"Like a reverse Alexis de Tocqueville, Steven Hill dauntlessly explores a society largely unknown to his compatriots back home. Sweeping away the ideological posturing, he shows us exactly how the modern European Way works and the promise it holds for an America which has slipped to become, in terms of social, economic and energy policy, the Old World."—Hendrik Hertzberg, senior editor, The New Yorker

Financial Times: “Steven Hill is a lucid and engaging writer. He makes you sit up and think. He is surely right in saying that Europe’s prosperous, peaceful and democratic social market economy looks attractive when contrasted with the unbalanced, excessively deregulated US model or with China's politically repressive capitalism.”

Foreign Affairs: “Timely and provocative...[Europe's Promise] 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. "

Internationale Politik (Germany): "Europe's Promise by Steven Hill…Explosive power, wherever you look...a dazzling Opus…”

The Economist: “In a new book, Steven Hill extols the European social contract for better government services. Life in Europe is more secure, he argues, and therefore more agreeable.”

Reuters International: “Europe’s Promise marshals an impressive army of facts and comparative statistics to show that the United States is behind Europe in nearly every socio-economic category that can be measured and that neither America’s trickle-down, Wall Street-driven capitalism nor China’s state capitalism hold the keys to the future.”

"Europe's Promise should startle, inform, and galvanize Americans in raising the ante in favor of a political economy where people matter first."—Ralph Nader

"Steven Hill ends the transatlantic debate over which economic and political system is superior: Europe wins. While America and China fight for oil and minerals, Europe already achieves more with less. Indeed, the path to the American Dream is the European Way."—Parag Khanna, author of The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global Order

"Steven Hill is an extraordinarily gifted writer... Europe's Promise is a substantial piece of work, with enormous footnoting, about the future of Europe and its influence as a place of extreme livability. Hill's intriguing book suggests that Europe isn't the basketcase that some people want to believe it is, and the quality of life and innovation there is quite high." -- Llewellyn King, host of PBS' White House Chronicle

"Hill's book is an elegant and counterintuitive manifesto for a new politics of interdependence that could take the world through the turmoil of the economic and global warming crises."—Mark Leonard, Executive Director, European Council on Foreign Relations

America: The National Catholic Weekly: “Breezily written and well-documented . . . Hill ably demolishes a series of common myths concerning differences between Europe and the United States . . . To anyone wondering whether by 2099 the current era will be viewed as a second ‘American Century,’ Hill’s warnings are worth considering. If the competitive advantages he ably enumerates continue to evolve in Europe’s favor, the claim to the century may well cross the Atlantic.”

Providence Journal: “An engrossing book...Hill has a gift for capturing cogent themes in a single image...he examines the evolving trajectory since World War II of Europe's 'fulcrum institutions' on which their societies pivot.”

Oakland Tribune: “An important new book...Steven Hill rebuffs many of the distortions we've heard for years about Europe's supposedly broken economic system. Europe has a vibrant, capitalistic economy — but one with a heart AND a brain.”

In the Public Interest: “Hill's thesis is that Western Europe treats its people better in many ways than the United States does its people. Read, wonder and galvanize!”

Reuters International: “U.S. militarism has long been a core part of the American Way,” writes Steven Hill in a just-published book, Europe’s Promise, that compares the United States and Europe. Militarism does “triple duty as a formidable foreign policy tool, a powerful stimulus to the economy, and a usurper of tax dollars that could be spent on other budget priorities.”

