EUI Times Winter 2014

T I MES

Winter 2014

times.eui.eu

The path to social mobility An ageing Europe Economic recoveries

PROFILES OPINIONS EVENTS

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ntroduction Welcome to the Winter issue of EUI Times, the quarterly electronic magazine from the European University Institute in Florence.

In this issue’s Feature section we look at what sociologists and economists say about the role of education in social mobility. A second article covers historical reactions to economic downturns, and how past actions have shaped today’s events. Our third feature explores the effects of an ageing population on a nation or region's economy and politics, and how Europe might avoid becoming the ‘old continent’ from a demographic point of view.

The EUI Times Profiles feature Ruth Rubio Marín, Professor of Constitutional and Public Comparative Law; Hassan Malik, Max Weber Fellow with the Department of History and Civilization; and Boyd Van Dijk, a first year researcher also in the Department of History and Civilization.

In our Opinion section Professor Donatella Della Porta reflects on the role of iconic leaders in social movements, Professor Bernard Hoekman evaluates the latest WTO negotiations, and Professor Giorgia Giovannetti comments on China's recent move to relax its one-child policy.

This edition also highlights some recent EUI publications, including an interview with Professor Dennis Patterson about his new book Minds, Brains and the Law, and invites readers to take a look at some key upcoming events.

As ever your thoughts and comments are welcome and can be sent to times@eui.eu I hope you enjoy this issue of EUI Times.

Stephan Albrechtskirchinger Director, Communications Service

T I MES Winter 2014

 Features

4 THE PATH TO

SOCIAL MOBILITY

What research at the EUI teaches us about education and social mobility

Philippe Fargues and Sven Steinmo look at the demographic and political concerns of Europe's aging population.

 Profiles

 Profiles

TOWARDS PARITY DEMOCRACY

14 Fellow

BANKERS AND BOLSHEVIKS

 Opinions

MOVEMENTS,

MANDELA Donatella della Porta

 Opinions

BALI WTO MINISTERIAL: RESULTS AT LAST Bernard Hoekman

17 THE

 Features

10 ECONOMIC

RECOVERIES

Economic Historian Youssef Cassis looks at historical precedents of economic recovery.

 Profiles

15 Researcher

DRAWN TO DILEMMAS

Hassan Malik

Ruth Rubio Marín

16 LEADERS,

7 AN AGEING EUROPE

13 Faculty

 Features

Boyd van Dijk

 Opinions

THE ONE-CHILD POLICY IN CHINA Giorgia Giovannetti

18 EASING

20 Events 22 Publications

EUI TIMES Winter 2014

Director: Stephan Albrechtskirchinger Editor: Jackie Gordon Writing: Mark Briggs Web: Francesco Martino, Raul Pessoa, Federico Gaggero Online: times.eui.eu Email: times@eui.eu

European University Institute Badia Fiesolana - Via dei Roccettini, 9 50014 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI) - Italy +39 055 4685266 www.eui.eu twitter: @europeanuni Published in January 2014 by the European University Institute © European University Institute, 2014

on the cover: villa la fonte - rscas photo (2010) courtesy of blaz zakelj

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eatures

IS EDUCATION THE PATH TO SOCIAL MOBILITY?

It is an idea fundamental to the American Dream, and increasingly seen as a key component of a modern democracy. The aim of social mobility is to ensure a child is not restricted in their life choices, that the workplace works as a meritocracy, rewarding individuals based on merit, not their social background.

The benefits of social mobility seem to be one of the few things most people agree about. Politicians from all countries and backgrounds make speeches about its importance, and the latest government schemes to promote it.

In November last year the former Prime Minister of the UK, John Major said there had been a “collapse of social mobility” in the country prompting the current PM, David Cameron to say “we need a far more socially mobile country.”

Is there enough social mobility? What can a government do to promote social mobility? And what role can education play?

According to our “ analysis it is clear

that education is the most important variable for social mobility

”

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Education and mobility “According to our analysis it is clear that education is the most important variable for social mobility,” says Hans-Peter Blossfeld, Professor of Sociology at the EUI , principle investigator of the ERC-funded project eduLife. and a founder of CLIC, the Comparative Life Course and Inequality Research Centre at the EUI. “It is also one of the major variables determining social inequality, income, upward job mobility, and quality of jobs.”

According to Blossfeld there are three main theories about the role education can play in a person’s life prospects. Human Capital Theory portrays education as an investment which increases productivity.

The more productive an individual the higher their income and the more upward opportunities they are presented with. Another theory suggests educational certificates act as signal of productivity: “It is very hard to determine the actual productivity of people so employers look at certificates as an indicator. Certain certificates mean an individual is likely to have certain attributes,” says Blossfeld. Finally there is the Vacancy Completion Theory. “Mobility processes are less geared by individual level characteristics but are geared by structural features of the labour market. Education helps prioritise you in a queue for a vacancy, but the actual driver is the availability of vacancies.”

The mechanisms are clear enough, but how much social mobility is there is today’s Europe?

“There was an occupational upgrade after the Second World War,” says Fabrizio Bernardi, Professor of Sociology and also founding member of CLIC at the EUI. “There were increasing numbers of people going into white collar and service industries jobs compared to previous generations. This occupation upgrade has probably peaked” Jobs in service industries traditionally pay higher wages than factory or agricultural work, providing absolute and inter-generational mobility. However there is evidence that this upgrading has now peaked, and that it hasn’t been accompanied by a decrease in inequality.

