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The well-being of Europe’s citizens depends less on individual consumption and more on their social consumption of essential goods and services – from water and retail banking to schools and care homes – in what we call the foundational economy. Individual consumption depends on market income, while foundational consumption depends on social infrastructure and delivery systems of networks and branches, which are neither created nor renewed automatically, even as incomes increase. This historically created foundational economy has been wrecked in the last generation by privatisation, outsourcing, franchising and the widespread penetration of opportunistic and predatory business models. The distinctive, primary role of public policy should therefore be to secure the supply of basic services for all citizens (not a quantum of economic growth and jobs). Reconstructing the foundational has to start with a vision of citizenship that identifies foundational entitlements as the conditions for dignified human development, and likewise has to depend on treating the business enterprises central to the foundational economy as juridical persons with claims to entitlements but also with responsibilities and duties. If the aim is citizen well-being and flourishing for the many not the few, then European politics at regional, national and EU level needs to be refocused on foundational consumption and securing universal minimum access and quality. If/when government is unresponsive, the impetus for change has to come from engaging citizens locally and regionally in actions which break with the top down politics of ‘vote for us and we will do this for you’.
, to schools and care homes – in what we call the foundational economy . Individual consumption depends on market income, while foundational consumption depends on infrastructure and delivery systems of networks and branches, which are neither created nor renewed automatically, even as incomes increase. The distinctive, primary role of public policy should therefore be to secure the supply of basic services for all citizens. If the aim is citizen well-being and flourishing for the many not the few, then European politics at regional, national and EU level needs to
collectively to create theatricalised and analytic ‘stories’ that illuminated the power relations of migration and migrant experience. Through the use of techniques developed through political theatre, we refused any pretence that it was empowering to demand that people performed their sad stories. Instead, we worked together to devise approaches to telling stories otherwise. Solidarities and critical questions in a changing landscape Over the few years from the start of the research project to the writing of this book, the European political landscape has continued to shift
disconnects in our society between social usefulness, educational certification and pay. Second, health and social care are important because they provide essential services which are meshed with the rights of being a European citizen; if health service delivery fails we immediately have a huge crisis of welfare which is much graver and more difficult to manage than any difficulties following failure of, say, civil legal services. But health and social care are not seen by the European political classes and policymakers as core productive activities
preferences cannot be taken for granted and must be discovered before they can input into policymaking. If asking citizens about foundational priorities is elementary common sense, it would also change the world taken for granted by most of Europe's political classes and their expert helpers. They are accustomed to more anodyne forms of ‘public consultation’ about operating detail when all the major decisions have been taken on transport systems, urban property re-development and such like. And any shift from the rituals of public
similar terms. Most notably, all of them failed to cover any conflict in terms other than the implications for European political and economic interests. The articles were identified on Nexis using the terms ‘Name of country + war OR bombing OR troops OR ceasefire OR peace talks OR war crimes OR civilians OR international OR terrorism OR civil war or human rights OR crime OR drugs’ and the equivalent in Italian. The timeframe included: 28 December 2014–28 January 2015 to coincide with the NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan; 30 September 2015–30 October 2015 to coincide
The binary construction of civility versus barbarism has haunted the European continent for centuries, including Yugoslavia, where the more northern parts often espouse closeness to civilized European politics while southern Yugoslav countries are deemed more barbaric. Despite the shifting parameters of this colonial and imperial logic due to different political moments, the strictures of gender usually play out negatively for women, be it in “civilized” or “barbaric” parts of the land. Somun has pointed out that the onset of the war in Sarajevo was gendered, as the
identification? What counts psychologically as such a commitment? … Is there much of a psychological reality to political self- identification in America, and if not, is that a worrisome problem or not?56 Pippin’s ensuing survey of European political philosophers who have contemplated this question includes some thinkers who frame the issue as one of distance. There is, for example, Rousseau’s observation that ‘sociable man is always outside himself’.57 And there is, of course, Marx’s notion of the alienation engendered by the capitalist system of economic relations. When
Tiersky’s François Mitterrand: The Last French President, emphasises Mitterrand’s victory over the Communist Party, his role in legitimising the presidency of the Fifth Republic and his support for European political and monetary unity at a time when a polarised Yalta–Europe was reorganising. Tiersky’s Mitterrand had a Machiavellian political genius combined with a republican vision of the future that allowed him eventually to exert a broad influence over history. Tierksy underscores Mitterrand’s charisma and his seductiveness, and especially his attachment to an
-shooting party includes not simply British aristocratic sportsmen but also European political figures, such as Count Mauriac, who, as the narrator puts it in phrasing that sounds tongue-in-cheek, ‘flew over from France for every shoot’, as if he were himself a bird; and Senhor Aveiro, a retired Portuguese diplomat, of whom we learn, in another term equally suited to wildlife, that he had ‘settled’ in England (162). This dramatises the comment made by George’s fellow-drinkers in the local pub about the ‘old Duke’s’ insistence on prosecuting the miners who worked in his pits