Short (3 minute) video summary of “Europe's Promise”

Lecture on “Europe's Promise” at the New America Foundation

Debate with a scholar from the Hudson Institute

Radio interview on WTOP, Washington DC’s largest station

Foreign Affairs reviews Europe's Promise in its January 2010 issue

Reviewed by Andrew Moravcsik
Foreign Affairs
January/February 2010
Read Article Here

In this timely and provocative book, Hill, known primarily as an analyst of U.S. state and local reform, argues that the "social capitalist" policies of European countries represent best practices in handling most of the challenges modern democracies face today. By contrast, the United States is often dysfunctional. When indirect fees, private out-of-pocket costs, and taxes are all included, Americans pay as much as Europeans for public services but end up with much less. Europe's health care, social welfare, environmental policies, labor rights, "smart power" projection, and multiparty parliamentary governments are consistently more efficient, more just, and less fractious than the United States' libertarian, militaristic, two-party, money-driven, separation-of-powers alternatives. Hill can be breathlessly wordy, and, like some other Europhiles, he occasionally indulges in armchair social psychology -- but the overall argument rests on solid data. It explains why in most areas, it is Europe's constitutional forms, economic regulations, and social values, not those of the United States, that are the most popular models for new democracies. The oldest one should take note.