Society and mobility Today there are more opportunities for people from a variety of different backgrounds achieve elite white collar jobs, yet there remains a disparity in graduate’s income closely correlating to their social backgrounds. Education may be providing mobility, but not equality.

“There is still this persisting influence of social origin. With the advent of the post-industrial society increasingly those known as soft skills are playing a larger role. This suggests a re-emergence of the importance of class of origin, because these are the skills you learn at home,” says Bernardi.

Hans-Peter Blossfeld

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“Socialisation conditions” also make it more likely children will perform better at school. “The higher their social class the better prepared children are to succeed in school. They know the operas, they have the books, and they read more, all these little things add up,” says Blossfeld.

“If you accept education is a positional good, that its value is determined by its distribution among the population, then you have an incentive to always to want something more, or better,” explains Bernardi, “this produces effectively maintained inequality.”

Those with resources will always seek ways to differentiate themselves. While it is understandable that parents want to provide their children with the best chances in life, what becomes increasingly important is not the level of education you achieve, but where you achieved it.

“Your family of origin will always try to influence and try and afford you the best opportunities,” says Bernardi who talks of the George Bush effect.

“George Bush got low grades, then gave a speech at Yale and said ‘To the C grade student I say you too can become president of US’, of course you need a father who has been president of the US to achieve that if you have C grades.”

“If you want perfect social mobility you have to have downward mobility,” says Bernardi. “It simply isn’t true that there is room at the top for everybody. Education can protect you from downward mobility.”

Fabrizio Bernardi

Andrea Ichino

Increasing mobility Andrea Ichino, Professor of Econometrics at the EUI, thinks we need to reform the way we think about public education. “The idea that the state should give the same quality of education to everybody does not help the poor who need an instrument to close the gap with the rich,” declares Ichino, with specific reference to the Italian school system.” In Italy, schools do not have enough freedom to implement programmes based on the needs of their own students. If I was in charge of a school I would feel like a captain of a ship that cannot use the tiller.”

In his work looking at Italian schools Ichino says there needs to be more autonomy to allow schools to react to the individual needs of their students, rather than providing a ‘one size fits all’ education.

[...] to allow the “ poor kids to close the

gap with the rich you need a system to get poorer kids into better schools. Equal quality schools do not really help.

”

quality schools do not really help.”

For Bernardi education has a role to play in increasing social mobility, but it is not the only factor; job security and long term work prospect would allow parents to plan and save for school and university fees. However, he says ultimately for true mobility you need to minimise the effects of downward mobility and well as maximise the paths for upward mobility: “If idea is that if you want to reduce inequality you should reduce inequality. You should act on the distribution of resources of parents to equalise the opportunities of the children.”

Under Ichino’s plans pupils would be free to choose which school they attended, and schools would be freer to choose teachers and what should be taught, in a system similar to reforms currently being implemented in the UK (free schools) and the US (charter “The only societies that have been proved to have schools). But funding, national exams and schools relative mobility are the Scandinavian ones. If you regulation would remain public. want to improve inequality and mobility, it’s not just “The immediate reaction to this suggestion is that education it’s distribution of resources. you will generate schools for the rich and schools for “If you make society more equal it becomes less the poor and reduce social mobility. But to allow the problematic to move downward. In a very unequal poor kids to close the gap with the rich you need a society a downward move has bigger implications.” system to get poorer kids into better schools. Equal

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F

eatures

THE ECONOMICS AND POLITICS OF AN AGEING EUROPE

Ageing is one of the inevitabilities of life. According to the stereotype as you get older, you become less energetic, less understanding of modern technology and more likely to settle rather than to strive.

sociologist, demographer and Director of the Migration Policy Centre. The result is either the workforce needs to pay more taxes, or pensions need to be reduced. Neither of which are politically popular.

So what happens when an entire population collectively ages? What effect does it have on the economy, the state, and the politics of that country or region?

The long term effect of an ageing population on the welfare state has been well documented. However, an increasing number of dependents isn’t the only problem associated with ageing. As the average age of the population increases, so too does that of the workforce, generating an imbalance of skills and experience, something Fargues believes has been overlooked.

Caused by the combination of a fall in fertility – measured by the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime – and a decrease in mortality, ageing is affecting individual member states and the EU as a whole.

Innovations in healthcare, hygiene and lifestyle have dramatically increased life expectancy in Europe, from 40 years in 1880, to nearly 80 today.

According to Eurostat, Europe’s median age increased from 35 years in 1991 to 41 by 2011 and is projected to reach 47 by 2035, with an ever increasing number of people over the age of retirement.

“If you accept that the knowledge, education and skills of young people are more up to date than those of older generations then you get what I call an ‘ageing of skills’,” explains Fargues. “This may affect European population’s ability to innovate and remain competitive in global markets.”

How is this effecting European society? And what can be done to ease the consequences of a phenomenon that took generations to create?

Effect on the economy “There is a clear social cost to ageing because you have an increase in the number of pensions required, and a decrease in the number of fiscal contributions from the working population.” says Philippe Fargues,

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Philippe Fargues

As the years between the end of formal education and the average age of workers collectively increases the work force becomes less in touch with the latest techniques and innovations.

“It is possible you can supplement this with added experience. This probably applies more in certain domains than in others. In more technical careers, education is more important than experience.”

Fargues admits there is currently a miss-match between the skills in demand in the labour market, and those being provided to students via a university education, especially outside of technical disciplines.

“The so called BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China, although I wouldn’t include India) are countries with high economic growth and young working age populations, and highly educated working age populations so it has an impact on their economic growth. Growth is one thing, but absolute growth is something else.

