Arno Tausch – författare

‘Globalization, the Human Condition and Sustainable Development in the Twenty-first Century: Cross-national Perspectives and European Implications’ is a cross-national, 175-nation-based exploration of the deep crisis in which Europe currently finds itself. Investigating the effects of dependency theory and world-systems theory upon the global success of eight dimensions of development – including democracy, environmental sustainability, employment, social cohesion, high-quality tertiary education and gender justice – this study argues that the current European crisis has been precipitated by the pro-globalist policies of the European Commission, and that in the near future these policies threaten to enter Europe into a destructive ‘race to the bottom’.

A study of the determinants of world development from 1960 onwards, using advanced statistical techniques and data from up to 171 countries and territories. Arno Tausch also debates the perspectives for world socialism and for neo-corporatism in the industrialized West.

This work is a collection of essays on Islamism and global opinion surveys, focusing on their implications for the future of Arab countries. Much of Western academia and the media still seem to be unable to come to terms with the real challenges posed by Islamism two decades after 9/11 and half a decade after the horrendous Paris 2015 terror attacks. What is at stake is the question of whether moderate Islamist political movements can and should be a partnered with the West. President Obama personally issued the Presidential Study Directive 11 (PSD-11) in 2010, ultimately concluding that the United States should shift from its longstanding policy of supporting “stability” in the Middle East and North Africa to a policy of backing moderate Islamic political movements. The present book squarely contradicts this perspective. Bassam Tibi maintains that only liberal Islam approves of democracy, while Islamism absolutely does not. The empirical basis of the book is based on estimates of the development of civil society in the Arab World by using comparative opinion survey data based on the evaluation of the World Values Survey and other global and regional surveys. Variables of trust, non-violence, gender justice and tolerance towards homosexuals indicate some of existing deficits in the development of civil societies in the region. Thus, Inglehart and Norris correctly foresaw that the real distinguishing parameter for Huntington’s theory is not his opinion on democracy, but his societal opinion on gender issues. This perspective is followed up with an empirical analysis of the gender ideology of Islamism and its gender values, all based on World Values Survey data. Muslim feminism, which implies the rejection of Islamism and the veil, and the democracy movement in the Muslim world are closely interrelated. In a chapter on Islamism and anti-Semitism, the book identifies the extent of relationships between anti-Semitism, the current economic and social situation, religious data, and opinions on terrorism among the global Muslim society. Islamism is deeply connected to anti-Semitism. The book also explores which factors contribute to the approval of terroristic acts, measured by such variables as opinions on suicide bombing and the favorability of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. The book shows how wrong it is to neglect the underlying ideological radicalism which characterizes the support of organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates in the region. Along with most radicalized factions of Islamist terrorism, they share intense hatred of Jews and Free Masons and Western civilization. In a concluding chapter, the book analyzes globalization, the environment in the Arab World and the future “greening” of Arab politics.

In its much-debated Human Development Report 2020, the United Nations Human Development Program attempted to present indicators of development which are planetary pressures-adjusted. In the present book by Arno Tausch, the author presents further reflections in this important and evolving field, vital for any informed debate about the Paris Climate Accord. Tausch adjusts the development achievements and setbacks of the countries of the world by ecological footprint per capita. With the hitherto existing globalized political economy in ruins in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing global economic depression, a new societal contract has to emerge which combines well-being with a minimum of energy inputs, thus reducing planetary pressures. Tausch attempts to answer vital questions, raised by the debates on the Paris climate accords, and the recent UNDP Human Development Index. Is a liberal economy, based on economic freedom, compatible with the attempt to “deliver” a maximum amount of democracy, economic growth, gender equality, human development, research and development, and social cohesion with a minimum of planetary pressure? Tausch looks at the cross-national drivers and bottlenecks of “smart development,” using standard comparative cross-national data. The book shows that those attempting to reduce planetary pressure and to work towards fulfilling the Paris Climate Accords have to start thinking about such issues as gender justice, economic freedom, globalization, population density, and migration, if they really want to bring about development with a minimum of planetary pressure.