"What can the United States learn from Europe? If you believe what's said in Washington, the answer is 'not much'. If you read Steven Hill's intelligent, broad-ranging, and deeply researched book, you'll find the correct answer is 'a great deal'—and now is the time to learn it."— Prof. Jacob S. Hacker, Yale University, author of The Great Risk Shift: The New Economic Security and the Decline of the American Dream

“A spirited new tour guide to the Europe beyond the tourist hotspots. . .Europe, Hill helps us understand, has much more to offer than history and vistas. Europe has a model, an approach to modernity that offers, by every measure that matters, the finest quality of life in the world.”—Sam Pizzigati, editor, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality

"The two great strengths of Europe's Promise are its breadth and its accessibility. The discussion is far ranging...Hill dispels myths and caricatures. He manages to survey in one book an extremely rich cross section of the policies and political practices that make "The European Way" distinctive -- from health care policies, to environmental policies, to family and other social policies, to foreign policy. Hill's book is also very well written, in an engaging journalistic style. The book makes a great contribution to European studies -- communicating in one compelling volume so much of what is distinctive and appealing about "The European Way." He argues that Europe has become a global leader, with a model of sustainable development and social capitalism that offers the most hopeful path forward for the 21st Century."—Prof. Dan Kelemen, Rutgers University, Director, Center for European Studies

"As Steven Hill compellingly argues in his excellent Europe's Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age, Europe has become a dynamic, transformational force in the world and stands as a clear model of success on so many fronts that we must push reset in our assessment of Europe's course. Americans today should learn a bit about how Europe has quietly and incrementally added to its size and global weight and maintained an innovative approach to broad public challenges like renewable energy, capital punishment, social welfare, and even corporate dynamism."—Steve Clemons, publisher and editor of the political blog, The Washington Note

"Europe's Promise is a provocative and illuminating book that should lead Americans to think hard about our own assumptions and priorities. By closely examining Europe's economic and political practices, Hill reveals a new Europe that has become the world's leader during this century challenged by global economic crisis, climate crisis, and new geopolitical tensions. In these times of hope and fear, read this captivating book to discover new and creative models for building a better future."—Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor and publisher of The Nation

(longer versions below)
From The Guardian, February 8, 2010
www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/feb/08/european-parliament-crisis
(excerpt)
US economists and Nobel laureates Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz appear sanguine about Europe, with Krugman arguing recently in the New York Times that the European welfare state and social market economy have survived the financial crisis well and represent a more successful and enviable model than America's. Steven Hill, a director at the Washington-based New America Foundation, has just published a book, Europe's Promise, which argues that "the European way is the best hope in an insecure age".

He dismissed talk of the EU being "marginalised" in a G2 world. On the contrary, he emphasised that the Obama White House was under pressure from the EU on climate change and financial regulation. "This, of course, is the exact opposite of the view that 'Europe is irrelevant'. Europe is actually hyper-relevant," he said. "Obama knows that Europe is leading in these ways, and he would like to follow to some extent, but he is having a hard time delivering."

******

From the Financial Times, February 8, 2010
Review of Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age by Steven Hill
Review by Tony Barber
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/52f7432c-140b-11df-8847-00144feab49a.html
(excerpt)

Steven Hill, director of the political reform programme at the New America Foundation think-tank, has two purposes in writing this book. One is to set out the case that Europe's methods of economic management, cradle-to-grave social support systems, democratic structures, ecological consciousness and temperate foreign policy are the way forward for the world. The global order is being remade, he says, and what will emerge on the other side will be a new world based on the European model. Europe is a beacon for humanity's future, no less, and it holds the greatest potential for the planet.

Hill's second goal is to show that the US, far from being an example for the world, is nowadays no model at all. Compared with Europe, he says, the United States is behind in nearly every socioeconomic category. Its economy is an obsolete, hyper-militarised model”and, even under Barack Obama, is mired in an antiquated free market ideology.

US democratic institutions are “unrepresentative, divisive and disenfranchising”, characterised by de facto one-party fiefdoms and 70m unregistered voters almost one-third of those eligible. The nation wastes colossal quantities of energy and fails to provide decent healthcare for millions of uninsured citizens. US foreign policy is trapped in a Vietnam-era mentality of using military muscle and even invading nations as a way of dealing with unsavoury elements”.