“We have to make sure we are making the most out of our youth, we have to effectively tap our resources.”

The politics of age Beyond the bottom line of economics and bills, a demographically unbalanced population has played an important role in the politics of countries, both in Europe and abroad.

Populations across the Arab world are characterised by a ‘youth budge’, with a high proportion of young adults who have benefited from recent expansion in education.

Fargues, who has written extensively on Arab Nations, says the political sphere simply no longer represented the population.

“Power belonged to old people with no education, not to young people with education. Combine that with a high level of unemployment, and you have all the ingredients of a revolution. I am not a historian of revolutions, but it seems to me it would be difficult to have a revolution with an older population.”

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Sven Steinmo

European populations may have lost their revolutionary zeal, but the power exerted by a dominant cohort remains a powerful political force.

Sven Steinmo, Professor of Public Policy and Political Economy and director of the ERC-funded research project 'Willing to Pay' at the EUI, says many of today’s political problems have their roots in demography, and a mismatch in resources between the generations. “What is a budget deficit? The transfer of wealth from one generation to another. My generation is borrowing money from the next even though we are wealthier than they are.”

“After the financial crisis you would have expected the left to jump up and down and say we cannot abide by the concentration of wealth. Where were they? Nowhere, why? The average active member is a person in retirement or approaching retirement.

many of today’s “ political problems

have their roots in demography, and a mismatch in resources between the generations

”

When the crisis came, the first thing they thought was ‘how do I save my pension’? The answer, bail out the banks. How? Borrow money from the next generation, so our pensions are safe.”

“The average voter, in the industrialised world is 55 years old,” explains Steinmo. “Politicians represent the median voter, that voter is becoming older and older.”

The same is true for trade unions who increasingly lobby, not for higher wages, but for increased pensions and health care, which disproportionally benefit older members. The average pension in Italy is currently 100 euros a month higher than the average wage.

The most famous cohort in Europe is the post Second World War baby boomers, who over the course of their lives have benefited from first the welfare state, then free market capitalism and tax cuts, and now the combination of both will see them collect pensions far greater that any generation before or after, leading to them being dubbed ‘the greediest generation.’

“The rub, or the kicker, is that few of us are greedy in a personal way, this is a structural problem.

We benefited from the socialisation of our parents wealth, now our reaction is to privately hold our wealth, fight against taxes, fight against public spending, so that we can hand our wealth to our own children or grandchildren.”

The role of migration “Demography is something that works extremely slowly,” concludes Fargues. “There is demographic inertia. We know exactly the structure of the working population for the next 10-20 years.”

The problems associated with ageing populations are known to governments around the world. China has recently relaxed its long standing one-child policy partly amid fears of a population imbalance, while Singapore’s government actively tries to encourage

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its citizens to have more children.

Every one of the 28 EU member states will see a decrease in the absolute number of workers under 45 between now and 2025. At the same time those under 45 will be increasingly better educated than their compatriots over 45.

In a recently published paper Fargues, and co-author Ashely McCormick, suggested that without immigration the EU would lose a sixth of its under-45 workforce by 2025 due to the decrease in fertility across the continent. So what can Europe do to help re-dress the balance?

“Migration is clearly part of the response to the ageing of our workforce. If we say in the 10 coming years we are going to lose 1/6 of young workers then if we want to replace them we have no choice but to open the door to young workers with the skills needed.”

Despite political opposition that sees immigration as a threat to the job security of current citizens Fargues says immigration has long been a tool for economic prosperity, offering a proactive rather and a reactive solution to the problem.

“There is a view that closing our borders protects our economies, but it doesn’t work like that. Immigration and growth go in parallel, when you have immigration you have growth; this is what history tells us.”

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ECONOMIC RECOVERIES: A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

Six years after the start of the financial crisis Europe is beginning to show tentative signs of recovery. Growth has returned to some member states and the threat of sovereign defaults has subsided and is even being rolled back, with Ireland becoming the first country to complete its bailout programme last December.

The crisis of 2008 may have been a perfect storm of factors leading to the worst recession since the Second World War, but the response of both the financial sector and national governments was rooted in historical precedents.

Youssef Cassis, Professor of Economic History and Joint Chair at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and the Department of History and Civilization spoke to EUI Times about the role banking, monetary union, and austerity have played in previous recessions, and how past actions helped shape today’s events.

Banking At the height of the crisis banks across Europe posted huge losses, with many requiring state backed bailouts to stay afloat. Some were broken up and sold; others remain with national governments as significant stakeholders. During the worst years of the crisis European governments risked a combined 1.5 trillion euros propping up banks.

As Cassis explains the practice of central bank intervention is a tried and tested method going back to the 1800s.

“In 1890 Baring Brothers, a very large merchant

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bank was on the verge of collapse, but was saved by the Bank of England. In France in 1889, one of the country’s largest commercial banks - Comptoir d’Escompte - was in serious trouble. The central bank organised the other big players to arrange a rescue, this is a model that has been used again and again.”

However in 2008 the number of banks in trouble posed a unique challenge, with more banks in need of help, and fewer in position to give it.

“Never before have you had so many large banks needing state intervention at the same time. In the UK, the government pushed Lloyds to buy HBOS. Because it was an emergency, they were given the opportunity to buy a much larger market share than they would usually have been allowed by the Competition Commission, but it cost them dear.”

In February 2009 HBOS revealed losses of £10 billion, over £1.5 billion more than expected when the merger occurred. The bank received a bailout and today remains 32 per cent owned by the UK government.