Titanic 2010 is around the corner: Is Eastern Europe really catching up with the West, and is the enlarged and transformed Europe really on its way to become, by 2010, the most competitive region in the world economy? Starting from the seven "cardinal sins" of the transformation process, described by Harvard Professor Janos Kornai. it is evident that the real income of a significant proportion of the population has remained unchanged,or even deteriorated in Eastern Europe, that a dramatic ''restructuring'' has taken place in the area of income distribution, that the employment rate has significantly declined, public security deteriorating, corruption has not ended, and that there are disorders in the political arena with tax policies favoring the rich. Dissatisfaction with the "Lisbon process" of the European Union, Initiated at the European Council meeting in Liston, March, 2000, to make Europe the most competitive economy of the world by 2010, is widespread also in Western Europe, relevant optimistic recent voices from the Commission notwithstanding. So instead of achieving unity and harmony, Europe is drifting towards "transnational integration and national disintegration" (Osvaldo Sunkel). Schumpeter and later world system and dependency writers were always of the crises, cyclical imbalances, regional shifts, and of the rise and decline of entire regions and even continents in the process of capitalist development. At the end of the day. a realistic and politically useful analysis of the "Lisbon process" has to be "Schumpeterian" in its question writing.

This book is based on the quantitative, multivariate analysis of the World Values Survey data from more than 80 countries around the globe on the political and social values of the world''s Muslim communities by international comparison. Global Muslims and also the Muslim communities in Western democracies are value-conservative, family-oriented, but supportive of democracy. This study takes up the idea of "Asabiyya" ("social cohesion"), inherent in classic Arab historiography, first described by Ibn Chaldun (1332 to 1406) in his important work "Muqaddimah". Is "moderinzation" without "spiritual values" possible in the long run? As a way out from the modernization trap of societies, characterized by large-scale social anomaly, the "active society" of volunteer organization work is the best societal medicine against this kind of value decay, which is so common in countries like France, Brazil, or most of East Central Europe and the former USSR. An active form of religious or non-religious humanism, which provides a noble motivation for such activities as volunteer social services, is a very necessary precondition for social cohesion in the 21st Century.

This book is intended to provide a new approach to the study of global values and global value change, based on representative international survey data, above all, the World Values Survey. This theme is of growing interest not only to the international social science community, but also international policy makers and business and financial executives in the framework of international values and business studies. Since the book is also designed to serve advanced graduate courses in sociology, political science and economics at Universities, government and business staff training centers, diplomatic academies et cetera, this book also contains themes for 10-20 minute statements (1000-2000 words) that students and course participants should be able to prepare after attending a course on global values. This book is intended to provide a new approach to the study of global values and global value change, based on representative international survey data, above all, the World Values Survey, covering the entire population in an ever growing number of countries, and now already comprising some 90% of the total global population on earth. The importance of these data for international politics cannot be overestimated: foreign ministries, international organizations, ministerial planning departments of national governments, national intelligence agencies, international bankers and investors, pension fund managers, global insurance enterprises, organizations of national and international security, NGOs, religious communities, they all can benefit from these freely available data, which indeed will revolutionize our discourse on international politics and political culture.

At a time of the profound crisis of the world capitalist system, a group of social scientists and theologians takes up anew the issue of liberation theology. Having arisen out of the struggle of the poor Churches in the world’s South, its pros and cons dominated the discourse of the Churches throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s. Then, dependency theory was considered to be the analytical tool at the basis of liberation theology. But the world economy – since the Fall of the Berlin Wall – has dramatically changed to become a truly globalized capitalist system in the 1990s. Even in their wildest imaginations, social scientists from the dependency tradition and theologians alike would not have predicted for example the elementary force of the Asian and the Russian crisis of today. The Walls have gone, but poverty and social polarization spread to the center countries. After having initially rejected Marxist ideology in many of the liberation theology documents, the Vatican and many other Christian Church institutions moved forward in the 1980s 1990s to strongly declare their “preferential option for the poor”. Now, the authors of this book, among them Samir Amin, one of the founders of the world system approach, take up the issues of this preferential option anew and arrive at an ecumenical vision of the dialogue between theology and world system theory at the turn of the new millenium.

