Transnational integration and national disintegration (2)

The policy approach, that is at the basis of this study, realistically assumes that the following determinants will be of the utmost importance for the success or failure of the project of European integration and European unity: (i) Europe is characterised by the typical 'mix' of countries that are doomed to stagnation (ii) Europe must come to terms with the 'new' social problems arising from the contradictions of the process of global environmental destruction, to which Europe as one of the main regions of world industry and traffic disproportionately contributes, and Europe must find a proper way for gender empowerment (iii) Europe must come to terms with the contradictions of world cultures and world cultural conflict, global anarchy and global decay (iv) Europe must come to terms with the contradictions between Europe, the developed centre, and its Eastern European periphery, and the problems of political instability, nationalism, and unequal development, that the present form of interaction between the centre and the periphery bring about (v) Europe must come to terms with the contradictions of the process of the ageing of democracies, especially phenomena which one might term sclerosis bruxelliana and sclerosis Europea Development is seen here as a multi-dimension process in the tradition of recent UNDP-centred research. Apart from per capita income growth, our indicators also analyse the maintenance of growth during the changing conditions of the post-1980 world as compared to the development experience from 1965 to 1980. Our measurements of development include, among others, life expectancy, life expectancy increases, political rights violations, human rights violations, the UNDP human development index, the UNDP gender-related development index, the UNDP gender empowerment index and, last but not least, the UNDP greenhouse index as an indicator of pollution. The human development index weights longevity, income, knowledge and standard of living. It is composed of per capita incomes, education and life expectancy variables. We also control for the effects not of internal, but international distribution coalitions as a co-determining factor of ascent and decline in the world system. These international distribution coalitions are closely linked to the number of years that a country is member of the UN.