Rattling Europe’s ordoliberal ‘iron cage’ : the contestation of austerity in Southern Europe

This article explains the popular revolt against austerity in Southern Europe as the outcome of profound politico-economic changes that are shaped by the transformation of the European Union’s (EU’s) macro-economic governance. It comprises three parts. The first part demonstrates how ordoliberalism – the Germanic variant of (neo)liberal economic thinking – was embedded in the EU’s new macro-economic governance, in processes that constitutionalise austerity and remove democratic controls over the economy. The second part examines the impact of austerity-driven reforms on welfare and employment in the aftermath of the sovereign debt crisis. These reforms undermined the social reproduction of Southern Europe’s familistic welfare model by destabilising three key pillars of social protection: employment security for households’ primary earners; small property ownership; and pension adequacy. The third part analyses the emergence of anti-austerity social politics in Southern Europe, both parliamentary and grassroots, and assesses their effectiveness in light of the collapse of public trust in both EU and domestic political institutions. The article concludes with our reflections on the fragility of EU’s integration process under the hegemony of ordoliberalism

Instances and connectors : issues for a second generation process language

This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants GR/L34433 and GR/L32699Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can effectively support business processes, and that they have not received sufficient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.Postprin

Rapport: Ecluses, vannes de sassement, portes

La pagination indiquée dans la zone "Pages" est celle du tiré à part, numérisé par les Bibliothèques de l'ULB. La pagination, telle qu'elle apparaît dans la revue est pp. 63-106.Section I :Navigation intérieureinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Bleak Prospects? Varieties of Europessimism and their Application to the Eurozone Debt Crisis and the Future of Integration

This article argues that pessimistic analyses of integration constitute a distinct category of critique separate from euro-scepticism or the democratic deficit literature. Drawing on an interdisciplinary analysis of law, political science, and international relations theory, three strands of europessimism are identified: realist, federalist, and social-democratic. The analysis of these varieties examines how the grounds for europessimism differ and how these can be applied to understand the causes and consequences of the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis. This application reveals how europessimism finds its vindication whilst also exposing evolution in how pessimistic each analytical tradition is. Indeed, whereas realism has never been optimistic about integration the article shows how federalism and social democracy are associated with optimistic or transformative visions of integration. Yet, the analysis concludes by showing the increasing pessimism of the social democratic tradition alongside the enduring optimism of federalism. By extension, the conceptual analysis of europessimism promises to have applications for the study of other research questions in European integration