This joint Austrian and Irish study is the outcome of empirical research on the development and decay tendencies of the capitalist world economy since the early 1980s and the role, that Europe will play in these constellations. In a way, it continues the socio-liberal re-reading of dependency theory, presented by Arno Tausch in ‘Towards a Socio-Liberal Theory of World Development’, published together with Fred Prager in 1993 with Macmillan. Over these years we came to the conclusion that the logic of capitalist world development changes with the ups and downs of longer Kondratieff cycles, and that different periods of hegemony and of world political constellations, connected with these Kondratieff cycles, in turn give rise to different constellations of world economic ascent and decline.

Global inequality and unfettered globalization are characterizing features of the world economy at the beginning of the millennium. We believe that a renewed debate about international exploitation is necessary for theoretical and practical reasons. The successive crises - or let’s term them abysses - that shattered entire continents since the 1980s, spreading the burden of misery from Latin America to Africa, Asia and Russia, brought home to the world and to millions and millions of human beings, that their livelihoods are determined by the ups and downs of the world market and the forces of the international economy. Europe, having launched a common, single currency, is characterized by a process of non-convergence of wages and incomes which could, ultimately, accelerate centrifugal political tendencies, as long as the structures of unequal exchange are not overcome.

In an age of uncertainty and change, it is the task of social science at least to present solid evidence that allows a beam of light into the darkness. One might be tempted, perhaps to state that in the morning of September 11th 2001 in Manhattan, globalization had reached its limits, and that from now on, like during the 1920s, the pendulum swings again against the principle of the market economy on a global scale. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, when first in the Pacific rim countries a new phase of world-wide capitalism began to take shape, and spread globally, and throughout the world neo-liberalism substituted Keynesianism as the main economic paradigm, moves to radically change the hitherto existing public pension models, that were based on contributions paid in a particular year by current workers (Pay-As-You-Go, PAYGO financing), gathered speed. The demographic changes that are ahead of us additionally increase the importance of regulations concerning the incomes and the economic fortunes of the elderly. Thus we are confronted with a deep and thorough re-writing of the social contract that evolved in the late 19th Century and guaranteed the welfare of the elderly in a great number of countries. Not only in Latin America, where Chile under the generals paved the way, but also in East Central Europe after the end of communism, and even in some former advanced welfare democracies like Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom far-reaching measures to reform the PAYGO-pension systems were introduced. The list of countries with privatization or pre-funding of the pension system grows longer and longer, and even in Sweden, the classic example of a Keynesian social welfare state from the 1930s onwards, the pension system has been drastically reformed. There are 18 countries, according to the World Bank; that fully introduced a three pillar, funded model, and many of them in addition introduced notional pension accounts following the Swedish model. Ever since the days of German Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), the idea of social security and the capitalist state are closely linked. Radical moves to change the balance, established by the public pension systems, require the closer attention not only of the international social policy debate, but also of the world systems research community. There is no doubt that in the United States under President Bush and in the remaining countries of the European Union, and in many other states around the globe, the conversion of still existing public PAYGO pension systems to (partially) funded pension systems, especially those based on a compulsory funding system, will further intensify and gather speed. The present volume tries to close this gap. The reader thus is intended to bring together two discussion strings - the world systems debate and the pension reform debate that rarely met each other before. The basic message of the reader is that - however we evaluate the funded pension reform alternatives-, they will qualitatively and quantitatively become a major force in the capitalist world economy and that they will transform the nature of the capitalist system substantially over the coming years. In itself, moves to radically alter existing pension systems would merit the attention of world systems research. For Volker Bornschier, the core countries-grouped around the triad formed by the United States, Japan, and the European Union - have experienced successive waves of change marked by phases of ascent, unfolding, and decay of societal models, of which social security along the lines of the PAYGO-model formed and integral part. What according to Bornschier seemed stable and predictable in past decades came close to collapse or broke down entirely. A new order, with a fresh, basic consensus around an overarching set of norms that allows problems to be solved efficiently, has not yet crystallized. The role of social security would play an integral part in such a consensus, and our volume is dedicated to this question.

