CommonDreams.org
"Europe
leaves the US behind"
By Steven Hill
April 29, 2004
Spain's new left-leaning government attracted the ire of
the Bush administration recently when it withdrew its troops
from Iraq. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero
fulfilled a campaign pledge when he announced the withdrawal,
aligning the Spanish government with the overwhelming
sentiment of the Spanish people, as well as with most
governments and peoples of Europe.
Receiving less attention than the troop withdrawal, in his
speech Zapatero announced other priorities that further
separated his government from the White House. Zapatero
pledged greater spending on education and affordable housing
for low- and middle-income families. He also pledged a
crackdown on violence against women -- a scourge he called
Spain's "greatest national disgrace" -- and
recognition of gay marriage. The last one no doubt will be
dismaying to religious fundamentalists in both the Bush
administration and the Taliban.
From inside the White House, Zapatero must look like a
flaming leftie and certainly no ally. But actually he is quite
within the mainstream of European politics, both on foreign
policy and domestic matters. The fact is, even the
conservative parties of Europe are to the left of the
Democratic Party in the U.S. The European political center is
where the American left would love to be. Europe’s famously
generous social state is still alive and mostly well, though
under attack by globalization and corporate opportunists who
would like to bury it and render Europe more like -- the
United States.
But the differences between Europe and the U.S. are
growing, registering like a series of small quakes on the
Richter scale. Trade disputes over agriculture, steel, and
genetically modified foods; broken treaties and promises on
global warming, sustainability, nuclear test bans, and the
international court; sharply differing opinions on the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and on the use of militarism vs.
diplomacy to resolve disputes; eastward expansion of the
European Union into traditional NATO areas; multilateralism
vs. unilateralism, the list is long and growing. European
corporations are expanding around the globe, challenging their
U.S. counterparts. A rising Euro now is competing with the
dollar as a global currency. The Europeans are closer to
putting their John Hancocks on a new Constitution that will
bind them closer as a continent.
Moreover, in numerous ways average Americans are falling
behind our European counterparts in this age of globalization.
Even with recent cutbacks, still Europeans have free health
care for all, cradle to grave; free education through
university level; generous retirement for their elderly; an
average of five weeks paid vacation, more sick leave, and
parental leave. Social spending in Europe runs some 50 percent
above that in the United States. Alternate energy development
(wind, hydro, tidal and hydrogen cell power), food safety,
organic and anti-GM laws, and labor laws are the envy of
activists in the U.S. For those pro-Iraqi war American workers
who patriotically joined in the dumping of French wines and
the renaming of French fries to “freedom fries,” they
might want to consider that they now work a full day longer
per week – about seven weeks longer per year -- than French
workers. Even the specter of higher unemployment, usually the
American rebuttal to European superiority in so many other
categories, turns out to be not so clear cut, with many
European countries by 2003 having lower unemployment rates
than the U.S., once the stock market bubble of the 1990s had
burst.
And yet the American media is not reporting much of this.
The typical American depiction of “old Europe” usually is
fraught with stereotypical extremes, either colorful vacation
adverts about castles on the Rhine or goose-stepping neo-Nazi
parties. One headline in an American daily newspaper, in
contemplating the apparent superior standing of average
Europeans, blared the ridiculous question "Do European
Workers Have It Too Good?" As if workers can have it too
good -- obviously we know who owns that newspaper. The row at
the United Nations seemingly burst from nowhere, but if the
American media hadn’t been so asleep at the wheel, they
would have seen it coming.
Why are Europeans outpacing Americans on so many social,
political and economic fronts? The answers are complex but
basically they boil down to the fact that, for the last 60
years in the post-WWII period, Europeans have been incubating
markedly different "fulcrum institutions" -- the key
institutions and practices on which everything else pivots. In
particular, three fulcrum institutions form the foundation for
the rest -- the political, economic, and media institutions.
These three play an Archidemean role in deciding ever-evolving
policies that affect people's lives, on matters ranging from
health care, education, housing, transportation and taxes to
the energy régime, corporate structure, immigration, foreign
policy and national security.
In the political realm, Europe utilizes full representation
electoral systems that gives representation to voters across
the political spectrum, public financing of elections that
fosters debate, universal voter registration, voting on a
weekend or on a holiday, and national electoral commissions
that establish nationwide standards and practices. Women and
third parties have far greater representation at all levels of
government. In the U.S., we are still stuck with our
18th-century winner-take-all system, privately financed
elections, poor voter participation, poll-tested sound bites
aimed at undecided swing voters, voting on a busy work day,
and haywire decentralized election administration left to over
3000 counties scattered across the country.
In the media realm, Europe boasts a robust public
broadcasting sector (radio and TV) and subsidized daily
newspapers, leading to more media pluralism, a better-informed
citizenry, more people reading newspapers, and a higher level
of what political scientist Henry Milner calls "civic
literacy." In the U.S., we are still stuck with corporate
media gatekeepers, media monopolies, an astonishing loss of
political ideas and a poorly informed citizenry.
In the economic realm, Europeans have developed practices
such as "codetermination," which provides meaningful
worker representation on corporate boards of directors, and
powerful works councils in the workplaces. There is more of a
balance of stockholder and stakeholder rights, forcing
business leaders to confer more extensively with their workers
and labor unions. There also are continent wide minimum labor
and environmental standards, including more union-friendly
laws.
Taken together, these fulcrum institutions work coherently
to form the basis of a “European Way” that is distinctly
different from the “American Way.” This provides a rough
blueprint of where institutional development in the United
States needs to go in the 21st century. Those who care about
the future of our country should take their cues from Europe.
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