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The Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) treaty signed at Maastricht does not guarantee the recreation of German‐style economic policies and outcomes at the European Community (EC) level. Membership was not limited to countries that mimic the German commitment to price stability. National representatives may outvote inflation‐averse EC central bankers in monetary policy decisions. The Council of Ministers has the power to set exchange rate policy vis‐à‐vis third currencies. The treaty does not provide binding constraints against fiscal profligacy in member states. The German government agreed to this suboptimal outcome because in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union and German unification it had broader political interests in maintaining the pace of European integration at Maastricht. The Bundesbank's policy of high interest rates in 1992, however, has effectively guaranteed a two‐speed monetary union, in which the first group of members will be limited to a narrow deutschemark zone. Given the waning enthusiasm for integration across the EC, the German government has no incentive to alter this outcome.

The 1930s and the 1980s were decades of significant political economic change in the capitalist democracies. Depression and the rise of the industrial working class created opportunities for the establishment of social democracy in the 1930s. Stagflation and the decline of the working class made possible waves of radical rightist reform. However, this article suggests that only governments that do not have to concentrate myopically on the exigencies of winning the next election have the political space to undertake structural changes, the benefits of which may only be manifest in the medium term. In turn, successful reforms are likely to entail changes in underlying social structural conditions—such as the strengthening or weakening of organized labor movements—that both expand the electoral constituencies of the government's partisanpreferred policies and improve their macroeconomic efficacy. These propositions are examined with respect to the construction social democracy in Sweden in the 1930s and the construction of neoliberalism in Thatcher's Britain. Although the consequences of these two instances were diametrically opposed, the conditions that created the possibility for radical reform, and the strategies pursued by the governments to precipitate structural change were very similar.

The decision of the European Community (EC) members to complete their "internal market" by the end of 1992, as embodied in the 1987 Single European Act (SEA), may represent the most ambitious instance of multilateral cooperation since the construction of the post-World War II international order. The economic objective of internal market completion is the removal of a wide array of nontariff barriers to trade that elsewhere have proved politically intractable, including border controls, national standards, preferential procurement policies, and industrial subsidies. The institutional structures underpinning the internal market are more constraining on the behavior of sovereign states than has been the case for other international regimes. The SEA replaced unanimity voting (national vetoes) in the primary decision-making body of the EC, the Council of Ministers, with a system of majority voting over matters pertaining to the internal market. In addition, the internal market is buttressed by an elaborate and powerful legal system. EC law is considered to have supremacy over national laws and to have "direct effect" in domestic jurisdictions, regardless of whether it is explicitly incorporated through legislation.

Examines forces and incentives behind the decision to sacrifice significant parts of national sovereignty and establish powerful supra-national institutions.

This article assesses the impact of globalization on welfare state effort in the OECD countries. Globalization is defined in terms of total trade, imports from low wage economies, foreign direct investment, and financial market integration. Welfare effort is analyzed in terms both of public spending (and separately on social service provision and income transfer programs) and taxation (effective rates of capital taxation and the ratio of capital to labor and consumption taxes). Year-to-year increases in total trade and international financial openness in the past three decades have been associated with less government spending. In contrast, integration into global markets has not been associated either with reductions in capital tax rates, or with shifts in the burden of taxation from capital to consumption and labor income. Moreover, countries with greater inflows and outflows of foreign direct investment tend to tax capital more heavily.

This article assesses the impact of globalization on welfare state effort in the OECD countries. Globalization is defined in terms of total trade, imports from low wage economies, foreign direct investment, and financial market integration. Welfare effort is analyzed in terms both of public spending (and separately on social service provision and income transfer programs) and taxation (effective rates of capital taxation and the ratio of capital to labor and consumption taxes). Year-to-year increases in total trade and international financial openness in the past three decades have been associated with less government spending. In contrast, integration into global markets has not been associated either with reductions in capital tax rates, or with shifts in the burden of taxation from capital to consumption and labor income. Moreover, countries with greater inflows and outflows of foreign direct investment tend to tax capital more heavily.

In this review, we address three principal questions that have dominated the debate over the distributive effects of globalization. First, how has globalization affected inequality among countries? Second, how has globalization affected inequality within countries? Third, how has globalization affected the ability of national governments to redistribute wealth & risk within countries? We conclude that despite the proliferation of research on the consequences of globalization, there is no solid consensus in the relevant literature on any of these questions, largely because scholars disagree about how to measure globalization & about how to draw causal inferences about its effects. We also suggest possible foci for future research. 4 Tables, 6 Figures, 81 References. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract. This article assesses the impact of globalization on welfare state effort in the OECD countries. Globalization is defined in terms of total trade, imports from low wage economies, foreign direct investment, and financial market integration. Welfare effort is analyzed in terms both of public spending (and separately on social service provision and income transfer programs) and taxation (effective rates of capital taxation and the ratio of capital to labor and consumption taxes). Year–to–year increases in total trade and international financial openness in the past three decades have been associated with less government spending. In contrast, integration into global markets has not been associated either with reductions in capital tax rates, or with shifts in the burden of taxation from capital to consumption and labor income. Moreover, countries with greater inflows and outflows of foreign direct investment tend to tax capital more heavily.

This article assesses the impact of globalization on welfare state effort in the OECD countries. Globalization is defined in terms of total trade, imports from low wage economies, foreign direct investment, and financial market integration. Welfare effort is analyzed in terms both of public spending (and separately on social service provision and income transfer programs) and taxation (effective rates of capital taxation and the ratio of capital to labor and consumption taxes). Year-to-year increases in total trade and international financial openness in the past three decades have been associated with less government spending. In contrast, integration into global markets has not been associated either with reductions in capital tax rates, or with shifts in the burden of taxation from capital to consumption and labor income. Moreover, countries with greater inflows and outflows of foreign direct investment tend to tax capital more heavily. (European Journal of Political Research / FUB)