La crise économique et financière de 2008-2009 soulève une série de questions d'importance majeure. Comment le monde a-t-il fait face aux crises précédentes ? La crise doit-elle remettre sensiblement en cause l'organisation actuelle du système financier international ? Les médias se sont-ils cantonnés dans un rôle d'information ou ont-ils joué un rôle d'acteur ? Que penser des plans de sauvetage des diverses institutions, en Belgique et dans le monde ? Peut-on parler d'un manque de régulation des marchés et des institutions financières ou d'une mauvaise régulation ? Quel rôle imaginer pour les États et les organismes internationaux dans la vie économique ? La crise va-t-elle conduire à plus d'Europe ou ouvrira-t-elle une réflexion globale sur la place de l'humain dans l'économie ? Enfin, dira-t-on demain que l'entrée dans le 21e siècle s'est faite à l'automne 2008 ? Il apparaît, au vu des multiples facettes d'une problématique aussi complexe, que l'analyse de la crise financière et de ses conséquences appelle une approche interdisciplinaire. Cet ouvrage relève ce défi et rassemble les contributions d'économistes, de juristes, de politologues, d'historiens et de spécialistes du monde des médias qui ont accepté de débattre ensemble du sujet lors d'un colloque tenu à Louvain-la-Neuve les 7 et 8 mai 2009.
Cet ouvrage vient enrichir la réflexion sur les puissances émergentes (en dépassant le seul cadre des BRICS pour intégrer des puissances telles que l'Iran) en soulevant des questions peu fréquentes, voire inédites, quant à leur rôle dans la recomposition des relations internationales contemporaines. À travers des communications pluridisciplinaires relevant du droit international, des relations internationales ou de la géopolitique, il s'agit de s'interroger sur la notion de puissance aujourd'hui. Dans cette perspective, les auteurs analysent les attributs des puissances émergentes en matière de sécurité internationale. Mettent-elles en place des réformes dans leurs ressources militaires en vue de devenir des acteurs à part entière de la sécurité internationale, ou optent-elles plutôt pour des stratégies de coopération visant à forger des alliances entre puissances émergentes ainsi que traditionnelles (telles que la France ou le Royaume-Uni) ? Ont-elles vocation à prendre en charge la sécurité régionale dans leur sphère d'influence ? Manifestent-elles des velléités d'expansion comparables à celles des puissances traditionnelles ? Ces questionnements visent à offrir un cadrage général autour de la notion de puissances émergentes, et s'appuient sur de nombreuses études de cas.
Recent years in Europe have been marked by efforts to introduce changes in labour law in order to boost employment, reduce labour costs and increase flexibility of national labour markets. The increased international competition has led to major labour law reforms in some European countries but the majority of national developments still indicate a rather limited reformist approach. Evolutionary rather than revolutionary efforts were initiated to balance the wage-setting mechanisms and to soften the dismissal law protection to create room for flexibility, to increase employment by promoting atypical forms of employment, to accommodate legal regulations to technological advances and the new types of economy. Accompanying social security measures intended to improve the efficiency of active labour market policies.
The current selection of academic contributions intends to provide an overview of recent developments in the legal regulation of labour markets in Eastern and Western European countries. The authors' contributions could not cover all the aspects of the current state of recent reformist efforts on the labour markets. However, by picturing separate developments in different European countries, it intends to assist in identifying regional similarities. Furthermore, it provides opportunities for exchange of ideas, experiences and practices for shaping labour law both at European and national level.
