Study guide
European Politics
Midterm Review, Fall 2026
Health Care: measures and differences between the US and Europe
Indicators; Index
Life Expectancy, Infant Mortality, Morbidity
Total cost. Public / Private Mix (Share of cost borne by government; share of cost borne by private employers and employees). Technology. Accessibility. Wait times. Patient and Doctor Satisfaction with the Health Care system. Pharmaceuticals
Postwar settlement / consensus
Collectivism
Social Risks.
Taxation. Low-tax America versus high-tax Europe (but is it that simple?).
Welfare State / Workfare State: Parental Leave, Childcare, Education (University and Workforce Training), Healthcare, Working Hours per Year, Minimum Wage, Retirement
Social Spending: Transfers vs. Services
Work / Leisure Trade-offs; Unemployment, Part-time work, Employment-Population Ratio
Economic Democracy: Work Councils, Codetermination, Unionization Rates
Demography: Population Aging, Low Birth Rates, Immigration. Dependency Ratios. Stresses on Welfare States.
Hill: Reasons for Optimism
Alesina: Reasons for Pessimism
Linguistic Fractionalization
Racial Heterogeneity
“Benefits” and “costs” of diversity
Americans are from Mars; Europeans are from Venus: Foreign Aid, Trade and Use of the Military.
Entrepreneurship
The State (larger and more permanent than the government). War makes states.
Territory, defense, armies, need for taxes, public administration, law and order (policing, courts, jails)
Nations; the basis for national sentiment - religion, language, history (often invented / heroic).
How States try to create Nations: holidays, flags, anthems, national history courses, monuments, education systems.
States and Nations: Catalonia; Scotland, Northern Ireland, Belgium, Quebec. Regionally concentrated nations within a state. Multiple Identities, Federalism, Asymmetric Federalism, the breakup of multi-ethnic states?
Globalization
European Union: ECSC, EEC, EC, EU… U.S.E? Intergovernmental or Supranational?
Germany:
Division and Reunification of Germany; Berlin Airlift; Berlin Wall
Ossies versus Wessies
Angela Merkel
Refugee Crisis
Dependence on Russia for oil and gas
North-South divide in Europe
The Rise of the AfD
Britain:
Parliamentary supremacy? Reasons this argument is made.
Steady curtailment of the powers of the crown
Gradualism of British democratization.
England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland. Devolution under Tony Blair. Scottish Nationalism.
First past the post electoral system
Thatcher and the Neoliberal Revolution.
Immigrants, Gender, Age: Inequalities
Euroskepticism
Brexit
Prime Minister’s Question Time
Shadow Cabinet
Back benchers
France:
Absolutist monarchy, weak parliament. Reasons for French Revolution. Effects of French Revolution: unlike US, no stable democracy. Regime instability.
De Gaulle. Maginot Line. London at the BBC. Resistance. Poor relationship with Churchill and Roosevelt. French grandeur. The French ‘Non’ to both Britain and the US.
Vichy Regime.
Algeria. OAS.
Le Pen – Front Nacional
Immigrant incorporation. Where immigrants in France come from: North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, but previously from Italy, Spain, Portugal and Poland.
The veil.
Etatisme, dirigisme, ENA, National Champions, Indicative Planning.
The contentious French: protests and strikes, 1968
Semi-presidential system: President and Prime Minister. 2-round voting system for President
Military Affairs:
Mass citizen armies / Conscription to Volunteer and Professional armies
What states needed to do to be able to handle mass citizen armies (from draft to battlefield)
Changing technology
Peace movements and arguments
Teeth to tail ratio
U.S. criticism of European defense spending
Warfare state to welfare state
How Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed military thinking in Europe and exposed challenges in Europe’s defense strategy
Indicators and Index
Life Expectancy: The average number of years a person is projected to live based on current mortality rates; European countries consistently exceed the US average due to universal healthcare access and stronger social safety nets.