In order to integrate the “outer” peripheries of the evolving “wider Europe”, the EU must be able to integrate its periphery. And here, world system analysis says, is the EU’s major problem. In order to enlarge, it is clear that Europe must transform and re-form many of its cumbersome institutional arrangements. There is first of all, a positive relationship between net wealth per capita and net receipts from the EU budget per capita, as evidenced by our own compilations from European Commission and UNDP data. The rich are getting richer! Second, there is also a concentric effect of regional development, as evidenced by the regional database that covers 248 regions with complete data provided by the Directorate General for Regional Policy of the European Commission. The high unemployment rates of 1999 were determined to the tune of 60 % by the already existing unemployment in 1990. Weak regions remained weak, and high unemployment regions remained high unemployment regions. There is no redistribution of employment and life chances in Europe! Third, economic growth in Europe did not so systematically benefit the poorer regions. The regional redistribution effect between 1995 and 1999 was only weak, and regional poverty only explained 5 % of the positive convergence in that period. It would be naïve to negate the contradictory process of centers and peripheries in Europe in the first place. This book deals extensively with this process, and it is at the very heart of the problem, how to further integrate the peripheries that surround the European landmass.

This new book deals with the complex issue of Europe’s inevitable yet extremely controversial expansion process.

The European social model “does not have to be abandoned but it must be adapted to meet the challenges of the 21st century (former British Work and Pensions Secretary David Blunkett). His Prime Minister (Tony Blair), never shying away from confrontations, has set the tone for this debate, to which this book contributes. PM Blair went further to say recently that nobody would deny that Europe in one way or the other is in a crisis. 20 million unemployed people; productivity rates falling behind those of the USA; outsourcing is increasing, allowing more science graduates to be produced by India than by Europe; skills, R&D, patents, IT, going down not up. India will expand its biotechnology sector fivefold in the next five years. China has trebled its spending on R&D in the last five years. After the negative results of the constitutional referenda in France and the Netherlands, it would be foolish to deny the existence of such a crisis. But what are its causes? Too much globalization, too much distance from the average European citizen, too much regional disparity among members, too heavy tax burdens, insufficient investment in infrastructure for development, or too much regulation? Or a shrinking demographic base and barriers to migration? Or the rigid policies of the European Central Bank and the Maastricht accords? So Europe, again in the words of David Blunkett, has to "learn the lessons of change" if it is to meet the economic challenge posed by India and China. So, do we need after all roadmaps to “Bangalore” to make Europe really fit for the 21st Century? This book, a real “reality check” of the issues involved, and written by European and Asian and World Bank specialists, leaves behind the trodden paths of transatlantic comparison US-EU and looks at the real global issues that cause some nations to stagnate while others rush forward.

This publication empirically evaluates and develops core aspects of the literature on global governance. Analyzing world social, gender, ecological and economic development on the basis of the main 9 predictors, compatible with the majority of the more than 240 published studies on the cross-national determinants of the “human condition” around the globe, it presents the results of 32 equations about development performance from 131 countries. We come to the conclusion that while there is some confirmation for the “blue”, market paradigm as the best and most viable way of world systems governance concerning economic growth, re-distribution and gender issues, the “red-green” counter-position is confirmed concerning such vital and basic indicators as life expectancy and the human development index.

While there is a never-ending debate on Islamism, Islamist terrorism and the identity of Europe vis-à-vis growing Muslim communities in Europe, there are hardly any solid cross-national data being presented on the real extent of the Islamist threat facing Europe, and on the social conditions that lead to Islamist radicalism. By and large, our rigorous quantitative results, based on the first systematic use of the Muslim community data contained in the “European Social Survey” (ESS) all support a socio-liberal view of “migration” and “integration”, compatible with much of the rest of current European political economic thinking regarding the future alternatives for the European Union, and contradict the very extended current alarmist political discourse in Western Europe.

In this publication, we draw some optimistic, socio-liberal conclusions about Islam in the world system. Countering some alarmist voices in the West, neither migration nor Muslim culture are to be blamed for the contemporary crisis, but the very nature of unequal capitalist accumulation and dependency that is at the core of the world capitalist system.