No question, Hill makes you sit up and think. Unlike intellectually lazier writers, he does not buy the argument that the 21st century belongs inevitably to China. He is surely right in saying that Europe’s prosperous, peaceful and democratic social market economy looks attractive when contrasted with the unbalanced, excessively deregulated US model or with China's politically repressive capitalism, Russia's petrodollar authoritarianism, Japan's corporate cronyism or conservative Islam. He makes a perceptive point, too, when he says that American conservatives play up Europe's difficulties as a way of suppressing discussion of radical change in the US…Europe, with its affordable universal healthcare, unemployment benefits, paid holidays and sick leave, childcare, time off for parents after a birth and inexpensive university fees, has certainly built an enviable form of social capitalism.

Hill is a lucid and engaging writer, and he recognises that not everything in Europe smells of roses. For example, Europe faces formidable problems in its declining birth rates and its reluctance, or inability, to integrate the millions of immigrants needed to sustain its prosperity in coming decades. Hill is right: the US model requires modernisation. But when it comes to welcoming the world's huddled masses, Europeans could learn from their American cousins.

******

Foreign Affairs
Reviewed by Andrew Moravcsik
January/February 2010
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/65851/steven-hill/europe%E2%80%99s-promise-why-the-european-way-is-the-best-hope-in-an-ins

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.

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Review of Europe’s Promise
“Who wins in U.S. vs Europe contest?”
Feb 12, 2010
By Bernd Debusmann
Reuters International
http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2010/02/12/who-wins-in-u-s-vs-europe-contest/

In these days of renewed gloom about the future of Europe, a quick test is in order. Who has the world’s biggest economy? A) The United States B) China/Asia C) Europe? Who has the most Fortune 500 companies? A) The United States B) China C) Europe. Who attracts most U.S. investment? A) Europe B) China C) Asia.

The correct answer in each case is Europe, short for the 27-member European Union (EU), a region with 500 million citizens. They produce an economy almost as large as the United States and China combined but have, so far, largely failed to make much of a dent in American perceptions that theirs is a collection of cradle-to-grave nanny states doomed to be left behind in a 21st century that will belong to China.

That China will rise to be a superpower in this century, overtaking the United States in terms of gross domestic product by 2035, is becoming conventional wisdom. But those who subscribe to that theory might do well to remember the fate of similar long-range forecasts in the past. At the turn of the 20th century, for example, eminent strategists predicted that Argentina would be a world power within 20 years. In the late 1980s, Japan was seen as the next global leader.

The latest pessimistic utterances about Europe were sparked by a debt crisis in Greece which raised concern over the health of the euro, the common currency of 16 EU members. Plus U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision to stay away from a U.S.-EU summit scheduled for May in Madrid, with a new EU leadership structure that should have made it easier to answer then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s famous question: “Who do I call when I want to talk to Europe?”

There are still several numbers to call in the complex set-up, giving fresh reasons to fret to those crystal-gazers who see the future dominated by the United States and China, the so-called G-2.

Pundits who see the European way of doing things as a model for the United States (and others) to follow are few and far between, not least, says one of them, Steven Hill, because most Americans are blissfully unaware of European achievements and, as he puts it, “reluctant to look elsewhere because ‘we are the best.’”

As foreigners traveling through the United States occasionally note, the phrases “we are the best” and “America is No.1″ are often uttered with deep conviction by citizens who have never set foot outside their country and therefore lack a direct way of comparison. (They are in the majority: only one in five Americans has a passport).

Hill, who heads the political reform program at the New American Foundation, a liberal Washington think tank, has just published a book whose title alone is enough to irk conservative Americans: Europe’s Promise. Why the European Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Future.

STUBBORN PRECONCEPTIONS
It marshals an impressive army of facts and comparative statistics to show that the United States is behind Europe in nearly every socio-economic category that can be measured and that neither America’s trickle-down, Wall Street-driven capitalism nor China’s state capitalism hold the keys to the future.

While China’s growth has been impressive, says Hill, the country remains, in essence, a sub-contractor to the West and is racked by internal contradictions.

“When I talk to American audiences,” Hill said in an interview, “many find the figures I cite hard to believe. They haven’t heard them before. U.S. businesses making more profits in Europe than anywhere else, 20 times more than in China? 179 of the world’s top companies are European compared with 140 American? That does not fit the preconceptions.”