“In Europe, there hadn’t been a crisis of such proportions since the 1930s. From the Second World War until the 70s banks were very stable and highly regulated.”

During the 1970s Europe suffered high levels of inflation, the combined effects of the oil shocks, and the collapse of Bretton Woods. However, the closest Europe has come to a shock that shook the whole system was in 1982.

During the preceding decade European and US banks leant heavily to developing nations, recycling dollars invested in their vaults by increasingly rich OPEC nations. An increase in global interest rates

At the outbreak of the Great Depression the world economy was still operating under the guidance of the gold standard, where currencies – either domestic or foreign – could be exchanged for a fixed amount of gold.

As the global economy shrank countries became desperate to maintain currencies to their value just after the First World War resulting in deflationary policies. “Every country that did that, it was a disaster. The biggest disaster was Germany,” says Cassis.

Youssef Cassis

caught out nations such as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina who found themselves laden with unserviceably high debts. In August 1982 Mexico announced a moratorium on its debts exposing some of the world’s largest banks.

Mirroring future events in Ireland, Portugal and Greece, negotiations followed between governments, banks and the IMF eventually leading to continued lending in return for massive internal restructuring.

“You could say a systemic banking crisis was avoided, but the emerging nations bore the brunt of the price, they took around 10 years to recover to their former position.”

“It seems until recently European countries and more advanced economies including the US thought that financial crises only happened in emerging countries not in advanced ones.”

Monetary union “The Euro crisis is unique, but is not unique. It’s the first time you’ve had currency union without political union and a currency where some countries are at risk of defaulting, but not others. However, we had a period where we didn’t have a single currency, but we had fixed exchange rates.”

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“It is generally accepted the Germans were afraid of inflationary measures because hyperinflation was so near their memory.” In the immediate aftermath of the First World War Germany witnessed hyperinflation that saw the price of a loaf of bread jumped from 1 mark in 1919 to 200,000 million marks in 1923 when one US dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 marks.

“Reparations meant confidence in the German currency was shaky. Chancellor Heinrich Brüning was determined to maintain the parity of the mark, and it lead to severely deflationary policies which eventually failed.”

Pegging currency to the price of gold meant governments and federal banks were limited in the policies they could implement to help stimulate the economy - such as quantitative easing and the lowering of interest rates, tools currently at the disposal of the European Central Bank.

By 1930 Britain was running out of reserves after the public lost confidence in the economy and began trading in their currency for gold. Britain eventually abandoned the gold standard in 1931, but not before the then governor of the Bank of England suffered a nervous breakdown agonising over the decision.

“The 1930s was a good period for the British economy relative to other economies,” says Cassis. “If you compare you see countries that remained in the fixed exchange rates had more difficulty getting out of the crisis.”

“What we have now with the euro is countries in the Eurozone cannot leave the single currency, and if they want to it’s at a cost no one has really properly evaluated. So at the moment all countries have decided to remain within the euro, some at a high price.”

Austerity Perhaps the most discussed outcome of the current economic crisis has been the wave of austerity sweeping across the continent, with governments enforcing spending cuts to try and control budget deficits.

Looking back to the 1930s, Cassis says austerity was the first move, but it quickly gave way to a more expansionist approach.

“Austerity was the policy followed at the beginning, but it had bad consequences and aggravated the crisis. It led to expansionary policies shortly afterwards.”

In the US President Franklin Roosevelt launched the New Deal, Britain began a large scale house building project funded by low interest rates and preferential trade tariffs with its Empire. The French government also began an expansionist policy after it left the gold standard in 1936, while Germany stimulated its economy with extensive rearmament.

According to Cassis there is no example from history of austerity leading the way out of a crisis. However, he is interested by events across the channel. “The curious thing is that Britain appears to be picking-up despite its austerity programme.”

Only time will tell if we are witnessing the latest historical precedent in the making.

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P rofiles

Faculty Towards parity democracy

now focused on issues of gender.

“As a woman, at some point I matured and grew aware of the more subtle forms of gender subordination and this triggered my academic interest in the field.”

Ruth Rubio Marín is Professor of Constitutional and Public Comparative Law at the EUI. Her work currently explores the possible emergence of parity democracy and the subversion of the sexual contract implicit and embedded in the modern state.

“More and more, women’s exclusion from decision-making positions is being seen not just as a question of women’s rights, but of democratic legitimacy,” says Rubio Marín.

Throughout her career Rubio Marín has worked on understanding the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion and the role of the law in justifying or subverting such processes. Having worked previously on issues surrounding immigrant and minority rights she is

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Despite the arrival of women’s suffrage in Europe over the last century Rubio Marín argues the dominant assumption of women’s domestic role in society remained unchallenged, and this remains imbedded in constitutions, laws, and attitudes.

After working for five years working in the US at Princeton, Columbia and NYU, Rubio Marín jumped at the chance to return to the EUI in 2008, from which she received her PhD in 1997.

“I still remember the day of the PhD interview, the excitement when I saw the beauty of the surroundings and the joy when I got the acceptance letter. I had fallen so deeply in love with the place and its stimulating environment.”

Rubio Marín has just finished organising an executive training seminar – part of the Global Governance Programme – and plans to host a conference next September discussing the spread

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of gender quotas – an increasingly widely used tool in the battle to increase female representation.

The use of gender quotas, first used to ensure women´s presence in parliaments, has spread into the judiciary and corporate boards. It has reached even countries with extremely strong patriarchal traditions such Egypt and Tunisia – which saw recent protests potential changes to the Constitution threatening the country´s progressive personal code. “Women basically took the street to proclaim this was their constitution too.”