Since the end of the nineteenth century the dairy sectors of some industrialised European and American countries have experienced a phase of growth that took place at a different rate and in a different manner in each country, and which was made possible by the availability of raw materials and a more widespread knowledge of scientific and technological methods. The sector's expansion was favoured by a revolution in transport networks, the beginning of globalisation in world markets and, decisively, by advances in packaging and refrigeration techniques. Italy in particular, despite its low availability of raw materials compared to other countries, rose quickly throughout the last century to become one of the largest international producers and exporters of cheese, especially of high value PDO cheeses. What factors were behind this achievement and which were the strengths and weaknesses of the sector during the twentieth century? The articles presented in this volume attempt to provide an answer to these questions from different points of view and using different interpretative approaches. The geographical range covered by these studies also reaches beyond Italy in order to look at other countries with relatively ancient dairy traditions. This comparative approach, although limited to just a few countries, is important in that it allows us to describe the evolution of a milk and dairy sector which has had such a large influence on the economic life of many regions in the Italian peninsula.
A school of thought hails microcredit as a social innovation, a messiah to enable people to help themselves out of poverty through entrepreneurship. An opposing school of thought considers microcredit as a capitalist demon ensnaring the poor in poverty and debt. The layman and the million professionals working in this industry are at a loss to make sense of the stories that circulate about microcredit. This book provides this sense-making, useful for students, professionals, investors and researchers who are attracted to this field.
Poverty is a wicked problem, akin to Hydra, the Greek mythological monster with many heads. As microcredit tries to balance multiple objectives to grapple with these multiple heads, it has needed to shift the weapons it uses. The arsenal for this battle has needed new philosophies, changing ethics, differing missions, institutional partnerships, the latest technologies and new products. These rapid innovations have differed in speed across the world, with adaptations in developed and developing countries. This book presents these with many case studies and field research.
It is clear that development initiatives, no matter how financial, cross academic disciplines. At the very least, they affect disciplines such as economics, business management, sociology, history, geography, politics, legal systems in place, as well as science, which is evolving at such a high speed. The book provides this multidisciplinary view and motivates future research and practices.
This collection is a great contribution to the field of violence and security studies. It presents six comparative, cross-regional analyses of violence and security, with both theoretical contributions and empirical researches conducted in Mexico, Morocco, Colombia, South Africa and Brazil. The book looks at violence and security within the broader contexts of globalization and regionalization as forces that shape the way discourses are understood with very concrete real-life consequences. Articles in the collection also discuss identity politics, indigenous cultures, race and ethnicity, and mass media in relation to violence and security. The book is uniquely tri-lingual with articles written in English, Spanish and French, and it also includes a preface by RISC president Harlan Koff.
Ce recueil, qui rassemble les actes des colloques internationaux de Vienne (2017) et de Mayence (2018), est l'aboutissement d'un travail interdisciplinaire de longue haleine conduit par de jeunes chercheurs et des chercheurs confi rmés provenant d'horizons divers et de plusieurs pays d'Europe. Il porte sur le serment, envisagé comme acte public performatif qui engage le corps de la personne qui le prononce, étudié depuis les débuts de l'Europe moderne jusqu'à nos jours. Ce parcours répartit les différentes périodes étudiées de part et d'autre d'un point de bascule : celui qui sépare l'époque où le serment est placé sous l'autorité de Dieu et de son représentant le Prince, et l'époque où, laïc, il repose sur le lien qui unit le citoyen à une abstraction, par exemple la Constitution de la nation dont il est le sujet.
Der vorliegende Band beinhaltet die Beiträge zu zwei internationalen Tagungen (Wien 2017 und Mainz 2018). Er ist das Ergebnis eines dreijährigen interdisziplinären Forschungsprojekts von Wissenschaftlern und Nachwuchsforschern unterschiedlicher Fachrichtungen aus verschiedenen europäischen Ländern. Das Projekt befasste sich mit dem Eid als performativem ffentlichem Akt, der die Person, die ihn leistet, physisch bindet, und beinhaltet Fallstudien von der frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart. So wird auch eine interessante Umbruchzeit mit behandelt: von einer Epoche, in der der Eid unter die Aufsicht Gottes und seines Vertreters, des Fürsten, gestellt war, zu einer Epoche, in der er, in säkularisierter Form, den Bürger an eine abstrakte Grße etwa die Verfassung der Nation band und bis heute bindet.
