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This comment is stimulated by Max Haller's contribution The Challenge for Comparative Sociology in the Transformation of Europe which appeared in the 1990 issue of International Sociology, and takes it as a starting point and as a challenge for some basic reflections on how to approach the emerging European society. This article gives a short abstract of Haller's argument and appreciates its merits and examines some of his propositions. This will allow the author to formulate a significantly different position. The last paragraph draws some conclusions. Although he does not make this point extremely explicit, the intention behind Haller's paper is, in the author's perception, to demonstrate that Europe is an optimal constellation for making international and intercultural comparisons. Thus, the problems he has to solve are what to compare with what, why, and how. But it is clear that in his view Europe forms an entity, with nations as sub-units. The paper's argument starts with crisis phenomena in Europe and continues to describe Europe's striking internal differentiation. The unity and diversity of Europe are seen as optimal preconditions for comparative research, where unity means external delimitation and internal interlinkage, and diversity means internal differentiation.

Europe today seems to be undergoing a serious crisis. Its several sub-regions and nations, however, are affected very differently by it. Does Europe constitute a meaningful unit from a social scientific point of view at all? The paper argues that this is the case because of its common historical-cultural heritage and because of the increasing density of direct interrelationships between its nations and peoples. Nevertheless, internal differentiations continue to make of this `continent' one of the most complex and variegated culture areas in the world. Three dimensions are of particular relevance in this regard: (a) the level of socio-economic development; (b) linguistic-cultural and religious traditions; (c) the type of political system. If we allocate 25 of the larger European nation-states to this 3-dimensional typology, we can demonstrate a limited number of relatively internally homogeneous clusters of nations. These are distinguished from each other not only in terms of political system, but also in terms of socio-economic development, language and religion. The paper concludes with the thesis that the macro-context Europe' constitutes an ideal base for carrying out international comparisons and pleads for making full use of this potential by including all European nations in such comparisons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the mid-seventies, Europe has gotten into a crisis profoundly affecting its social, economic, and political life. The manifestations of this crisis, however, have touched its nations in very different ways. In the more peripheral, southern and eastern regions, high levels of unemployment, fiscal crisis of the state, and environmental pollution are among the most urgent. In the more prosperous, central and northwestern nations, crisis phenomena are the threat of a splitting of the societies into those with secure, well-paid jobs and those without such jobs, declining birth rates, and dwindling confidence in public institutions among subsections of the population. In the main part of the paper, it is argued that for two reasons Europe constitutes, also in view of these different trends, a "macro-context" with outstanding opportunities for comparative research. There are two arguments for this: (1) the direct connections between its regions and nations are increasing more rapidly than ever before; (2) even if the differences within Europe are manifold, they are not so fundamental as to forbid comparisons at all. Rather, just this diversity of actual trends at the background of a common history and culture offers optimal possibilities for comparison. In order to make maximal use of these possibilities, however, one should include all countries into the comparison, not only specific subsets of nations. One must also be continually aware of the main lines of differentiation within Europe. Three main dimensions are distinguished in this regard: (1) level of socioeconomic development, related strongly to central or peripheral geographical location; (2) linguistic-cultural and denominational differentiations (distinguishing three large "culture areas": the northwestern, Anglosaxon-German, protestant; the southern, catholic-romance; and the eastern, orthodox-slavic; (3) political system (Western democratic and capitalist market societies; Eastern socialist societies). The paper concludes with some considerations and suggestions about strategies for comparative research simultaneously incorporating these three dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reply to Bernd Hamm's critique of the transformation of Europe as a challenge to comparative sociology. The main thrust of Bernd Hamm's critique is that the article on the transformation of Europe is pursuing a comparative approach resulting only in the empirical description of similarities and differences between nations. Such an approach, accepting nations as the most important and meaningful entities for comparison, tends to confine research to a static and correlational logic. He asserts that it is characterized by a retrospective and conservative bias, not allowing for a true consideration of patterns of interlinkages between the units of observation nor the dynamics of change. While such an approach, according to Hamm, might have some merits, a truly fruitful comparative research within the context of Europe necessitates a significant different position, an evolutionary approach focusing on the changes going on in Europe. Here, the processes of building European institutions are particularly at issue; only by focusing on them can we contribute to the understanding of Europe as it becomes one society, and to learn lessons from such understanding. There are some specific arguments in Hamm's critique on which the author would like to comment briefly. The first concerns arguments about crisis phenomena in Europe in the first part of the paper. A second, quite important, issue raised by Hamm concerns the question whether nation-states are still the most meaningful units of observation in comparative research.

This article suggests that the economic standing of foreigners’ country of origin may become grounds for the emergence of an inclination to exclude an out-group population from the country. Moreover, exclusionary attitudes based on the economic standing of the immigrant’s country of origin may vary according to the economic conditions of the destination country. Data obtained from European Social Survey for 21 countries show that exclusionary views directed exclusively at foreigners from ‘poorer countries in Europe’ or at foreigners ‘from richer countries in Europe’ are quite substantial. Multi-level analyses reveal that differential preferences of immigrants from relatively rich and poor European countries indeed interact with the economic conditions of the host societies. Support for the exclusion of European foreigners from ‘poorer countries’ tends to be less pronounced in economically prosperous places while support for exclusion of European foreigners from ‘richer countries’ tends to be less pronounced in economically depressed places. The findings are discussed in the light of sociological literature and the context of modern European society. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]