Rubio Marín has just returned from a research mission to the MENA region where she explored the involvement of women in constitution making.

“There is a global phenomenon going on that challenges the conception of women’s role in society, and in a way what it means to be a woman; it’s a big cultural redefinition of the sexes. I am seeing progress. However, we will only see a global transition if masculinity as well as femininity is redefined.

On this issue, progress is much slower.”

P

Fellow Bankers and Bolsheviks

rofiles

Hassan Malik is a Max Weber Fellow linked to the Department of History and Civilization. He received his PhD from Harvard University with a dissertation entitled Bankers and Bolsheviks: International Finance and the Russian Revolution, 1892-1922. The period saw Russia become a huge international debtor culminating in the largest default in history.

Despite its scale, Malik says the Russian default has been relatively understudied. “We hear a lot about hyperinflation in Weimar Germany, but we don’t hear a lot about this default. My work is an attempt to re-centre the default in economic history, to get inside the heads of nineteenth century and early twentieth century investors, and to see what made them tick.”

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After a period working on Wall Street, Malik – who studied Russian as an undergraduate – moved to Moscow where he was working during the 2008 financial crisis.

“What had been one of the best performing markets became one of the worst. I was intrigued by how the foreign investors I was working with think about markets, and that led me to my dissertation topic.”

Reading memoirs and letters from financiers and their clients Malik attempted to work out why, only a few years before the arrival of communism, investors from around the world were buying Russian sovereign debt.

“Economists, historians and some political scientists have offered various explanations for, the levels of investment: the gold standard or perhaps exports – in 1900 Russia accounted for approximately 50 per cent of global oil production.”

“What I found was a very different dynamic operating at the micro level. Yes, you have the global bond market, but you also have a small number of banks and bankers, human beings, at the centre of all of this. They are the ones who

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are attracting individual savings from French peasants and British widows and channeling them into Russia.”

Investors and bankers closed themselves off, and ignored increasingly stark warnings from opposition groups and the radical press. Finally under Lenin’s order, Russia defaulted on its debt in 1918.

“If you look at Egypt before the Arab Spring people were investing in what was effectively a family dictatorship. When the Arab Spring happened, it raised questions very similar to what happened in Russia; are these investments still valid and legitimate?

This whole politicisation of finance and investing is something that resonates very strongly.”

While at the EUI, Malik intends to publish papers on comparative studies of revolutions and complete a book based on his dissertation. “Being around macro economists at the EUI has been interesting. I like being able to present my ideas in different formats and various environments.

It’s very helpful when developing as an academic.”

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Researcher Drawn to dilemmas

rofiles

“I’m interested in how the laws of war were affected not only by the Second World War, but also all the other processes that were going on; decolonisation, the start of the cold war, reconstruction, intellectual movements booming at that time, existentialism among others.”

Boyd van Dijk is a first year researcher in the Department of History and Civilization. His work centres on the Fourth Geneva Convention, exploring how the unique events occurring in the aftermath of the Second World War affected how we think about the laws of war.

In 1949 the world was still coming to term with the revelations of the Nuremberg Trials, Harry Truman – the only person to launch a nuclear attack – was inaugurated for the second time, Communist Forces entered Beijing and a ceasefire was arranged in the Indo-Pakistan War. In the midst of these global events the Fourth Geneva Convention sought to establish rules for the protection of civilians in times of war.

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According to Van Dijk the Fourth Geneva Convention deals with questions that remain salient for today’s conflicts. “The discussion then was ‘who is a combatant?’ and ‘who was an unlawful combatant?’ This applies to today’s ‘War on Terror’” Before arriving at the EUI, Van Dijk published a book based on his graduate theses. The book, Leven naast het kamp : Kamp Vught en de Vughtenaren 19421944, explores the relationship between the Dutch village of Vught and the concentration camp built there in 1942, the only SS Concentration Camp in occupied Western Europe.

“I was interested in bystander history, how people living next to the camp dealt with its presence, both practically and psychologically.”

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The potentially apocryphal quote attributed to Joseph Stalin ‘One death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic’ plays on the assumption that humans can feel no emotion to even the most brutal uses of violence, which presents a unique challenge to those studying such events. “You realise that you are an historian and you have to step back. [However] You will be reading something and you can be hit by one particular detail, it can be a victim’s story, or a particular family tragedy.”

So why does he do it? “Part of what I think is so interesting about history, and in particular the study of war and violence, is that you study dilemma. It is interesting to see how politicians, legal scholars, generals, diplomats tried to deal with these dilemmas.”

“As a historian you are always reluctant to answer questions on morality or ‘what would we do today’ and you try to understand the circumstances in which people came to their decisions, but as a civilian you can’t not think about it.”

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LEADERS, MOVEMENTS, MANDELA

pinions

the Arab Spring. Academic visions of leadership in the social sciences focusing on either rational choice by individuals or organizational needs have proved of little help in explaining leadership in social movements.

Charismatic, traditional or legal-rational forms of authority, as in Max Weber’s influential classification, no longer resonate with the rhythms of social movement activities.

Last December, Nelson Mandela died at the age of 95. The various memorial events were attended by high representative of 90 states, hundreds of thousand citizens, and the global media, all honouring his long and committed life.

What does his life and death tell us about the role of leaders in social movements? Even though the importance of strategic choice is often acknowledged, reflections and theorisations on leaders’ characteristics and capacity is not a central field in social movement studies.

