Europeanisation, National Identities and Migration ... - europeanization

72 Richard Münch
all imaginable worlds and thus in need of being safeguarded in the nation-state and
transferred as much as possible to the European Union. In this perspective, we see
but one side of the coin, whilst the other, far too much neglected side, is the fact of
erecting an authoritarian regime in a democratic guise exercising paralysing effects
on individual activity, innovation and mobilisation of the society, by taking half
of the earned income from the active people for the political formation and
administration of society and the production of a class of unemployed people lacking
access to networks, social status and the feeling of self-esteem. It is, therefore,
one-sided and means a restriction to the analytical perspective if we take the ‘positive
integration’ of the national welfare state as the only valid model of a ‘good’ society
and as the binding goal of mastering the social effects of European market
integration and economic globalisation. Monitoring and benchmarking are surely
‘soft means of steering’, they do not determine a European employment policy
with binding power, they do not establish any binding intervention in the market
and are thus far removed from the institutionalised national forms of ‘positive
integration’. They are possibly the weakest forms of complementing the liberalisation
of the labour market by ‘negative’ European market integration with ‘positive
integration’.
The effects of monitoring and benchmarking on the learning capabilities of
national policy makers should, however, not be underestimated. Together with
enhanced market competition, they initiate institutional competition and restrict
the range of justifiable strategies to such measures which are confirmed by success
under the condition of open markets. In this sense, there is a trend of convergence
of the member states in the measures of ‘best practice’. Nevertheless, this trend is
limited by the consistent pressure of policies. There is no guarantee that an element
of policy, which is successful in one national institutional setting, will also be the
right solution to the problem in another setting. Lack of support from complementary
institutional elements and lack of legitimacy can always result in failure. The
policy element might be adapted to the established institutions and lose its effectiveness,
because it is robbed of its original meaning or it might be rejected because it
does not fit in the new setting. Only under favourable circumstances will it contribute
to a lasting transformation of the institutional setting and legitimating culture: if
there is enough suffering from failures of the established institutions and if there
are political entrepreneurs which are able to mobilise a broad movement of
institutional reform. Margaret Thatcher’s reform policies in the paralysed Britain
of the late 1970s and early 1980s are the most interesting example for studying the
preconditions of such thoroughgoing societal change. Preoccupation with Thatcher’s
deconstruction of the welfare state has hindered many analyses of her policies
for the construction of a new liberated and more dynamic society. The cautious
consolidation of Thatcher’s achievements by Tony Blair’s New Labour government
is sound proof of the wide acknowledgment of Thatcher’s work of ‘creative
deconstruction’ in the sense of Schumpeter’s description of the entrepreneur’s role
(Schumpeter 1950/1993: 134–42). Here it is the role of the political entrepreneur.
In the perspective outlined, we point to the innovative and constructive side of
institutional reforms which eradicate established patterns of welfare regulations.