Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

66 Richard Münch
In this sense, the welfare potential is even rising. The fact that this potential can be
used less than before for redistribution and a comprehensive social security, is not
simply a matter of capital taking on an international character, whilst work remains
tied within the national boundaries. This is but one aspect of a much more
comprehensive structural change which withdraws the foundations of a nationally
closed mechanical solidarity from the welfare state and involves an internally
much more differentiated organic solidarity which goes far beyond national
boundaries. A structural contradiction arises between this emerging solidarity
of networks and the traditional welfare culture. The welfare culture is becoming a
fetter on the new solidarity structure which is in the process of development.
A phase of social struggles, institutional and legitimacy crises will set in, from which,
in the long run, a new institutional structure and a new legal culture will result
that are in harmony with the new solidarity structures. The dynamics of this
structural change start from the unfolding of new opportunities and competition
through the opening of national markets, with the ever closer networking of these
markets by communication and transport playing an essential role. The structural
change occurs in line with Marx’s model. The unfolding of productive forces
through open markets is in contradiction with the established production relationships,
that tie up the further development of productive forces, but which will
tear in the long run and give way to new production relationships and their more
satisfactory superstructure of law and justice. Nevertheless, this process does not
lead straight into the paradise of communism, but rather into the realm of the open
multi-level network society (van Ruysseveldt and Visser 1996; Müller et al. 1997).
This far-reaching structural change has so far not been sufficiently grasped.
This is not least of all underlined by the fact that the search for solutions is focused
on the maintenance of the ‘achievements’ of the national welfare state, whether it
is by transfer to the European level and/or safeguarding of the national level. It is
generally neglected, however, that the social justice of the national welfare state
was coupled with both European and global injustice. The emphasis is on complementing
the ‘negative integration’ of the single market through the removal of all
tariff and non-tariff barriers to free economic circulation by a ‘positive integration’
through social policy. This pattern of thought was introduced into the theory
of international relationships by Jan Tinbergen (Tinbergen 1965; Scharpf 1996;
Jachtenfuchs 1998). Fritz Scharpf has taken up and applied the idea to the question
of European integration. He starts from the assumption that the national welfare
states succeeded in producing a ‘balance’ between negative, market liberating and
positive, market regulating integration, since their constitutions not only grant the
right to freedom, but also the right to equality, not only in property rights, but
also social rights so that the inequalities created by the market are kept within close
limits by social policies. In the European Union, however, negative integration
outweighs positive integration, since the latter depends to a far greater extent on a
working government that intervenes in society. The big differences in the economic
performance alone that prevail between the poor and the rich member states, do
not allow for an agreement on uniform social standards. For the poorer countries,
the high standards of the rich countries would mean a loss in competitiveness. The