1st Edition

Efficiency and Justice in the Industrial World: v. 2: The Uneasy Success of Postwar Europe

By Dusan Pokorny Copyright 1997

    European market integration was originally seen as the way to overcome national enmities in the wake of World War II. Over time, it acquired the purpose of social melioration as well. Today, the advanced market societies are richer than they have ever been, yet each is driven by social and economic divisions as some groups thrive while others lose ground. The tension between the social demand for equity and security, and the market's drive to burst the bonds of state regulation both internally and at the border post, has taken on new complexity. It is this issue that underlies domestic political struggles over privatisation, safety-net programmes, immigration policies and trade agreements. Will European Union survive the stresses of high employment and the strains of German unification? These are some of the questions Dusan Pokorny considers in this second volume of his exploration of the efficiency-justice conundrum.

    Part 1 Europe: Markets - a Short List of Options, Conditions of Choice Making; Polities - Projections, Experiences, Afterthoughts. Part 2 Mainly About Property: Corporations - Corpus, Corporati and the Others, The Riddles of Valuation, Strategies; Destabilisation and Privatisation - To Lay the Ground, On Sale - the Family Silver, Procedures, Results, Outlooks, At a Crossroads; Mergers, Acquisitions, Alliances - Imperfect Competition, The Life and Times of a Product, Sectors and Frontiers, Symbolic Systems and Information Flows, Signals, Carriers, Messages, On Second Thought. Part 3 Efficiency and Justice: Reason and Action - Technical Control, Functional Accomplishment, Social Norms Proper and Their Justification, Reductionism..., ...And Its Limits, Why All Should Not (Again) Become (Almost) One, Appendix - Models of Optimisation; Efficiency and its Conditions - A Brief of Experience, Patterns and Stages, Journeys Into the Future, Technologies and Games, The Contigencies at Play, Techniques and Societies, Management and Morality; Justice - Means and Needs - The Union - the Regional Fund, The Union - the Social Fund, Member States - the Parameters, Member States - the Programmes, The Issues on the Table. Part 4 Markets and Societies: Money and Monies - Equivocacies of Representation, The Model Roles, The High-Flying Derivatives, Exposure and Regulations, The ECU - Attractions and Distractions, The Rich, the Poor and the Bank, The Conditions, the Choices; The Social and the Political - Inequalities - On the Rise, At the Edge - Poverty, Insurance and Solidarity, The Complexities of Redistribution, Another View - Income Uncertainty, A Survey of the Field - Entitlements, A Survey of the Field - Funding, Decisions in Waiting. Part 5 What Kind of Europe?: Of Labour, Work and Recognition - The State of Affairs, The State of Theories, Among the Choices To Be Made, Beyond the Trodden Paths, A Testing Ground; Sovereignties In the Age of Information - Signs, A Brief History of Sovereignty - We Among Ourselves (1), Sovereignty - We Among Ourselves (2), Sovereignty - We and the Others (1), Sovereignty - We and the Others (2), The Options.

    Biography

    Pokorny, Dusan