The Lisbon Process, Re-Visited - A Reality Check of the European Social Model

Abstract

This article portrays a bleak picture of European realities. Analyzing world social, gender, ecological and economic development on the basis of the main 9 predictors, compatible with the majority of the more than 240 published studies on the cross-national determinants of the "human condition" around the globe, we first present results of 32 equations about development performance in 131 countries with available data. We come to the conclusion that while there is some confirmation for the "blue", market paradigm as the best and most viable way of world systems governance concerning economic growth, re-distribution and gender issues, the "red-green" counter-position is confirmed concerning such vital and basic indicators as life expectancy and the human development index.We also show that Europe's crisis is not caused by what the neo-liberals term a "lack of world economic openness" but rather, on the contrary, by the enormous amount of passive globalization that Europe -together with Latin America -experienced over recent years. Our combined measure of the velocity of the globalization process is based on the increases of capital penetration over time, on the increases of economic openness over time, and on the decreases of the comparative price level over time: the United States, Mexico, larger parts of Africa and large sections of West and South Asia escaped from the combined pressures of globalization, while Eastern and Southern Latin America, very large parts of Europe, Russia and China were characterized by a specially high tempo of globalization.

Plug&Play Places: Lifeworlds of Multilocal Creative Knowledge Workers

“…Blanke 2004;Social Platform 2004;Tausch 2006;Kok 2004). The final evaluations in 2010 were not much better.…”