Participatory equalitarian values have always been central in progressive social movements, but since the 1970s new social movements have vehemently rejected the idea of a leadership, for example Occupy, or

What the global tribute to Nelson Mandela did indicate however, is the surviving importance of symbols and myths, as well as the complex web of relations that leaders mobilise.

Nelson Mandela was able to combine the two roles of leadership; inspiration and organisation.

He helped shape the strategies of the African National Congress and the anti-apartheid movement, worked as a lawyer, and had a lead role in the sabotage campaign as well as supporting opportunity to develop a common racially-united front with white communists.

Later on, in prison and as head of state, he continued to make important strategic decisions, but was increasingly known as the inspiring hero of the anti-apartheid struggle,

the founding father of the nation and democracy, the strong promoter of reconciliation, a moral authority more than a political one. Nobel Prize laureate in 1993 and friends of celebrities, he became a global myth because of his commitment and sufferance.

Was he a last leader of a movement of the past? Research in social movements recognises both the critique of leadership, but also the impossibility of a leaderless mobilisation.

However, skills and forms of the leadership tend to change within cultural, political and social context.

Leadership has become more distributed, and often short-time.

Modern leaders tend to be not the controllers of the purity of the doctrine, but rather those capable of communicating with a broader public. While vertical organisations decline in importance, leaders are less and less those who hold position within the bureaucracy and more and more so-called bridge leaders, endowed with social skills.

Differently constructed, but myths and heroes will continue to play an important emotional role in social movements.

Donatella Della Porta is professor of Sociology in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the EUI. She is director of the Centre on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos) and co-editor of the European Political Science Review, and was recently awarded Doctor Honoris Causa in Political and Social Sciences by the University of Lausanne.

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pinions

THE BALI WTO MINISTERIAL: FINALLY SOME RESULTS

have been seriously tarnished if no deal had emerged in Bali.

The 9th Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) held in Bali during December 4-7, 2013 concluded with the first-ever agreement negotiated under WTO auspices since its creation in 1995. The “Bali Package” comprises ten decisions and agreements in three areas: trade facilitation; agricultural support policies; and economic development.

The Bali deal encompasses just a small subset of the long-running Doha Development Agenda negotiations. But it is an important milestone, demonstrating that the WTO can deliver new agreements. Given repeated failure to agree on Doha round issues, the credibility of the WTO would

The main outcome was a new Agreement on Trade Facilitation.

This mainly aims to reduce costs for traders of getting goods cleared through Customs. A unique feature of the agreement is that developing countries can determine whether specific provisions will apply immediately, only after a transition period, or only after a transition period and the provision of technical/ financial assistance. The latter option is an innovation for the WTO. It implies that commitments that are conditional on receiving help cannot be enforced through WTO dispute settlement provisions if the assistance is not provided.

By far the most contentious issue in Bali was a demand by India that developing countries be allowed to exceed a WTO cap on agricultural production subsidies (a maximum of 10% of the value of production).

India was concerned WTO rules might impede implementation of its food security bill guaranteeing over 50% of the population 5 kilos of food grains per person/month. It made this a deal breaker. After hard bargaining it was agreed that exist-

ing support programmes for staple food crops would not be included in the 10% cap, and that a work programme be created to revisit WTO disciplines in this area to come up with a longer-term resolution.

The big question confronting the WTO now is whether Bali will generate momentum to develop a work programme that offers better prospects for a multilateral deal to liberalize trade in agricultural products, manufactured goods and services and addressing policy areas that so far have been kept off the WTO table, such as investment, competition and industrial policies. Much here will depend on whether current efforts to negotiate so-called mega-regional agreements (such as the EU-US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership) are successful and their effects on excluded countries.

This is an area of ongoing research in the EUI’s Global Governance Programme, undertaken in partnership with other research institutes around the world. Some initial findings were presented in seminars in Bali in a seminar. For more information, please visit the GGP website.

Bernard Hoekman is the Director of the research strand “Global Economics: Multilateral Cooperation and Policy Spillovers” in the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies' Global Governance Programme. He previously held various senior positions at the World Bank, and has published widely on trade policy and development, the global trading system, and trade in services.

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EASING THE ONE-CHILD POLICY

pinions

The ratio of taxpayers to pensioners is expected to drop from almost five to one to just over two to one by 2030.This in turn will result in an increased dependency ratio and therefore in a heavy burden for future generations in terms of pensions and health-care, with the proportion of over 60 possibly doubling by 2050, and reaching 35 percent. Even if easing the one child policy, these imbalances will A reform proposed by the recent take more than a generation to be Third Plenum meeting last No- resolved. vember attracted special attention Nevertheless, the “baby boom” in China and worldwide: the eascould however represent a boost ing of the one child policy. for the Chinese economy, in So far, only couples who are both terms of domestic consumption, only children have been allowed a component of demand typically to have two babies; from now on, lacking strength in China. But, only one of the couple needs to be especially if domestic demand an only child. Introduced in 1979 picks up, a smaller workforce is

by Deng Xiaoping the one-child likely to translate into high wages; policy is officially credited with these, combined with high costs preventing around 400 million for land and other inputs, and a births and keeping China’s popula- likely house bubble, may damper tion down to its current 1.3 billion. China’s competitiveness and make However, combined with parental it less attractive to offshore to Chipreference for male children and na. So, the demographic restraint selective abortions, it has triggered that has helped the Chinese sucgender imbalance, and along with cess in the last thirty years, may increased life expectancy - 76 years now be a risk to its future growth: for women and 72 for men - helped it is likely that there won’t be an fuel an aging population.

adequate labour supply nor high levels of savings (due to the population structure).