Such preconceptions exist, in part, because U.S. media have portrayed Europe as a region in perpetual crisis, its economies sclerotic, its taxes a disincentive to personal initiative, its standards of living lower than America’s, its universal health care, guaranteed pensions, long vacations and considerably shorter working hours a recipe for low growth and stagnation. “In the transmission of news across the Atlantic, myth has been substituted for reality,” says Hill.

He is in good, though numerically small, company with such views. The economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, both Nobel prize winners, also have positive outlooks for Europe. In a recent column in the New York Times, Krugman said that Europe is often held up as evidence that higher taxes for the rich and benefits for the less well-off kill economic progress. Not so, he argued. The European experience demonstrates the opposite: social justice and progress can go hand in hand.

The relative rankings of countries tend to be defined by gross domestic product per capita but Hill points out that this might not be the best yardstick because it does not differentiate between transactions that add to the well-being of a country and those that diminish it. A dollar spent on sending a teenager to prison adds as much to GDP as a dollar spent on sending him to college.

On a long list of quality-of-life indexes that measure things beyond the GDP yardstick — from income inequality and access to health care to life expectancy, infant mortality and poverty levels — the United States does not rank near the top.

So where is the best place to live? For the past 30 years, a U.S.-based magazine, International Living, has compiled a quality-of-life index based on cost of living, culture and leisure, economy, environment, freedom, health, infrastructure, safety and climate. France tops the list for the fifth year running. The United States comes in 7th.

******

"The Great Promise"
How Europe can help America recover -- and then help the whole world
By Jan Techau
Internationale Politik (Germany)
May/June 2010 (German language original)
p. 132-134
www.internationalepolitik.de/ip/archiv/jahrgang-2010/der-falsche-glanz-der-diktatur-/das-grosse-versprechen.html

Book review of Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age (www.EuropesPromise.org), by Steven Hill, University of California Press, January 2010

Jan Techau is a research advisor at the NATO Defense College in Rome

Europe, a political dwarf with a weak economy and leisure-addicted workers? Wrong, says political scientist Steven Hill. To his stunned readers he presents the old continent in contrast to the prevailing US doctrine as a veritable role model for America and the rest of the world.

There are books on international politics which should not be rectangular, with a cover made of cardboard and many, many pages of paper, but they should look like cartridges for an assault rifle: sharp pointed projectiles with steel jackets and a heavy charge of powder in the case. "Europe's Promise" by Steven Hill, program director at the Washington-based New America Foundation, is one such book. Explosive power, wherever you look.

Europeans will find a mountain of ammunition for their own integration debate and to prevent unjustified blanket accusations against the sick man of Europe. The American left will find bullets for the domestic political battles for the reorientation of America after the era of George W. Bush, and the American right can also powerfully recharge for the duel with Obama and “naïve” liberals.

The book is in the great tradition of American analysis-manifesto hybrids, that is the combination of a fundamental discourse of provocative writings with a mixture of facts and opinion, a genre that barely exists in Germany, and so we market the Anglo-Saxon (and also the French) endeavours that we envy.

Steven Hill presents "Europe's Promise,” his fourth book since 2001, and despite the title he is also here concerned particularly with the United States which in his view is badly in need of repairs. What’s new here is that he chose Europe as a contrasting foil for his tireless mission, which he visited several times since 1999 to make his analysis. In contrast to the mainstream of published US opinion and what is taught at colleges and universities, he does not consider Europe as a political dwarf with a weak economy and half-day leisure addicts, but as a veritable model for America and the world.

In the four main parts of his book, densely argued, Hill draws the picture of Europe as an economic and foreign policy superpower that gave capitalism a human face, without sacrificing wealth and living standards. A superpower that better organizes democratic participation, burdens the environment less, preserves a pluralistic media landscape, operates more efficient health care systems, better promotes families and has a foreign policy based on development and compromise.

A superpower, finally, that produces a higher social value than the much more dominant U.S. presence in the world. All of this via implementation of a multilateral, multinational integration project which values inclusion and consensus-building, which relies on smart power instead of hard power, and thus has developed precisely those skills needed by the world, which has been battered by so much.