Infant Mortality: The number of infant deaths per 1,000 live births; significantly higher in the US than in Western Europe, reflecting socioeconomic inequalities and uneven prenatal care access.
Morbidity: The incidence or prevalence of disease and chronic illness within a population; European systems prioritize primary and preventive care to lower population morbidity.
Systemic Differences
Total Cost: Overall healthcare expenditure as a share of GDP; the US spends approximately 17–18% of GDP, whereas European nations typically spend 10–12% while providing universal coverage.
Public / Private Mix: The division of funding between government revenue and private entities; Europe finances care predominantly through taxation or statutory sickness funds, whereas the US relies heavily on voluntary, employer-sponsored private insurance.
Technology: The diffusion and utilization of advanced diagnostic equipment; the US leads in rapid adoption and high volume of high-tech procedures, which substantially inflates system-wide costs.
Accessibility: The degree to which all citizens can obtain medical care; European systems grant legal, universal entitlement, whereas US access is tied to employment status and private income.
Wait Times: The delay required to access elective surgery or specialist consultations; more prevalent in single-payer, gatekeeper systems (e.g., the UK NHS) than in the US for well-insured patients.
Patient and Doctor Satisfaction: Patient peace of mind regarding catastrophic medical costs is notably higher in Europe, while US physicians face higher administrative billing burdens.
Pharmaceuticals: Prescription drug regulation; European governments use single-buyer negotiations and statutory price controls, resulting in significantly lower prescription prices than in the unregulated US market.
Welfare State and the European Social Model
Postwar Settlement / Consensus: The broad cross-party agreement established after World War II balancing free-market capitalism with state intervention, full employment commitments, and comprehensive social safety nets.
Collectivism: The philosophical premise that society bears mutual responsibility for individual security and social risks, contrasting with American individual self-reliance.
Social Risks: Vulnerabilities common across the life cycle (sickness, old age, unemployment, disability, and poverty) mitigated by statutory welfare protections.
Taxation (Low-tax America vs. High-tax Europe): European nations levy higher total taxes (relying heavily on Value Added Taxes [VAT] and social security contributions) to fund public services that Americans must purchase privately through out-of-pocket spending.
Welfare State vs. Workfare State:
Welfare State: An institutional system that treats social support as an unconditional social right, promoting de-commodification.
Workfare State: A model that conditions public benefits on mandatory employment participation, job searches, or workforce retraining.
Parental Leave: Subsidized, job-protected leave following childbirth; standard and generous across Europe, but lacking federal statutory guarantees in the US.
Childcare: Heavily subsidized public early childhood care in Europe enabling parental workforce participation.
Education: Publicly funded, low- or zero-tuition university systems and robust vocational apprenticeship programs common in Europe.
Healthcare: Universal statutory entitlement to medical care funded by social solidarity.
Working Hours per Year: European workers log fewer annual hours due to legally mandated 4–6 week paid holidays and statutory workweek limits (e.g., France's 35-hour week).
Minimum Wage: Legally mandated wage floors or collectively bargained sector-wide wage minimums that prevent extreme working poverty.
Retirement: Generous, state-managed pay-as-you-go pension systems that replace a high percentage of pre-retirement earnings.
Social Spending (Transfers vs. Services):
Transfers: Direct cash disbursements to individuals (e.g., child allowances, unemployment stipends, state pensions).
Services: Direct state provision of physical infrastructure and social goods (e.g., public daycares, state hospitals, eldercare facilities).
Work / Leisure Trade-offs: European cultural and institutional preferences favor leisure and vacation over maximum income generation, resulting in lower annual hours worked compared to the US.
Labor Market Indicators:
Unemployment: The percentage of the active labor force seeking work; historically influenced in Europe by labor market rigidities and dismissal regulations.
Part-Time Work: Prevalent in several European economies (e.g., the Netherlands) to balance domestic duties and employment, often legally protected with pro-rated benefits.
