Over The Past Two Generations The United States Has Undergone a series of remarkable transformations. It has helped to defeat global communism, led a revolution in information technology that is fuelling unprecedented prosperity, invented life-saving treatments for diseases from AIDS to cancer, and made great strides in reversing discriminatory practices and promoting equal rights for all citizens. But during these same decades the United States also has undergone a less sanguine transformation: its citizens have become remarkably less civic, less politically engaged, less socially connected, less trusting, and less committed to the common good. At the dawn of the millennium Americans are fast becoming a loose aggregation of disengaged observers, rather than a community of connected participants.

Soon After The Democratic Candidate For President Of The United States in 2000, Al Gore, conceded defeat to George W. Bush, he engaged in a heated exchange with President Bill Clinton over why he had lost the election. Gore argued that Clinton's sexual escapades, and public qualms about other character issues, notwithstanding strong approval ratings for the job he was doing as president, had contributed significantly to Gore's defeat. Clinton retorted that Gore blew an ideal chance to run on the record of the Clinton administration and fumbled a perfect opportunity to become president. However, the Clinton record proves ambiguous at best. Indeed, the aftertaste has carried strongly over to his first hundred days out of office. The dubious pardons, ‘conversion’ of public property from the White House and rental rates at prime Manhattan locations have grabbed more headlines and provided more grist for talk shows, it often seems, than negative coverage of George W. Bush. Indeed, in terms of negatives, we run the risk of seeing Clinton's first hundred days out of office eclipse Bush's first hundred days in the presidency.

In Early December 2000 The Political Leaders Of The European Union (EU) met in Nice in order to decide on the treaty adaptations needed before the enlargement envisaged for the next decade. The overall goal was to render the EU more efficient and its decision making more transparent. The outcome of this important event was widely considered as disappointing. Some observers even came to the conclusion that there were no leaders of the EU as such, but only rather narrow-minded, egotistical national leaders who did not – with minor exceptions – care about the ‘common good’ at all. Never had it become so evident, in the opinion of some, that the European perspective had been fading away for many years, and that it was being replaced by national considerations which are often short-sighted and limited to the horizon of the next national elections. One of the classical theories on European integration, neo-functionalism, measures the progress of integration in terms of the Europeanization of its political elites. From this perspective, the top decision-makers seem to be on a downward trend. Is it then a case for the opposite theory, that of intergovernmentalism, which claims that national interests continue to be in the centre of EU decision-making and that tough bargaining is of its very nature?

España Va Bien. ‘Things Are Going Well In Spain.’ With This Simple yet somewhat unoriginal slogan, the incumbent conservative Partido Popular (PP) swept to victory by absolute majority in the 12 March 2000 general election in Spain. The PP's astounding victory may be attributed to several factors. First, its own well-organized campaign was based upon a strong leadership, something the two main leftist parties lacked. As the experience of the former centrist party, Unión Centro Democrático (UCD) shows, party leadership does matter. Secondly, leadership charisma, so important in the 1993 election when the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) managed to be re-elected despite worryingly high unemployment figures and a wave of political scandals, seemed to matter little or nothing in the March 2000 election. Effective management skills and strong leadership seem to have replaced populist charisma as a way to attract the average Spanish voter.

During The Years Immediately Following The Fall Of The Ceausescu regime in 1989, Romania fulfilled the requirements of an ‘electoral democracy’. Free and reasonably fair elections regularly produced parliaments (1990, 1992) and governments dominated by the communist successor parties run by Ion Iliescu, a member of the old nomenklatura. Once elected, these institutions operated in principle within the framework of procedural democracy, but in practice often broke the rules and norms accepted in the West as characteristic of liberal democracy. When this occurred public opinion was either too weak, or divided, or simply too indifferent to demand more accountability. Further impoverishment of the poorest citizens due to mismanagement of the economy and rampant corruption contributed to the demise of the post-communist regime in 1996, which in turn led to the hope that with electoral democracy established, the development of democratic institutions and government accountability would follow.

This Article Discusses The Importance Of Social Learning For Eu public policy-making in general and regional policy in particular. The first section analyses the implications of the learning process for EU regional policy and examines its social and institutional prerequisites. Section two introduces the concepts of social capital and institutional networks as components crucial for the learning process and socialization function. The third section, based on the analysis of the role of social learning, delineates the multi-level system of governance in EU regional policy. The fourth section presents empirical evidence from Greek regions on the role of social learning in the implementation of EU regional policy (Structural Funds) programmes. Finally, the last section draws conclusions on the role of social learning in EU regional policy and lessons from the Greek experience.