The European Union's internal market is the «hard core» of integration and by far its most precious asset. However a number of deep-seated factors have impeded the development of a systematic and wide-ranging academic research programme dedicated to the internal market. The purpose of this book is to begin to address this predicament with a tri-disciplinary analysis of the internal market, as scant opportunities for mutual understanding and learning across disciplines (law, economics and politics) currently exist. Internal market scholars from all three disciplines collaborated on this project, in which each chapter was read and critiqued by a scholar from a different discipline. The editors trust that this unique exercise reveals to many readers the enormous potential for in-depth and continuous analysis of the internal market and all that it entails. It also provides an accessible text for students and scholars from all three disciplines interested in the internal market.
As of a consequence of the ongoing economic crisis, in 2010 there was a marked deterioration in cross-border relations between Italy and Germany. In both countries the press published articles openly blaming economic hardship on the squandering attitude of southerners or the egoistic and mercantilist policies of northerners. The reigning confusion among economists, split between pro- and anti-Euro positions in both countries, could do nothing to counter this growing wave of populist nationalism. Out of this situation grew the idea of organizing a conference to discuss the theoretical issues implied by recent economic policy debates, purging them of ideological and nationalistic overtones. This volume publishes the proceedings of the resulting international colloquium, «Economic crisis and new nationalisms: German economic policy as perceived by European partners», which was organized by the Foundation Cesifin Alberto Predieri and held in Florence in November 2012.
The current crisis is the expression of the struggle of a dominant `fictitious capital' over real capital to redistribute the global mass of wealth. It is translated into an expansion of assets in financial markets sustained by an inverted pyramid of credits without being backed by a major growth of the real economy, which is increasingly global in scope. The conversion of fictitious capital into real capital is a geopolitical item to understand acquisitions of land in the South to produce agro-fuels, for example. Conversion from fictitious to real capital also happens, the other way round, when military expenditures are financed by more public debt, as is the case for the US today. Financial capital engages in a warlike strategy to establish a global order under its hegemony, without borders and citizens. Employment, social-economic security and political stability will be a worldwide problem. The greatest fear of the capital is that the Eurozone will become a part of the Euro-Asian Continental Bloc. This definitely means a possible military conflict of the US with Russia and China. This crisis is one of the Western `civilization' itself.
This book attempts to address an important question: where is the European project going? As Europe struggles with the most profound economic and social crises in recent history, what happens to the promises of freedom, democracy, equality and respect for the inviolable and inalienable rights of the human person proclaimed in the Preamble of the Treaty on European Union? How does the European Union intend to demonstrate its commitment to fundamental social rights at a time of widespread deregulation and an increasingly precarious labour market? How can we further enhance the democratic and efficient functioning of European institutions when there is a growing distance between citizens and political elites? This publication is based on papers given at the international conference «Citizenship and Solidarity in the European Union - from the Charter of Fundamental Rights to the Crisis: The State of the Art», which took place in the School of Law at the University of Minho, Portugal, in May 2012. The line-up of contributors includes scholars from southern and northern Europe and Brazil, and together the papers constitute a lively and productive debate about the future of Europe.
A strong brand is a key factor in business success, both in the short-term and in the long-term. Brands help to provide a better understanding of the corporate and commercial culture of different firms. A brand reveals the knowledge capital held by a company, but also often reflects the perception of the firm held by consumers and stake-holders. The book explores the historical process of building some of the most famous brands among European businesses and examines the extent to which the brands have contributed to the image of the firms and their differentiation against competitors in the industry.