Employment-Population Ratio: The proportion of working-age adults currently employed; varies significantly across Europe, with high participation in the Nordics and lower participation in Southern Europe.
Economic Democracy:
Works Councils: Elected factory- or office-level bodies representing worker interests on workplace conditions and layoffs.
Codetermination (Mitbestimmung): Legal mandate requiring worker and union representatives to hold seats on corporate supervisory boards (central to Germany).
Unionization Rates: The proportion of workers enrolled in labor unions; structurally higher in Europe, where collective bargaining agreements often cover non-union workers as well.
Demography, Diversity, and Societal Models
Demographic Pressures:
Population Aging: A rising median age driven by longevity and low fertility, shrinking the tax-paying workforce relative to retirees.
Low Birth Rates: Fertility rates across Europe are below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman.
Immigration: Essential for mitigating labor shortages, though it generates cultural and political debates over integration.
Dependency Ratio: The proportion of dependents (children and retirees) relative to the productive working-age cohort; rising ratios severely strain public pension and health budgets.
Stresses on Welfare States: Shrinking contributor pools paired with escalating healthcare and pension liabilities.
Debate on Diversity and Redistribution:
Hill (Optimism): The thesis that demographic diversity can rejuvenate aging European labor markets and that inclusive welfare states can successfully integrate diverse populations without collapsing.
Alesina (Pessimism): The political-economy thesis that racial and linguistic heterogeneity weakens popular support for redistribution, as majorities are less inclined to fund welfare for out-groups they perceive as different.
Linguistic Fractionalization: The statistical probability that two randomly selected citizens speak different native languages; historically linked to harder consensus-building on public spending.
Racial Heterogeneity: Societal demographic diversity, which research suggests is often exploited by populist factions to undermine universal social spending.
Benefits vs. Costs of Diversity: Economic dynamism, innovation, and demographic replenishment versus integration expenditures, social frictions, and political polarization.
Americans from Mars, Europeans from Venus (Robert Kagan):
Concept: Kagan's thesis that the US relies on hard power, military intervention, and unilateral strength ("Mars"), whereas Europe emphasizes soft power, international law, commercial diplomacy, and multilateral institutions ("Venus").
Foreign Aid and Trade: Europe prioritizes economic partnership agreements and developmental assistance over military intervention.
Entrepreneurship: The cultural and economic willingness to launch commercial ventures; Europe shows lower venture dynamism and greater risk aversion than the US due to tighter regulations, complex bankruptcy laws, and extensive safety nets.
The State, Nations, and Governance
The State: An enduring institutional entity that claims a legitimate monopoly over the use of physical force within a bounded geographic territory.
"War Makes States and States Make War" (Charles Tilly): The historical thesis that external military conflict forced rulers to centralize administrative authority, expand taxation, and build standing armies, creating the modern bureaucratic state.
Core Attributes: Fixed territory, external defense forces, compulsory tax systems, specialized administrative bureaucracy, and domestic legal enforcement (police, judiciaries, prisons).
Nations and National Sentiment: A community bound by shared cultural identity, language, religion, or historical myths ("imagined communities").
State-Led Nation Building: Deliberate government initiatives to forge a unified identity through national holidays, flags, state anthems, monuments, standardized national curricula, and mandatory military service.
States and Nations (Sub-State Nationalism):
Regionally Concentrated Nations: Distinct cultural groups confined to specific territories within a larger state (e.g., Catalonia in Spain, Scotland in the UK, Flanders/Wallonia in Belgium, Quebec in Canada).
Multiple Identities: The capacity of citizens to maintain concurrent regional and state loyalties.
Federalism: The constitutional division of sovereign authority between central and regional levels of government.
Asymmetric Federalism: A system where certain sub-state regions possess greater degrees of autonomy or distinct legal competencies than others (e.g., Scotland within the UK, Basque Country in Spain).
