Societies in Transition: Economic, Political and Security Transformations in Contemporary Europe

235 Pages·2015·3.7 MB·English

by  Savvas Katsikides, Pavlos I. Koktsidis (eds.)

Savvas Katsikides · Pavlos I. Koktsidis
E ditors
Societies in
Transition
Economic, Political and Security
Transformations in Contemporary
Europe
Societies in Transition
ThiS is a FM Blank Page
Savvas Katsikides • Pavlos I. Koktsidis
Editors
Societies in Transition
Economic, Political and Security
Transformations in Contemporary
Europe
Editors
Savvas Katsikides Pavlos I. Koktsidis
Department of Social and Department of Social and
Political Sciences Political Sciences
University of Cyprus University of Cyprus
Nicosia Nicosia
Cyprus Cyprus
ISBN 978-3-319-13813-8 ISBN 978-3-319-13814-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-13814-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015936345
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London
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Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Pavlos I. Koktsidis and Savvas Katsikides
Part I Economics
2 EMU and the Process of European Integration: Southern
Europe’s Economic Challenges and the Need for Revisiting
EMU’s Institutional Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Eleftherios Thalassinos and Georgios Dafnos
3 Unemployment in Mediterranean EU Countries: Fighting
Youth Unemployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Hardy Hanappi
4 The Impact of the Eurozone Crisis on a Periphery Country:
The Case of Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Franco Praussello
5 Economic Transition in Romania: A Completed Process? . . . . . . . 87
Luminița Șoproni and Ioan Horga
6 Impact on European Union Studies of the Developing EU
Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreements with Third
Countries: The Case of Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
Tatjana Muravska, Alexandre Berlin, and Don Sparling
Part II Politics and Security
7 Transitions of Democracy: An Evolutionary Political Economy
Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Manuel Wa¨ckerle
8 Crisis and Transition of NGOs in Europe: The Case of Greece . . . 159
Sotiris Petropoulos and Anastasios Valvis
v
vi Contents
9 Energy Security and the Transformation of Regional Securitization
Relations in the Eastern Mediterranean . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
Constantinos Adamides and Odysseas Christou
10 Terrorism in Transition: The Implications of Cyber-Terrorism . . . 207
Trevor Calafato and Paul Caruana
11 Economic Consequences of Military Expenditure:
Evidence from Southern Europe and Turkey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
Darshana Udayanganie and Evangelos N. Charos
Introduction
1
Pavlos I. Koktsidis and Savvas Katsikides
Amidst a period of increased risk and uncertainty, we ventured to produce a
compilation of works on the manifold implications, lessons and new directions
raised by the unfolding of the post-2009 crisis in Europe. For the first time since the
end of the Second World War, European societies are being confronted with the
consequences of a critical economic downturn shaking the established socio-
political order. Europe is facing a number of important social, economic and
political challenges, as much of the European continent continues suffering from
sluggish economic growth or stagnation, difficulties to effectively implement
structural reforms and widespread political reactions towards the established polit-
ical order. In varying ways, the crisis has strongly impacted societies across Europe.
Many people lost their jobs or part of their income as a result of salary cuts, while
uncertainty about the future has risen. European citizens demonstrate an increasing
lack of confidence and trust in relation to the governance of financial institutions,
and the free market overall, but also in relation to democratic institutions and
politics at European, national or local levels.
Europe’s economic downturn has exposed an unprecedented dichotomy between
the ‘disciplined’ European North and the ‘unruly’ European periphery within the
EU. Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy and Cyprus have gone through a painful process
of fiscal readjustment with the introduction of austerity measures in return for
receiving large European and IMF financial rescue funds and averting the
implications of economic collapse. Rescue appeals were made by the EU to the
wealthy Euro zone members. The strict bail out conditions that were put in place for
the disposal of large rescue funds to the drowning European economies of the South
have ultimately triggered major social resentment. At the same time, stereotypical
attempts on the causes of the South’s economic unruliness and underperformance
have similarly dominated popular narratives across the European North. The
P.I. Koktsidis (*) • S. Katsikides
Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
e-mail:
2 P.I. Koktsidis and S. Katsikides
addition of this new European dichotomy in discussions about European integration
comes to complement previous but still largely resilient dichotomies between the
industrial North and the agrarian South, the efficient North and the inefficient
South, the ‘reasonable’ North and the ‘excessive’ South. Last but not least, Eastern
European states have remained particularly vulnerable to the fluctuations and
shocks of the international economic system despite variable efforts to align their
economies to match with EU standards. Despite entry into the EU, a majority of
Eastern European states struggle with low productivity levels, poor welfare systems
and high unemployment, and present a markedly lower standard of living to the
