Progress Report on the New Member States: Twenty Years of Social and Political Developments [antikvár]

Progress Report on the New Member States: Twenty Years of Social and Political Developments Preface: The Dream about Sustania in the New Mennber States The global crisis has deeply shaken the new member states (NMS) and it hasclearlydemonstrated theirstrength and weaknesses. The crisis has proven painfully that there has been no linear development in the NMS, neither in Europeanization nor in Democratization. The social history of the new member states in the last twenty years is a very complex issue, indeed, first of all when elaborated in a close European context. It can only be grasped in a "post-modern" way, covering its basic dimensions in separate chapters according to their different logic and approaches. Thus, the three chapters of this book are to some extent complete units in themselves, but support each other by analyzing the complex social history in NMS from different sides with small contacting overlaps. The first chapter focuses on the future alternatives of the EU28, the second chapter analyzes the triple crisis in its domestic aspects, and finally, the third chapter overviews the "empirical" sides of the NMS developments based on the data of the international ranking institutions. These chapters in such a way try to reinforce the main argument of this book about the controversial character of the social developments in the NMS after the systemic change, in the last twenty years. The database and the reference literature are common in these chapters, which have been reflecting the same vision and philosophy about the contemporary word. The earlier version of this Progress Report (containing the shorter version of the second and third chapters) was prepared for FEPS (Foundation for European Progressive Studies). I am grateful to the FEPS staff - and particularly to Ernst Stetter, the General Secretary of FEPS - for organizing an international conference in Budapest on 16 November 2012 on the NMS developments and giving me an opportunity to present the earlier version of this Progress Report for discussion as the "Report on Democracy, Liberty and Freedom in Central and Eastern Europe". At this international conference I received many interesting comments to improve - and a strong impulse to complete - this Report The key term of this Progress Report is sustainability, as the long-term, durable social progress in an environmental context. The Report has been written to promoting the EU catching up process through a Dream about Sustania in the NMS. At the same time, this present book has been prepared in the framework of an OTKA project as a long process of research on the competitiveness as sustainable development. In 2009 the four year project on the "Competitiveness of the Hungarian regions in the EU" began with the support of the Hungarian National Research Fund (OTKA, K 77659), which has focused on the catching up processof Hungary within theEU in particular, and on that of the new member states in general, at both national and regional levels. Altogether, three books have been published as the results of this research project on the national and regional competitiveness. As the global crisis has deepened, the competitiveness issue has become high priority in the international and domestic political science. The national and regional competitiveness in the EU was already a central topic in the first volume on the competitiveness - From the Lisbon Strategy to the Europe 2020 Strategy: Think European for the Global Action (12"' volume of the Together for Europe series in 2010), since the Lisbon Strategy has emphasized the regional competitiveness to a great extent, in view of its transition to the new European mega-strategy, the Europe 2020 Strategy. The EU2020 Strategy has also meant a radical reform of the regional and cohesion policy as well as in the national and regional competitiveness. In this spirit this book has underlined the need for the organic link between the cohesion policy and the EU2020 Strategy both within the EU and in its member states. No doubt that in 2011 the European Union arrived at the crossroads and it necessitated to deal also with the European perspectives after the global crisis as also the title of the 1S"" volume of this series indicated: European Union at the crossroads: The European perspectives after the global crisis (2011). The second book on