What’s European about Europe? Potential and weaknesses of the European social model – James Wickham

Résumé du document

This text studies the case of the European Social Model. James Wickham defines and proves the existence of the European Social Model. His main idea is that this model is the main feature of the Europe's definition. He adopts the commonly recognized idea that you cannot define something otherwise than in opposition with another thing; this other being here the US liberal model. It is easy to understand that the author stands against the American model. Wickham then demonstrates the existence of a common European model, mainly based on the welfare State and what ensues from it. He exposes the main features of this model, the social and economic citizenship, the lesser big inequality that ensues from the European model than the American one, the difference between the US's charity and the European welfare state, etc.

According to Wickham, what defines the European Social Model is its difference of point of view from the US model; the ESM doesn't seek the profit at any cost, like the American one, but is looking forward to serve the user citizen. In a second time, the author, aware of the critics against the European Social Model, tries to show that the inefficiency of the European Social Model is disputable, and is mainly a matter of perspective (as he criticize, in a very anti-liberal tradition, the choice of GNB (it also works for the GDP) as the main comparison indicator between the economies, and suggests that if we used the HDI instead, the economies ranking would be much different).

Extraits

[...] Potential and weaknesses of the European social model James Wickham This text studies the case of the European Social Model. James Wickham defines and proves the existence of the European Social Model. His main idea is that this model is the main feature of the Europe's definition. He adopts the commonly recognized idea that you cannot define something otherwise than in opposition with another thing; this other being here the US liberal model. It is easy to understand that the author stands against the American model. [...]

[...] He exposes the main features of this model, the social and economic citizenship, the lesser big inequality that ensues from the European model than the American one, the difference between the US's charity and the European welfare state, etc. According to Wickham, what defines the European Social Model is its difference of point of view from the US model; the ESM doesn't seek the profit at any cost, like the American one, but is looking forward to serve the user citizen. [...]

[...] Actually, if this point of view seems very humanist, one may say that it is also quite utopist to state so; it would be having too much faith in the human nature to forget the rationalist egoist, the Mancur Olson's free rider, whom will take advantage of the situation without contributing to the ideal of this method. This argument makes the transition with the key feature to analyze this text; the economic crisis which struck the world in 2008. Wickham's arguments are based on a strong, efficient, and above all, rich. [...]

[...] This method led to a critical lack of innovation (which is, according to Schumpeter, the main cause of growth), as the shareholder share of the benefits overtook the one dedicated to the research. This analysis has been used a lot since the crisis, in order to recreate the growth with which the European economies are yearning for. As a conclusion, Wickham's analysis seems very relevant, but would gain to be revised with the current crisis taken into account. Sources: Wickham, James (2004). ?What?s European about Europe? Potential and weaknesses of the European Social Model?? [...]

[...] Actually, the labour cost is currently criticized in many countries as the cause of the European lack of competitiveness. Moreover, this European Social Model also assumes that the State is a good manager, which it is, as the crisis revealed it, clearly not always. The disastrous situation of the Greek and Spanish economies is due to an equally disastrous management of these states. Aznar, the former Spanish Prime minister, put Spain into a deep crisis by generating a huge real estate bubble after constructing an enormous number of houses and urging people to contract loans to buy a house. [...]