In 2010, the European Studies Unit of the University of Liege, under the aegis of the Belgian Presidency of the Council of the European Union, invited young researchers from all over Europe to meet and discuss the existing rules governing the trade of items that may be used for both peaceful and non-peaceful purposes. During a two-day conference held in Chaudfontaine, Belgium, each participant presented the export control system of his or her member state. Debates took place with eminent specialists, representatives of the European institutions and representatives from industry on the challenges faced by European states when trying to reconcile trade performance and global international security. The potential role played by the European Union in the regulation of this so-called «sensitive trade», as well as the past, present and future of European harmonisation over this issue, was also at the core of the discussion. This book brings together these contributions from a wide variety of member states and demonstrates that the future of the European motto, «United in Diversity», lies in greater coherence on international issues. Initiatives such as this newly created «Chaudfontaine Group» will undoubtedly contribute to this achievement.
During the last decade the rapid growth of justice and home affairs as an internal policy making domain of the European Union has led to the Union emerging as an increasingly important international actor in this field. This book covers the institutional and legal framework of the external dimension of EU justice and home affairs; issues of policy interaction as well as specific challenges; policy responses and results in the fields of migration policy; judicial cooperation; counter-terrorism; and cooperation with major international partners. Taking into account the changes introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon as well as the priorities set by the 2010-2014 Stockholm Programme the book provides an in-depth exploration of the political and legal dynamics of a major new dimension of the EU.
In Economics, networks are increasingly used to describe the many links created between independent companies, as well as between them and other institutions (universities, banks, venture capital, etc.). In the current global and knowledge-based economy, they can be characterised as knowledge factories and knowledge boosters. They feed the internal processes of innovation (collaborative innovation) or the external processes of innovation, created by the propagation effects that come from inter-firm collaboration. The book explains how innovation networks are at the origin of the production of new knowledge that will be transformed and used in common as well as in separated production processes. This characteristic of networks as knowledge factories gives incentives to further investment in the production of knowledge and ensures the cumulativeness of the innovation process. Some of the authors clearly take a territorial point of view and study how clusters (in different parts of the world: Europe, Eastern Asia and North America) propelled by the quality of the innovation networks they enclose, can be characterised as knowledge pools into which the local actors will be able to draw to reinforce their individual and collective competitiveness. This book also includes analyses of the quality of the networks built within clusters, which may help their identification.
What is the worth of the social economy? What worth does the social economy produce? Co-operatives, not-for-profit and mutual benefits organizations as well as foundations share common values that colour the way they perform and how they manage to do so. Yet, little is known about how the social economy is actually being evaluated, and how evaluation may reinforce or weaken this specificity. This book fills a gap in the literature about the social economy. It seeks to make a critical assessment of the interests to which the social economy of today must cater and for which questions of evaluation appear to be the most telling. A first set of contributions is made up of four theoretical papers inspired by various disciplinary fields: management, economy, sociology, philosophy. A second set of contributions is composed of seven national analyses of how the social economy is evaluated in different institutional contexts: France, Québec (Canada), United Kingdom, United States, Brazil, Portugal and Japan. The conclusion of the book summarizes the findings of this study and formulates some questions addressed to policy designers, evaluation specialists and social economy actors.
In the European Union, competition law has expanded and matured, assuming a key role in the promotion of consumer welfare, economic progress and public interest in general. Nevertheless, several issues remain open. Should the European Union remain faithful to antitrust public enforcement or fully consider the complementary role of private enforcement? Are the European solutions concerning exclusionary abuses coherent and predictable? What role should National Competition Authorities play in the context of State Aid? This book attempts to analyse and discuss some open, selective questions concerning three particular topics on competition law that are becoming highly relevant in the European and national praxis: antitrust private enforcement, exclusionary abuses and state aid. To address these issues, two seminars and international conferences, supported by the European Commission, took place at Católica Porto School of Law, Catholic University of Portugal, in March 2014 and March 2015. This publication includes the papers presented in those events, which gathered well-known and respected scholars and practitioners in the field of competition law, leading to a productive debate about EU competition law challenges in the next decade.
