty and multiple deprivation combine to produce extremely high levels of economic strain, there is no evidence that they interact in a significant fashion. We argue that understanding deprivation is not facilitated by focusing on a cleavage between a multiply deprived minority and a comfortable majority, and we consider the policy implications of this argument.