Democracy in Europe (Part One)
It’s hard not to think of disturbing things while watching the news these days. Or, better still, just after. Disturbing things such as, for example, the general economic crisis and the apparent delusion of the (arguably) great and (surely not) good that democracy is fundamentally an irritant and a danger to order and economic security.
It was with this thought that I remembered, quite suddenly, an interesting passage that I’d copied out of a journal (Urban Studies as it happens) a few weeks ago. So, you know. Here it is:
‘…state fiscal transfers will be eroded by the dismantling of the Keynesian welfare systems so intrinsically related to the social democratic consensus politics of the early post-war Fordist era; and (if it happens) European Monetary Union will result in regional inequalities which will be a whole order of magnitude greater than those we see today.’
The author of the article was A.J. Fielding, the article bore a name from central casting (‘Industrial Change and Regional Development in Western Europe’) and the the relevant addition details as ‘volume 31′. The article was written in 1994.