La gestión de la diversidad religiosa constituye uno de los desafíos más importantes y actuales de las sociedades democráticas. Este volumen ofrece propuestas de armonización y acomodo social, institucional o normativo para una más adecuada gestión de la diversidad religiosa desde un enfoque de derechos humanos. El trabajo aquí publicado resulta de una investigación, llevada a cabo por un equipo interdisciplinar del Instituto de Derechos Humanos de la Universidad de Deusto, sobre demandas sociales y prácticas de armonización de la diversidad religiosa en el espacio público local. En este marco, los textos en este volumen combinan diversas aproximaciones, partiendo de una descripción del marco jurídico, para pasar posteriormente al análisis de las demandas de los grupos minoritarios recogidas a través de una investigación empírica. Este análisis va dando paso progresivamente a una reflexión teórica sobre las estrategias del acomodo y sobre la conveniencia de reenfocar la aproximación al debate sobre laicidad y acomodo de la diversidad religiosa a través del principio general de interdicción de la discriminación que opera en toda sociedad democrática.
Since the 1990s and the 2000s, Western social protection systems have experienced a turn towards activation. This turn consists of the multiplication of measures aimed at bringing those who are unemployed closer to participation in the labour market. These measures often induce a strengthening of the conditions that must be met in order to receive social benefits. It is in this well known context that the authors gathered in this book decided to take a closer look at the relationship between activation policies for the unemployed and the right and the duty to work. If activation measures are likely to increase transitions towards the labour market, we can also make the assumption that they may, particularly when they are marked with the seal of coercion, hinder or dramatically reduce the right to freely chosen work. In such circumstances, the realisation of the «right to work», which is often stated to be the aim of those who promote activation, tends in practice to be reduced to an increasing pressure being exerted on the unemployed. In this case, isn't it actually the duty to work that is particularly reinforced? After an historical and philosophical perspective on the issue, this assumption is confronted with the developments observed in the United States and in France, and then with the guidelines laid down in international human rights instruments. What follows is a discussion of two alternatives to the dominant activation model: the basic income guarantee and the employment guarantee.
Si la mondialisation a intensifié les échanges commerciaux, elle a également généré des flux migratoires sans précédent qui s'expliquent en partie par l'internationalisation du marché du travail et, pour certains pays, par un besoin accru de main d'oeuvre étrangère. Cette dynamique migratoire a ranimé les problématiques complexes liées à l'identité nationale et à l'intégration des nouveaux arrivants. L'immigration et la « diversité culturelle » qu'elle implique provoquent fréquemment d'intenses débats dans les sphères publique, politique et médiatique. Sur la question de l'emploi en particulier, la diversité culturelle pose des défis inédits aux organisations et aux entreprises qui doivent composer avec une main d'oeuvre plurielle et repenser leurs pratiques de gestion des ressources humaines. Mais qu'en est-il concrètement de l'accès et des modalités d'intégration des travailleurs issus de l'immigration au marché du travail local ?
L'ambition de cet ouvrage ne tient pas seulement au développement d'une analyse critique des pratiques et des stratégies d'accompagnement des travailleurs étrangers et de l'hétérogénéité des mécanismes de discrimination. Ce volume entend aussi mettre en lumière la question essentielle des représentations des travailleurs étrangers qu'ont les employeurs, les salariés, les professionnels du travail social et des organismes chargés de l'insertion professionnelle. Toutefois, cette analyse s'intéresse également au regard que les bénéficiaires eux-mêmes portent sur les dispositifs d'accompagnement en termes d'insertion professionnelle.
Réunissant des contributions d'auteurs établis sur trois continents différents, cet ouvrage combine plusieurs approches disciplinaires pour proposer une analyse des nombreuses politiques, pratiques et représentations de la diversité culturelle dans le monde du travail dans plusieurs sociétés d'Europe et des Amériques, notamment à travers diverses études de cas éclairantes.