Breakup of Multi-Ethnic States: The disintegration of states lacking cross-cutting identities when central coercive authority weakens (e.g., Yugoslavia, the USSR).
Globalization & European Integration:
Evolution: Progressed from the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC, 1951) to the European Economic Community (EEC, 1957), European Community (EC), and the European Union (EU, 1993 Maastricht Treaty).
United States of Europe (U.S.E.): The political vision of transforming the EU into a single federal supranational state.
Intergovernmentalism vs. Supranationalism:
Intergovernmentalism: Decision-making where national governments retain sovereign vetoes and cooperate through negotiation (e.g., the European Council).
Supranationalism: Governance where delegated independent EU institutions hold power above national governments and can enact binding majority decisions (e.g., the European Commission, European Court of Justice).
Germany
Division and Reunification: The post-WWII partition into democratic West Germany (FRG) and communist East Germany (GDR); unified in 1990 following the collapse of the Soviet bloc.
Berlin Airlift (1948–1949): Western allied operation flying supplies into West Berlin to break the Soviet ground blockade.
Berlin Wall (1961–1989): Barrier erected by East Germany to prevent mass emigration to the West, serving as the central symbol of the Cold War.
Ossies vs. Wessies: Informal cultural, economic, and psychological divide between citizens of the former East (Ossies) and West (Wessies), marked by differences in wealth, political outlook, and identity.
Angela Merkel: Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Chancellor from 2005 to 2021 who governed through centrist consensus, crisis management, and pragmatic policy execution.
2015 Refugee Crisis: Germany accepted over one million asylum seekers fleeing Middle Eastern conflicts, encapsulated by Merkel's slogan "Wir schaffen das" ("We can manage this"), triggering domestic political backlash.
Dependence on Russian Energy: Long-term strategic reliance on cheap Russian natural gas via the Nord Stream pipelines, which left Germany economically exposed during the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
North-South Divide: Economic disparity between Germany's prosperous, industrial southern states (Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg) and its rust-belt northern and eastern regions.
Rise of the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland): Right-wing populist party established in 2013 as an anti-Euro movement, evolving into an anti-immigrant, nationalist party with strong electoral support in the eastern states.
Britain
Parliamentary Supremacy: The constitutional principle that Parliament is the supreme legal authority in the UK, capable of creating or ending any law without judicial strike-down.
Curtailment of Crown Powers: The progressive reduction of monarchical power through historical milestones like the Magna Carta (1215), the English Civil War, and the Glorious Revolution (1688).
Gradualism: The UK's pattern of evolutionary, incremental democratic reform (e.g., Reform Acts of 1832, 1867, 1884) rather than sudden, violent revolution.
Devolution: The statutory granting of local legislative and executive powers from Westminster to regional assemblies in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland under Tony Blair’s Labour government (1997–1999).
First-Past-the-Post (FPTP): The single-member district plurality electoral system that tends to produce single-party majority governments while penalizing parties with geographically dispersed votes.
Thatcher and the Neoliberal Revolution: Margaret Thatcher’s 1980s agenda characterized by state enterprise privatization, trade union curtailment, financial deregulation, and market-oriented state retrenchment.
Inequalities: Persistent socio-economic divisions structured along immigration status, gender, and widening generational gaps in housing and pension access.
Euroskepticism and Brexit: Long-standing British wariness of European supranational regulations, which culminated in the June 2016 referendum and formal UK withdrawal from the EU in 2020.
Parliamentary Procedures:
Prime Minister’s Question Time (PMQs): A weekly 30-minute constitutional convention where the Prime Minister answers direct questions from the Leader of the Opposition and backbenchers.
Shadow Cabinet: Senior members of the official opposition party who scrutinize their counterpart government cabinet ministers and present alternative policies.
Backbenchers: Members of Parliament who do not hold ministerial or shadow ministerial positions and sit behind the front benches.