It places the American reality side by side with each identified plus of Europe. This is often quite convincingly made and European readers rub their eyes, because Europeans see their own continent, which has been estimated as at best mediocre, with a fresher view. Occasionally with Hill his romanticism goes to increased heights over an alleged European quality of life and he produces unintentionally amusing Eurokitsch, as we know it all too well from American fans of the old continent.

Hill rightly complains that in the United States usually either complete ignorance or massive misperceptions about Europe dominate. Instead of understanding the miracle of postwar Europe and incorporating elements of this clearly superior system, as emissaries from Africa, Asia and Latin America on their European journeys do, instead what prevails in America is an arrogant self satisfaction and the certainty that Europe was a hopelessly backward continent. Yet the “European Way” has produced comparable wealth for lower costs and lower social conflicts, while at the same time produced a substantially underestimated but successful foreign policy that has sucked 80 other countries into the direct sphere of influence of the European Union (the "Eurosphere") by means of EU accession policy, development assistance and trade.

Hill sees a world order arise where several regional groupings largely modeled on the European Union will replace the current multipolar world. Unlike other pro-European manifestos such as Mark Leonard’s “Why Europe will run the 21st century "(2005) or Charles Kupchan’s “The European Challenge" (2003), he foresees not necessarily a future leading role for the EU (he thoroughly analyzes the menacing problems of Europe in two separate chapters), but views the mechanisms of conflict resolution and increased prosperity developed by Europe to be exemplary. Europe itself is not the promise mentioned in the title, but Europe's way.

In thinking about the “old world,” Hill views the settlement of America as one that betrayed its own ideals, and how those from the 17th century have been stuck onto the governance problems of the 21st century. This becomes clear when the author provides a historical review of ideas and philosophy, which alone is worth the reading of the book for the elaborate, weighty arguments behind it.

Under the title "The Concept of 'Europe' (Chapter 15 in the book), he tries to arrive at the deeper reasons for American failure and European success on this track. He sees the principal reason being the pure selfishness of a perverted American individualist ideal as the main reason for America's descent. This contrasts with the European principle of bonding individual success to the common good or public interest, embodied in the ideal type of a social market economy of the Freiburg School, which has become established in one or another variation across Europe.

Hill digs his scalpel deeply into the heart of American identity when he calls upon American political saints like Jefferson, Adams and Hamilton as his witnesses, whose idea of free citizens determining their own destiny was replaced by an ideology of the "ownership society" (George W. Bush), which ultimately means nothing other than: everybody is on his own.

But what to make of this dazzling Opus? The analysis offers some fresh perspective on the European and American systems, although it also contains some inaccuracies and bias. The book sketches Europe as the successor of America and already has encountered embittered resistance in the United States. It offers some idealistic exuberance and it is American in a fascinating and sometimes touching way. The book fills gaps in information about Europe and at the same time act as a manifesto for a fundamentally different America.

I suppose that is a bit too much at one time, because for those Americans whom Hill most would like to move to rethink these matters, the book will trigger the heaviest cognitive dissonance. Even Europeans might be skeptical because they are not so used to getting away looking so good. But even a hint of good humor, with which Hill is taken, may be an antidote for the insidious, self-pitying and curmudgeonly Euroscepticism that Europeans currently find so chic. Only a strong dose of this will allow Europe to show the promise that Steven Hill recognizes in it.

Jan Techau is a research advisor at the NATO Defense College in Rome.