Le Belge Édouard Empain obtient en 1898 la concession du Métro de Paris, qu'il construit et exploite. Pour alimenter son Métro en énergie, Empain devient producteur d'électricité et fonde la Société d'électricité de Paris. Déjà présent en France depuis les années 1880, le groupe Empain ne cesse dès lors plus de croître dans ce pays. Fleurons d'un empire industriel de dimension mondiale, ses entreprises comptent parmi les plus importantes du paysage économique français.
La croissance du groupe Empain en France relève d'une saga à la fois industrielle et familiale. Trois générations se succèdent : un grand industriel européen, visionnaire et innovateur ; son frère ; ses fils. Des personnages hauts en couleur, très différents, reliés pour le meilleur et pour le pire par le sang et l'argent.
Cette histoire, dévoilée de l'intérieur et jusqu'alors mal connue, a été enfouie dans la mémoire nationale sous les décombres de la Troisième République et éclipsée après Seconde Guerre mondiale par la nationalisation de l'électricité et la municipalisation du Métro.
L'économie occupe une place importante dans la société, au point de cristalliser un ensemble de questions socialement vives. Cet ouvrage aborde les enjeux de société à partir de l'oeuvre de Léon Walras (1834-1910). Ce dernier est souvent présenté comme l'un des pères fondateurs de la Science économique. On oublie toutefois que Léon Walras était également un humaniste, qui a cherché à populariser ses travaux au nom de la paix dans le monde. Les différentes contributions de cet ouvrage reviennent ainsi, à l'occasion du centenaire de la mort de Léon Walras, sur son analyse économique et philosophique qui continue encore aujourd'hui à alimenter de nombreux débats.
En proposant le 9 mai 1950 la création d'une Haute Autorité du Charbon et de l'Acier, Robert Schuman, inspiré par Jean Monnet, choisit un chemin fonctionnaliste pour parvenir à une Europe unie. L'Europe communautaire vit depuis avec ce schéma. Que ce soit le projet de marché commun qui conduit aux traités de Rome ou la mise en place du système monétaire européen, la logique est la même : les solidarités économiques devraient déboucher sur un surcroît d'intégration politique. Pourtant, dès l'amorce de la construction européenne, on s'aperçut de la difficulté à passer, par le biais de l'économie, à une plus grande unité politique. Ce constat revêt une acuité particulière dans le contexte actuel de la crise que traverse le projet européen et légitime le sujet des troisièmes journées d'études accueillies à la Maison de Robert Schuman qui pose la question de l'Europe par l'économie. En interrogeant les héritages historiques mais aussi en mettant en perspective les débats d'aujourd'hui relatifs à la dimension économique de la construction européenne, et cela à une période cruciale de son histoire, les communications rassemblées dans le présent ouvrage contribuent, par une approche pluridisciplinaire, au nécessaire travail d'analyse afin de dresser un état des lieux de l'intégration économique et monétaire et de dessiner les voies possibles pour l'avenir du projet européen.
L'innovation est au coeur du modèle dynamique de croissance fondé sur l'incertitude, le risque et le profit. Dans la crise actuelle et la mondialisation, l'entrepreneur, l'entreprise et les institutions publiques d'action économique sont interpelés par le besoin de renouveler au plus vite les technologies, les organisations, les modes de production et de consommation. Ce livre définit l'innovation et l'applique en partant du modèle des 3 « A » : analyser ses propres forces et faiblesses et celles du contexte technique, économique et social pour anticiper le changement et agir pour s'adapter ou, au contraire, pour conduire le progrès. Les études présentées par les universitaires, les managers de l'innovation et des décideurs politiques s'accordent sur le fait que l'action entrepreneuriale et la politique publique pour être efficaces doivent penser l'innovation comme un système : la frontière entre recherche, industrie et innovation étant de plus en plus perméable, il est nécessaire que les mécanismes économiques se trouvent en phase les uns par rapport aux autres. La synchronisation des processus sociotechniques est à la base du succès des activités innovantes et de l'amorce d'une nouvelle trajectoire de croissance.