France
Absolutist Monarchy to Revolutionary Instability: France's history of centralized monarchy (Louis XIV) followed by the 1789 Revolution, producing successive regime changes (Five Republics, two Empires, Bourbon/Orleanist Restorations) before democratic consolidation.
Charles de Gaulle and Gaullism: Leader of the French Resistance who established the Fifth Republic (1958); prioritized French national independence (grandeur), developed an independent nuclear deterrent (force de frappe), and rejected Anglo-American leadership (vetoing British EEC entry).
Maginot Line: Fortified concrete defensive line built during the 1930s along the German border that was outflanked by the German blitzkrieg through the Ardennes in 1940.
Vichy Regime: The authoritarian collaborationist French regime led by Marshal Philippe Pétain from 1940 to 1944 following military defeat.
Algerian War and the OAS: Brutal decolonization conflict (1954–1962) that collapsed the Fourth Republic; the OAS (Organisation armée secrète) carried out domestic and colonial terrorist campaigns to keep Algeria French.
Front National (National Front / Rassemblement National): Far-right nationalist party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen and rebranded by Marine Le Pen, focusing on immigration restrictions, law and order, and French cultural sovereignty.
Immigrant Incorporation & Republican Model: Integration approach based on universal assimilation into French civic identity rather than multicultural group rights; historically absorbed European migrants (Italians, Spanish, Poles), but faces tensions integrating post-colonial North and Sub-Saharan African populations.
The Veil Controversy (Laïcité): Constitutional secularism requiring absolute public neutrality on religion, leading to legal bans on conspicuous religious symbols (such as Islamic headscarves) in public schools.
State Economic Tradition:
Étatisme: The philosophy of a strong, centralized state directing national life.
Dirigisme: State intervention and directive control over the domestic economy.
ENA (École Nationale d'Administration): Prestigious elite postgraduate institution that trained high-ranking civil servants and political leaders.
National Champions: Strategic, state-subsidized corporations promoted to compete globally (e.g., Airbus, EDF, SNCF).
Indicative Planning: Non-mandatory state economic blueprints outlining multi-year investment priorities.
The Contentious French: A political culture that frequently uses street demonstrations, strikes, and social mobilization (e.g., the May 1968 student-worker uprising) to check executive power.
Semi-Presidential System: Dual executive structure featuring a popularly elected, powerful President who directs foreign and defense policy, and a Prime Minister responsible to the National Assembly who runs domestic administration; utilizes a two-round majoritarian electoral process.
Military Affairs and European Defense
Conscription to Volunteer Armies: The transition from Napoleonic mass citizen armies (levée en masse) to modern, smaller, highly professional, volunteer forces focused on high-tech capabilities.
Logistical Demands of Mass Armies: The institutional infrastructure required by modern warfare: state-run draft boards, universal medical screenings, centralized supply chains, and rail networks.
Changing Military Technology: The shift from industrial-scale attrition warfare to precision-guided weapons, drone systems, cyber capabilities, and automated battlefield reconnaissance.
Peace Movements: Influential Cold War and contemporary civil society groups (e.g., anti-nuclear protests in Germany and the UK) advocating for disarmament, diplomatic neutrality, and reduced defense spending.
Teeth-to-Tail Ratio: The proportion of military personnel in active combat roles ("teeth") relative to administrative, logistical, and technical support staff ("tail").
US Criticism of European Defense: Long-standing Washington frustration that European NATO allies fail to meet the alliance target of spending at least 2% of GDP on defense, relying instead on American security guarantees.
Warfare State to Welfare State: The structural post-WWII reallocation of European national budgets away from military hardware toward healthcare, pensions, and social services.
Impact of Russia’s 2022 Invasion of Ukraine: A turning point (Zeitenwende) forcing Europe to re-arm, expand joint procurement, address depleted ammunition stockpiles, revive territorial defense plans, and integrate Finland and Sweden into NATO.