Search

More than at any time during the half century since World War II, Europe's roughly 320 million people and its state structures are experiencing decisive, far-reaching forces for change in the 90s. The changes in Europe after the French Revolution in the late 18th century did not leave European public administration unaffected. The abolition of absolute monarchy and the transfer of power to a liberal constitutional state meant that government's primary role became the protection of rights and liberties, the right of property, basic for free-market capitalism, and individual human rights and liberties basic for a parliamentary Rechtsstaat. These powerful forces include, collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, reunification of Germany, creation of newly independent post-socialist East European nations, growth of ethnic tensions and New Right politics, outbreak of civil war and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, strengthening of overhead European Union authority, trends toward regionalization below the European nation-state, prolonged European unemployment above 11 percent, reduction of American forces and redirection of NATO policies.