Abstract
Beginning of Europe modern state structures can be recognized in the past millennium. Some kingdoms existing already around 1000 CE are now modern nation-states. State- and nation-building were a long-term process in which national-state were formed with clear boundaries, uniform administration, defined citizen rights and so on. It took the time into the 1950s to build from the isolated national state the supranational unit of the European Union. The process of state- and nation-building did not aim at homogenous states which offer a similar level of well-being to its citizens. Europeans attained rather high levels of well-being in global comparisons. Heterogeneity is found in all the national measures from the economic accounts (GDP), satisfaction with life (SWL), Human Development Index (HDI) and social progress (WISP). The leading question is if Europe can be described as a continent of variety or a continent of inequality.
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Notes
- 1.
This is documented using three indicators for all the EU countries at the end of this chapter.
- 2.
State formation is a historical process which ended up with the establishment of a central authority (government) and an administrative infrastructure (state bureaucracy) that gained control over a territory and was able to defend its borders. In addition nation-building was focused on the sociopolitical integration of peoples and the development of a national identity on the basis of a common history, common language and common values.
- 3.
A similar perspective on state- and nation-building Europe is used in Held (1996).
- 4.
But other causes of the big European migrations are also debated, for example, the migration pressure from the Huns who came from the East.
- 5.
It is also often told that he brought peace, but this is usually restricted to the inside of his country, whereas at the borders he fought many wars.
- 6.
According to historical research, the time of Charlemagne is described as a betterment of the historical trouble before, and especially administrative procedures have been adapted in Europe which enforced the homogeneity of religious and living conditions in Europe.
- 7.
Part of the EU are also the outermost countries which belong to an EU mainland as there are the Azores and Madeira (Portugal), Canary Islands (Spain), French Guyana (France) and some others.
- 8.
The status of applicant for the European Union has a number of countries, especially on the Balkans.
- 9.
The EU has been built on predecessors and accompanying institutions. The “European Coal and Steel Organization” was a first important step for European cooperation which led into several EU treatises. Aside, the “European Council”, founded in 1951, included all European countries but implemented weaker forms of integration than the EU. A common European currency—the Euro—was introduced in 2007 in 15 member countries and constituted a further step of European integration.
- 10.
In the year 2016, in European countries, two supranational representative survey sets were carried through, one by Eurofound and one by the World Happiness Study. Whereas in the Eurofound survey, the simple satisfaction ladder from 1 to 10 was implemented; the World Happiness Survey adapted the Cantril ladder, which is somewhat more complicate. According to the results, the life satisfaction values of both surveys differ somewhat in detail but not in the main tendency. Top and bottom countries tend to be the same in both surveys. It is no-good solution that different scales for life satisfaction are used in the various surveys and that, therefore, no precise comparability of the results exists.
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Glatzer, W. (2019). Long-Term State- and Nation-Building in Europe. In: History and Politics of Well-Being in Europe . SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05048-1_6
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