The easing of the one child policy, though being probably the most discussed, was not the only reform proposed in the Third Plenum; there were changes in fiscal policy, competition policy, factor pricing, and state-owned enterprise reform. The whole reform strategy revolves around a more competitive economy. The key challenge to achieving this goal is establishing a proper relationship between the State (government) and the market, with a greater share of economic activity outside the scope of government influence. A reduction to government interference with pricing, removing regulatory barriers to investment, and reforms to state-owned enterprises are is necessary.

The proposed reforms are ambitious and touch different spheres of the economy and society. Now, however, China has to pass the test of implementation.

Giorgia Giovannetti is the director of the research strand “Development” and part-time Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. She acted as Principal Investigator for the First and Second European Report on Development for the European Commission, and been an advisor to the Italian Treasury.

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8 MAY 2014

Badia Fiesolana

9 MAY 2014

Palazzo Vecchio (Florence City Hall)

For the fourth year running The State of the Union conference will bring together leading academics, policy-makers, civil society representatives and business leaders to discuss the current situation and future prospects of the European Union. This year's conference will focus on Trade, European and Global Markets and offer a special session on the 2014 European elections.

8 May - European University Institute, Badia Fiesolana • Parallel sessions on Trade, European and Global Markets • Interview with José Manuel Barroso: 10 Years in Office, the Road Ahead

9 May - Palazzo Vecchio, Florence • Keynote speeches and plenary session on Trade, European and Global Markets • Session on 2014 European Elections

Confirmed participants as of 15 January include:

 Roberto Azevêdo  Tony barber  José Manuel Barroso  Enrico Letta  Miguel Maduro

 Mario Monti  Günther Nonnenmacher

Director General of the World Trade Organisation Europe Editor, Financial Times President of the European Commission Italian Prime Minister Portuguese Minister for Regional Development and Minister Adjunct to the Prime Minister Member of the Italian Senate Editor, Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung For more information please visit stateoftheunion.eui.eu

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vents

23 JANUARY 2014

Imperial Soft Power and Governance beyond Borders: The EU’s relations with North Africa and the Middle East

Jointly organised by the Copenhagen Business School and the ERCfunded BORDERLANDS project at the EUI, the conference aims at testing the conceptualisation of the EU’s relations with North Africa and the Middle East in terms of EU imperial power and governance beyond borders.

The conference is organised by RSCAS Professor Raffaella Del Sarto and will take place in Frederiksberg, Denmark.

27 JANUARY 2014

Professor Pierre-Cyrille Hautcoeur (EHESS, Paris) will deliver 'Should Central Banks Save Failing Banks? Insights From the 1889 Crisis' in a colloquia of the Department of History and Civilization.

This lecture looks at the banking crisis of 1889, when the Banque de France quickly intervened, ensuring that a run on the Comptoir d’Escompte, one of the largest banks in France, did not turn into a general panic. Subsequent ‘lifeboat’ or ‘bailout’ tactics have led to criticism over the potential moral hazard’ causing bigger loses down the line.

However, in 1889, management and directors were compelled to absorb the losses and many lost their jobs and faced further penalties.

The lecture is organised by Department of History and Civilization Professor Laura Lee Downs and the discussant will be Professor Youssef Cassis.

Sala Europa Villa Schifanoia 17:00 - 19:00

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Should Central Banks Save Failing Banks?

Insights From the 1889 Crisis

E

vents

19 FEBRUARY 2014

Max Weber Lecture: Making Sense of the Past and Future Politics of Global Warming in the United States

With Democrats and Republicans firmly entrenched in their respective camps the opportunity for environmental legislation is currently extremely small. But are those in favour of increased environmental policy ready to act if a new opportunity arises, and if not, how can they organize and rally support?

Professor Theda Skocpol, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University, will address this topic in the February Max Weber Lecture.

The monthly Max Weber Lectures are given by distinguished scholars from the four fields of Economics, History, Law and Political and Social Sciences. The series is coordinated and planned by the Max Weber Programme.

Refectory Badia Fiesolana 17:00 - 19:00

2-4 APRIL 2014

Academy of Global Governance: Principles of Equality and Challenges of Discrimination.

Problems and Effective Remedies

This Executive Training provides for the conceptual and normative basis of the struggle for equality and against discrimination through study of concrete cases. It illustrates steps taken to combat ethnic, national, racial, and religious forms of discrimination, at international, regional and national levels, and assesses the access to these remedies and their efficiency. It assesses the progress made so far and discusses how there can be policy transfer and learning among different countries within and beyond Europe.

This executive training is addressed to officers of European and international organisations, officers of public administrations, NGO officers, trade union officers. It can also be useful to lawyers, researchers, human resource managers, educators, and any person working in the wider field of migration, minorities, discrimination, affirmative action.

Deadline for application: 2 March 2014.

Register online

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ublications

Minds, Brains and Law: The Conceptual Foundations of Law and Neuroscience Michael S. Pardo and Dennis Patterson Oxford University Press, 2013 EUI Law Professor Dennis Patterson, along with his coauthor Michael Pardo, recently published Minds, Brains and Law: The Conceptual Foundations of Law and Neuroscience, an in-depth look at the philosophical issues surrounding neuroscience and its implications for law.

“At its deepest level it’s a humanistic book, it’s a rejection of the scientific picture of the human personality,” says Patterson. “We include an intense philosophical discussion; we do the law, the practical problems of implementation, and the ethical problems. The book covers everything.”

