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The Democratic Welfare State: A European Regime Under the Strain of European Integration. IHS Political Science Series: 2000, No. 68

Offe, Claus (2000) The Democratic Welfare State: A European Regime Under the Strain of European Integration. IHS Political Science Series: 2000, No. 68. [Working Paper]

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    Abstract

    States are organizations of governance that apply to the people living in a defined territory. But in order to sustain such governance, the people must not just individually obey the law, but also colletively conceive of themselves as "We, the People..", with whom the law originates. For only if I, the individual citizen, have reasons to trust that, they, my fellow citizens, are actually willing to also obey the law, I’ll do so myself. This indispensible sense of belonging to a civic community can be based upon a variety of factors: ethno-cultural, linguistic, civic republican (as in "constitutional patriotism") or social justice. Applying this notion of an indispensible civic infrastructure to the case of European integration, the author discusses a number of potential sources from which the view might be derived that what happens in Europe is a matter of "us, the Europeans". In the absence of a democratic regime in Europe, as well as a European welfare state (to say nothing about a strictly "European culture"), it is not easy to find out possible foundations of European "identity".

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    Item Type: Working Paper
    Subjects for non-EU documents: EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > europeanisation/europeanization & European identity
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > social policy > welfare state
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > political affairs > democracy/democratic deficit
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > Institute for Advanced Studies (Vienna), Department of Political Science > IHS Political Science Series
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 07 Mar 2003
    Page Range: p. 36
    Last Modified: 15 Feb 2011 17:15
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/242

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