scholarly journals Political structures and trust in markets: A comparative examination of consumer trust in 28 EU member states and the effects of consumer policy on trust

2021 ◽  
pp. 144078332110019
Author(s):  
Sebastian Nessel

A central tenet of the New Economic Sociology is that trust is a central factor in the sound functioning of markets. Previous research has mainly used a national-scale network approach to argue that personal relations generate trust in market relations. In contrast, this article shows, from a comparative perspective, how political structures influence consumer trust. First, using aggregate data, it shows how consumer trust in markets varies across the 28 European Union (EU) member states. Second, it uses regression models to examine the effects of varying levels of political embeddedness on consumer trust, taking consumer policy as a proxy. The results support the view that it is not only personal relations that generate trust in market relations but also political structures. This argument echoes institutional economic sociological approaches, and it adds to them a trust dimension. It furthermore encourages a more finely grained comparative analysis to better account for the effects of social macrostructures on trust.

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Nessel

Abstract This article examines consumer policy in 28 EU Member States. It introduces a new methodological framework and several indicators to analyse legal, social, enforcement, and associational dimensions of consumer policy. Drawing on the most recent data, the empirical results provide a detailed picture of consumer policy across Europe displayed in several indices. The results furthermore allow for statistically testing consumer policy regimes, as suggested by previous research. These indices reveal great differences between individual countries but only few instances of statistically significant differences between consumer policy regimes. Considering legal and political accounts as well as sociological explanations that have not yet been applied, possible explanations for these findings are discussed. It is concluded that comparative consumer policy analysis should further analyse differences between individual European countries in several dimensions and should not only account for consumer policy regimes from a legal or a political science perspective. The methodological framework and the theoretical explanations outlined in this article may help to accomplish this goal.


2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Franca Angela Buelow

To arrive at a good status of all European water bodies is the main objective of the European Union (EU) Water Framework Directive (WFD). Since its adoption in 2000, the policy has fundamentally changed the institutional, procedural and organizational structures of Member States' water management, leading to an Europeanization of national legislation and decision-making structures. The case of WFD implementation in Schleswig-Holstein is an example of the policy's highly innovative governance architecture that unfortunately is not (yet) able to take that one last hurdle: to improve water quality and establish a good water status across EU Member States by 2015 or 2027.


Author(s):  
Irina PILVERE ◽  
Aleksejs NIPERS ◽  
Bartosz MICKIEWICZ

Europe 2020 Strategy highlights bioeconomy as a key element for smart and green growth in Europe. Bioeconomy in this case includes agriculture, forestry, fisheries, food and pulp and paper production, parts of chemical, biotechnological and energy industries and plays an important role in the EU’s economy. The growth of key industries of bioeconomy – agriculture and forestry – highly depends on an efficient and productive use of land as a production resource. The overall aim of this paper is to evaluate opportunities for development of the main sectors of bioeconomy (agriculture and forestry) in the EU based on the available resources of land. To achieve this aim, several methods were used – monographic, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, statistical analysis methods. The findings show that it is possible to improve the use of land in the EU Member States. If all the Member States reached the average EU level, agricultural products worth EUR 77 bln would be annually additionally produced, which is 19 % more than in 2014, and an extra 5 billion m3 volume of forest growing stock would be gained, which is 20 % more than in 2010.


Author(s):  
Mary Canning ◽  
Martin Godfrey ◽  
Dorota Holzer-Zelazewska

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 634-638
Author(s):  
Joanna Szwacka Mokrzycka

The objective of this article is to present the standard of living of households in Poland in comparison with other EU member states. The starting point for analysis was the economic condition of Poland against the background of other EU member states. The next step consisted of assessment of the standard of living of inhabitants of individual EU member states on the basis of financial condition of households and the structure of consumption expenditure. It was found that the differences within the EU in terms of economic development and the standard of living of households still remain substantial.


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