There are currently calls for the increased use of scientific evidence in trials and legal proceedings, including the use of MRI brain imaging to test the veracity of testimonies, memory, and truth telling. These proposals stem from a materialistic approach to the mind - simplified as the metaphor of the brain as a machine – an idea Patterson and his co-author believes relies on shaky arguments.

“We’re not anti-science, far from it, we just think that what people want to infer from the scientific evidence is extremely problematic.”

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“Some people think that neuroscience can prove that we don’t make choices, that the brain and all behaviour can be explained, causally and mechanically. If that’s the case, no one can be held responsible for anything. Well if that’s true then we should just get rid of the criminal law, the presupposition of which is that we make choice, we do things intentionally or unintentionally.”

Patterson, who holds degrees in both Philosophy and Law, says this debate goes to the core of what it is to be human.

“The mind is not a thing, it’s a range of abilities and what it means to be human is to exhibit these abilities; thinking, feeling, affection, cognition, the full range. All these things are capacities that humans have, you have to have a brain to do them but it’s not the brain that does them it’s the entire person. It’s an anti-reductionist book.”

This issue of neuroscience in law has become a rapidly expanding topic. There were over a thousand publications on the topic last year, up from just 200 in 2006.

However Minds, Brains and the Law is the first monograph on the subject. Patterson has already received two grants for further study and is planning to hold a conference on the subject in the near future. “[The book] will be savagely attacked, bring it on. I’m interested to see what people have to say about the arguments.”

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ublications

Individual Rights and the Making of the International L’ âme des lumières : le débat sur l’être humain entre System religion et science Angleterre-France (1690-1760) Christian Reus-Smit Ann Thomson Cambridge University Press, 2013 Champ Vallon, 2013 We live today in the first global system of sovereign states in history, encompassing all of the world’s polities, peoples, religions and civilizations. This volume presents a new account of how this system came to be, one in which struggles for individual rights play a central role. The international system expanded from its original European core in five great waves, each involving the fragmentation of one or more empires into a host of successor sovereign states. In the most important, associated with the Westphalian settlement, the independence of Latin America, and post-1945 decolonization, the mobilization of new ideas about individual rights challenged imperial legitimacy, and when empires failed to recognize these new rights, subject peoples sought sovereign independence. Combining theoretical innovation with detailed historical case-studies, this book advances a new understanding of human rights and world politics, with individual rights deeply implicated in the making of the global sovereign order.

Christian Reus-Smit was Professor of International Relations in the EUI's Department of Social and Political Science until 2013, when he took up a chair at the University of Queensland.

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This work of intellectual history takes a new look at the period of the early Enlightenment, through a study of discussions about the crucial question of human nature, and its implications in different fields. It studies the different stages of the political, theological and scientific debate on the human soul, from late seventeenth-century England to mid-eighteenthcentury France, showing how a Christian polemic took on different connotations in different circumstances, ending with a totally secular, and even irreligious view of humans as purely material entities.

Linking the study of thought to the concrete circumstances of its production and circulation, the book questions certain generally accepted views about the thought of this period, as well as throwing light on certain of today’s preoccupations.

Ann Thomson is Professor of European Intellectual History in the Department of History and Civilization.

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SELECTED EUI BOOKS cadmus.eui.eu

Adraoui, MohamedAli. Du Golfe aux banlieues : le salafisme mondialisé (Presses Universitaires de France, 2013)

Clavert, Frédéric and Noiret, Serge. L’histoire contemporaine à l’ère numérique ; Contemporary history in the digital age (Peter Lang, 2013)

Marzouki, Nadia.

L’Islam, une religion américaine ? (Seuil, 2013)

Ranci, Pippo; Cervigni, Guido.

The economics of electricity markets : theory and policy (Edward Elgar, 2013)

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ublications

Amato, Giuliano; Gualtieri, Roberto (eds). Prove di Europa unita : le istituzioni europee di fronte alla crisi (Passigli, 2013)

Bara, Anna; Di Bartolomeo, Anna; Brunarska, Zuzanna; Makaryan, Shushanik; Mananashvili, Sergo; Weinar, Agnieszka (eds) Regional migration report : Eastern Europe (EUI, 2013

Finger, Matthias and Holvad, Torben (eds). Regulating transport in Europe (Edward Elgar, 2013)

Liebert, Ulrike; Gattis, Alexander; Evas, Tatjana.

Democratising the EU from below? : Citizenship, civil society and the public sphere (Ashgate, 2013)

Mungiu-Pippidi, Alina. Controlling corruption in Europe (Barbara Budrich Publishers, 2013)

Osswald Trinidade Guerreiro, Maria Cristina. Written in Stone: Jesuit buildings in Goa and their artistic and architectural features (Goa, 2013)

Rosati, Eleonora.

Originality in EU copyright : full harmonisation through case law (Edward Elgar, 2013)

Stornig, Katharina.

Sisters crossing boundaries : German missionary nuns in colonial Togo and New Guinea, 1897–1960 (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013)

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ublications

cadmus.eui.eu

ARTICLES

BOOKS

BOOKS

Click on the research communities pictured here for search results on indicated collections.

A full list of the EUI's research communities and collections can be found here.

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The EUI research repository contains the academic publications of EUI members, including books, articles, working papers, book chapters, theses, and research reports.

BOOKS

MAX WEBER PROGRAMME FOR POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES WORKING PAPERS

EUI TIMES | Winter 2014

RESEARCH REPORTS

QM-AJ-12-001-EN-N

ISSN: 1977-799X