Is really “Islam” to blame for many of the ills of the world, like stagnation, gender inequality, social inequality, human rights violations and ecologically unsustainable development? In this book, the authors will present a Barro-type of cross-national development accounting framework for the weight that the variable “Muslims per total population” has in comparison to standard world economic openness, political geography and political history indicators for 17 key economic, political, social and environmental variables in 134 countries. This is a ''first of its kind'' to develop a quantitative assessment of the "global Lisbon process" of the convergence or divergence of living conditions across the globe since the 1990''s. The authors draw come optimistic, socio-liberal conclusions about Islam in the world system while we show, at the same time, that membership in the EU-15, by comparative standards, has dire long-term consequences in the world economy, and globalization does not fulfill many of its promises.

With the process of a “wider Europe” (EU-Commission President Romano Prodi’s “ring of friends”) that extends from Marrakech in Morocco to St. Petersburg in Russia gathering speed, the growing rift between Europe and America also is about how to deal politically with the countries of the Mediterranean-Muslim world. The house of Islam (Dar al Islam) was pivotal to the European path to the Renaissance and to the re-discovery of classic Greek philosophy. The Mediterranean policy of the European Union aims at a positive and cooperative relationship with the region. A successful integration of the Mediterranean South would have tremendous and positive repercussions for regional and world peace. World-wide leading experts from the field of world systems analysis, economics, integration theory, political science, theology and area studies, agnostics, Christians, Jews and Muslims alike discuss the issue with European decision makers. The outcome is an interdisciplinary evaluation of this projected export of peace, cooperation, dialogue and stability in the framework of world center-periphery relationships.

With the process of a “wider Europe” (EU-Commission President Romano Prodi’s “ring of friends”) that extends from Marrakech in Morocco to St. Petersburg in Russia gathering speed, the growing rift between Europe and America also is about how to deal politically with the countries of the Mediterranean-Muslim world. The house of Islam (Dar al Islam) was pivotal to the European path to the Renaissance and to the re-discovery of classic Greek philosophy. The Mediterranean policy of the European Union aims at a positive and cooperative relationship with the region. A successful integration of the Mediterranean South would have tremendous and positive repercussions for regional and world peace. World-wide leading experts from the field of world systems analysis, economics, integration theory, political science, theology and area studies, agnostics, Christians, Jews and Muslims alike discuss the issue with European decision makers. The outcome is an interdisciplinary evaluation of this projected export of peace, cooperation, dialogue and stability in the framework of world center-periphery relationships.

‘Globalization, the Human Condition and Sustainable Development in the Twenty-first Century: Cross-national Perspectives and European Implications’ is a cross-national, 175-nation-based exploration of the deep crisis in which Europe currently finds itself. Investigating the effects of dependency theory and world-systems theory upon the global success of eight dimensions of development – including democracy, environmental sustainability, employment, social cohesion, high-quality tertiary education and gender justice – this study argues that the current European crisis has been precipitated by the pro-globalist policies of the European Commission, and that in the near future these policies threaten to enter Europe into a destructive ‘race to the bottom’.

This book provides an in-depth analysis of public opinion patterns among Muslims, particularly in the Arab world. On the basis of data from the World Values Survey, the Arab Barometer Project and the Arab Opinion Index, it compares the dynamics of Muslim opinion structures with global publics and arrives at social scientific predictions of value changes in the region. Using country factor scores from a variety of surveys, it also develops composite indices of support for democracy and a liberal society on a global level and in the Muslim world, and analyzes a multivariate model of opinion structures in the Arab world, based on over 40 variables from 12 countries in the Arab League and covering 67% of the total population of the Arab countries. While being optimistic about the general, long-term trend towards democracy and the resilience of Arab and Muslim civil society to Islamism, the book also highlights anti-Semitic trends in the region and discusses them in the larger context of xenophobia in traditional societies. In light of the current global confrontation with radical Islamism, this book provides vital material for policy planners, academics and think tanks alike.