European average. Therefore, this collection of works does not simply focus on the
processes within the EU but takes a much broader view of problems and themes
affecting European security and welfare as a whole.
Moving beyond cliche´ narratives, we invited a number of distinguished
academics to provide us with novel insights into the nexus of economic, political
and security repercussions on social transformation, following a period of
European-wide recession, and with a view to conceptualize the influence recent
economic changes have on traditional political perceptions, organizational pro-
cesses, and of course on security and social change in the European periphery.
We are delighted to have drawn together important contributions from researchers
and academics from across the spectrum of social sciences offering a penetrative
account of the speedily evolving European state of affairs. The central idea is to
compile research devoted to key questions and aspects of the relationship between
various and widely discussed social, political and security rearrangements in order
to produce knowledge that encapsulates a range of interrelated subjects. A selected
number of authors from research-oriented universities across Europe (Austria, Italy,
Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Latvia, Malta, and the US) examine the possibilities of
coping with contemporary concerns of political and economic stability, security,
growth, governance and integration from different scientific perspectives, and
assess their social implications while taking into account the deepening humanitar-
ian misfortunes on a country and regional level.
The book’s objective is to build a concise picture of responses to major eco-
nomic, political and security challenges affecting the European continent, and
explore the impact of a distinctly fundamental phase of transition. Drawing from
a carefully selected array of contemporary academic research, this collection of
chapters allows for the development of fresh insights into the social repercussions
of transition from traditionally established organizational practices and political
perceptions to new forms of collaboration, integration and governance. In this
respect, it is hoped that our collection of studies will be of key interest to those
involved in inner and interdisciplinary research in diverse fields of social, economic
and political studies.
1 Introduction 3
1.1 The Origins of Transition
The trans-national repercussions of the US credit crunch crisis in Europe exposed
the inadequacy of dominant perceptions with regards to the endurance and agility of
the international financial system and the banking sector. The spiralling effect of the
2008 credit crunch in the US has marked the opening of a Pandora’s Box for
Europe’s most vulnerable economies. Within the EU, Ireland was the first Eurozone
country to encounter the financial rumblings caused by a long-swelling bubble burst
in the real estate sector. When the housing bubble burst, Ireland’s government
requested for a European rescue package to be delivered in order to recapitalize
banks with taxpayers assuming private debts. In a rather different way, Greece and
Portugal were devastated by the recession of economic activity, as they were overly
exposed to external market borrowing and home-grown structural deficiencies.
Inability to borrow from international capital markets and the need to sustain the
growing disequilibrium between revenues and expenditures threatened the
economies of Greece and Portugal with collapse.
Both countries faced a critical dilemma, as they were called to choose between a
tough spend-cutting programme with socially devastating consequences in return
for subsistence loans from a consortium of rescue mechanisms, or face the sweep-
ing consequences of economic default. Spain and Italy formed a sufficient political
consensus to implement demanding fiscal discipline policies to their economies in
return for lax bail-out packages. The dreadful puzzle of Euro-zone failures
expanded to include Cyprus. Faced with significant liquidity shortages and exposed
to the toxic Greek market finances, Cyprus endured an unprecedented ‘haircut’ of
private savings followed by a complete restructuring of its national banking system.
The outbreak of the sovereign debt crisis in the European South is the result of a
composite mixture of external and internal conditions. Surely, international capital
markets stalled as a result of the US financial contraction and mortgage crisis of
2008. Yet the freezing of funds by international capital markets collided with the
intrinsic fragility of indebted economies due to their excessive borrowing practices
and poor defences against the repercussions of an increasingly interdependent
financial system, which accelerated the likelihood of systemic failure. States that
were overly exposed to external borrowing and with a low capacity to respond
effectively in the event of major systemic imbalances in global financial activity
were most vulnerable to the consequences of global financial contraction and
collapse.
Demands by the EU and the IMF to rectify the deficiencies embedded in the
internal economic systems of the endangered Euro-zone members became part and
parcel of the rescue package conditions for Greece, Portugal and Cyprus. Funds
were transferred to the countries on conditions of implementing drastic public
expenditure cuts, reducing public sector workforce, accelerating privatizations
and rationalizing the management and distribution of public revenues. The process
of reforming the state has given way to an ‘in-between’ socio-economic vacuum of
deepening recession, shrinking public provisions and skyrocketing unemployment,