******

Review of Steven Hill's "Europe's Promise: Why the European Way is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age." Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
By Professor Dan Kelemen
Director, Center for European Studies
Rutgers University
EUSA Review
Spring 2010
www.eustudies.org/publications_review_spring10.php#list-10

We've all heard of the 'American Way', but is there a 'European Way'? In Europe's Promise, Steven Hill explores European approaches to a range of contemporary policy challenges - from economic policy, to social policy, to health care, to climate change, to foreign policy - and argues that there is a distinctive 'European Way'. He asks readers to discard outmoded caricatures of the 'Old Continent' that are regularly reinforced in American media coverage of Europe - namely that European economies are inefficient, overtaxed and uncompetitive, and that Europe is deeply divided politically.
Instead, he demonstrates that the economically advanced democracies of Europe have developed a model of social capitalism and a wide range of public policies that may serve as models for American reformers and for other nations around the world. In short, he argues that Europe has become a global leader, with a model of sustainable development and social capitalism that offers the most hopeful path forward for the 21st Century.

Part one of the book describes what he calls Europe's "social capitalism".
The discussion is far ranging, as Hill takes us from the post-War roots of labor-management relations policies in Germany to European reactions to the
2008-09 financial crisis. Throughout this section, Hill makes it clear that European countries have established a distinctive approach to capitalism that combines the pursuit of economic growth with a far greater commitment to social cohesion than America's "Wall Street Capitalism" allows. Along the way, he highlights the economic advantages of institutions and policies such as 'co-determination' and 'flexicurity'. He also argues that European social policies and childcare policies support European families and reflect real 'family values', whereas conservative advocates of 'family values' in the US in practice do little to address the needs of working families. Of course, generous social policies have to be paid for, and many Europeans pay higher taxes than Americans to support their social systems. However, in one of the most compelling arguments in the book, Hill attacks the 'myth of the overtaxed European'. First, he shows that when all forms of taxes are considered, differences in tax rates for most Europeans and Americans are much more modest than is commonly assumed. Second, he rightly points out that many Americans are forced to pay out of pocket for many services - from health, to education, to elderly care - that are financed by tax revenues in Europe.

After discussing Europe's social capitalism in general terms, Hill turns to an in depth discussion of health care. Again, he dispels myths and caricatures. While many Americans equate 'socialized medicine' with the British National Health Service, Hill shows that France, Germany and other European countries have achieved universal, quality healthcare without a 'government takeover' of the health care system - while spending much less overall on health care than does the US.

Next Hill explores 'Sustainable Europe', focusing on energy and transport policies. For those who recall America's role as a leader on environmental issues in the 1970s, these chapters may make for depressing reading. As Hill illustrates with a wealth of examples, Europe has become a global leader in renewable energy and fuel efficient transport while the US has lagged behind.

Having surveyed a range of domestic policies, Hill looks at the emerging role of the European Union on the world stage. He shows that the increasing integration of Europe has given the member states of the EU a new kind of influence on the world stage. In an argument that will be very familiar to EU scholars, he suggests that while the EU lacks the military might of the US, it wields 'smart power' or civilian power and has enormous influence across a range of issues from global trade talks, to development aid, to democracy promotion.

Hill concludes the book by looking at a number of the major challenges to the 'European Way'. Two demographic challenges stand out. Substantial increases in immigration to western Europe have created strains, as countries wrestle with questions of how to integrate new immigrants groups.
This is particularly true with regard to Muslim immigrant communities, as evidenced by 'veil controversies' in France, the UK and elsewhere and by the recent wave of anti-burqa legislation emerging across Europe. And while there is much political and social resistance to increased immigration, Europe actually needs more people. Indeed, immigration has been one of the few trends counteracting the population decline in Europe. In a chapter subtitled, "Where are all the children?", Hill reviews data on the unprecedentedly low fertility rates in many European countries and the population declines and potential threat to the European social model that they portend. He then discusses the policy options that may increase fertility rates and reverse this demographic decline.

The two great strengths of Europe's Promise are its breadth and its accessibility. Steven Hill manages to survey in one book an extremely rich cross section of the policies and political practices that make "The European Way" distinctive - from health care policies, to environmental policies, to family and other social policies, to foreign policy. Hill's book is also very well written - in an engaging journalistic style - that will draw in undergraduates and seasoned academics alike. The book's weaknesses are the flip side of its strengths. In its pursuit of breadth and accessibility, it sometimes sacrifices depth. Likewise, in an effort to generalize about The European Way the book downplays the differences across European countries in many areas of public policy. Nevertheless, the book makes a great contribution to European studies - communicating in one compelling volume so much of what is distinctive and appealing about "The European Way". The book will make ideal reading for undergraduate survey courses on European politics or comparative (US/EU) public policy.