This book systematically assesses the value systems of active Muslims around the globe. Based on a multivariate analysis of recent World Values Survey data, it sheds new light on Muslim opinions and values in countries such as Indonesia, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey. Due to a lack of democratic traditions, sluggish economic growth, escalating religiously motivated violence, and dissatisfaction with ruling elites in many Muslim countries, the authors identify a crisis and return to conservative values in the Muslim world, including anti-Semitism, religious and sexual intolerance, and views on democracy and secularism, business and economic matters. Based on these observations, they offer recommendations for policymakers and civil societies in Muslim countries on how to move towards tolerance, greater democratization and more rapid economic growth.

This book systematically assesses the value systems of active Muslims around the globe. Based on a multivariate analysis of recent World Values Survey data, it sheds new light on Muslim opinions and values in countries such as Indonesia, Iran, Tunisia, Egypt and Turkey. Due to a lack of democratic traditions, sluggish economic growth, escalating religiously motivated violence, and dissatisfaction with ruling elites in many Muslim countries, the authors identify a crisis and return to conservative values in the Muslim world, including anti-Semitism, religious and sexual intolerance, and views on democracy and secularism, business and economic matters. Based on these observations, they offer recommendations for policymakers and civil societies in Muslim countries on how to move towards tolerance, greater democratization and more rapid economic growth.

This book systematically assesses the political and social values of the more than 1.3 billion Catholics around the globe, by far the largest denomination of Western Christianity. Based on an extensive analysis of data from the World Values Survey and other global opinion surveys, the book sheds new light on the value systems and opinions of Roman Catholics. The authors highlight core problems and challenges the Church is currently facing in adapting to the modern world, including Catholic anti-Semitism, religious and sexual tolerance, and opinions towards democracy, while also offering an anthropological reflection on how well the Church is adapting or failing to adapt to the requirements of an open society.

This book systematically assesses the political and social values of the more than 1.3 billion Catholics around the globe, by far the largest denomination of Western Christianity. Based on an extensive analysis of data from the World Values Survey and other global opinion surveys, the book sheds new light on the value systems and opinions of Roman Catholics. The authors highlight core problems and challenges the Church is currently facing in adapting to the modern world, including Catholic anti-Semitism, religious and sexual tolerance, and opinions towards democracy, while also offering an anthropological reflection on how well the Church is adapting or failing to adapt to the requirements of an open society.

This book systematically assesses the political and social values of the more than 1.3 billion Catholics around the globe, by far the largest denomination of Western Christianity. Based on an extensive analysis of data from the World Values Survey and other global opinion surveys, the book sheds new light on the value systems and opinions of Roman Catholics. The authors highlight core problems and challenges the Church is currently facing in adapting to the modern world, including Catholic anti-Semitism, religious and sexual tolerance, and opinions towards democracy, while also offering an anthropological reflection on how well the Church is adapting or failing to adapt to the requirements of an open society.

This book studies values and attitudes in the Gulf region. In light of global power shifts, the threatening collapse of internal security in the West, and uncertainty about the current leadership vacuum in world society, this book explores a future leading role of the Gulf countries in such institutions as the G-20 and the OECD. Based on rigorous analysis of macro-level data and opinion surveys with relevance for the Gulf region, it analyzes the global macro-factors shaping the Gulf's future at a time of the global COVID-19 crisis and depression and rising global tensions. Starting with an empirical time series analysis of the long cycles of global politics and economics, it highlights the implications for the Gulf region. Offering a multivariate analysis of civil society values in the Gulf, the author analyzes value changes and attitudes on antisemitism, political Islam, internal security, democracy, and other issues of Arab politics. The partially optimistic conclusions of the study testify to the underestimated and incipient maturity of the Gulf’s civil society and strongly suggest that the Gulf's future is rather with the free societies of the West and not with a Neo-Ottoman Empire in whatever form."Exceptional in scope and right up-to-the-minute in coverage"Brian M Pollins, Associate, Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University."An outstanding and topical book by an astute scholar of the MENA region"Professor Hussein Solomon, Academic Head of Department, Political Studies and Governance, University of the Free State, South Africa."The most comprehensive and insightful study on the subject to date"Manfred B. Steger, Professor of Sociology, University of Hawai'i at Manoa and Global Professorial Fellow, Western Sydney University.