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From Old Europe, a New Roadmap
By Sam Pizzigati
July 19, 2010
Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality
http://toomuchonline.org/from-old-europe-a-new-roadmap

A review of Steven Hill, Europe’s Promise: Why the European Way Is the Best Hope in an Insecure Age. University of California Press, 2010. 473 pp.

Sam Pizzigati edits Too Much, the online newsletter on excess and inequality published by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Policy Studies.

Does modernity require inequality? Or can we build totally modern societies that respect solidarity and community?

Millions of Americans know Europe. Or at least think they do. These Americans have climbed up the Eiffel Tower in Paris and ambled around the Coliseum in Rome. They’ve hiked the Alps and maybe even quaffed a stein or two in a German beer garden.

But these Americans, argues Steven Hill in this spirited new tour guide to the Europe beyond the tourist hotspots, have missed the Europe most worth seeing — and appreciating.

Europe, Hill helps us understand, has much more to offer than history and vistas. Europe has a model, an approach to modernity that offers, by every measure that matters, the finest quality of life in the world.

Average Europeans, notes Hill, do not “live in fear of being financially wiped out by illness, economic decline, or stock market crashes.” If they lose a job, they get job retraining. If they get good grades, they get a free university education. If they have a child, they get paid leave to parent — and a special stipend to offset the costs of parenthood. They enjoy, in short, security and opportunity.

Author Steven Hill spent ten years researching this book. He spoke to lawmakers and business executives, social activists and academic experts. But he also spoke to everyday Europeans, and plenty of them.

In one particularly memorable encounter, at a town square in Salzburg, a local was describing the benefits that all Austrians, be they taxi drivers or poets, take for granted: the universal health care, the guaranteed vacations, the quality day care, the paid sick leave, and on and on.

“In America, you are so rich,” the Austrian noted. “Why don’t you have these things for your people?”

We don’t have these things, Hill’s Europe’s Promise makes plain, because we have let America’s riches concentrate in the hands of a few. Europe has shared the wealth. We haven’t.

CEOs in the United States routinely take home hundreds of times more pay than their workers. The standard CEO-worker pay gap in Europe: a couple dozen times. In the United States, the most affluent 10 percent owns 70 percent of the wealth. The top 10 percent share in Germany? Just 44 percent.

This greater European equality, author Hill emphasizes, just didn’t happen. Europeans have fashioned it, through a wide variety of what he calls “fulcrum” institutions, economic and political arrangements that promote, in the comings and goings of daily life, the core values of fairness, equality, and solidarity.

Most corporate workplaces, for instance, operate under the principle of “co-determination.” Worker representatives, writes Hill, “sit side by side with stockholder representatives on corporate boards of directors,” and, on the shop floor, “works councils” give workers input — and sometimes even a veto — on everything from daily schedules to dismissals.

These “co-determination” institutions act, says Hill, a former program director at the New American Foundation, “as a barrier against CEOs playing God.”

“Imagine Wal-Mart’s board of directors having anywhere from a third to a half of its directors elected directly by its workers,” he asks. “ It’s hard to even conceive of such a notion from the American standpoint, yet most European nations employ some version of this as standard operating procedure.”

Europe, Hill acknowledges, hardly qualifies as “some utopian paradise,” and the pages of his Europe’s Promise candidly and thoroughly walk us through Europe’s many problems, straight through the 2008 global financial crash and beyond.

But even after that crash, Hill shows, “the pro-family European democracies still provide a level of security and comfort that far outshine anything available in the United States.” We continue to concentrate “most economic gains among just a handful of winners.” Europe has made wealth’s “fair and more equal distribution” a “hallmark of its raison d’etre.”

As tourists, we never see that reality. As citizens in an increasingly insecure age, we need to learn from it.