debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
Strengthening labour relations and workplace innovations are prerequisites for sustained recovery and future growth. Enabling workers and unions to negotiate wage growth in line with enhanced productivity growth requires the dissemination of high-performance working practices that engage workers, a raising of minimum standards, and substantial changes to labour law. The global economic crisis had its [...]
Now that financial institutions are being subsidised by taxpayers and speculative trading is back to pre-crisis levels, breaking the economic boom-and-bust cycles should become a high priority for the European trade union movement. This needs to be underpinned by broad coalition-building, campaigns and targeted lobby work in member states. Rahm Emanuel, White House chief-of-staff, after [...]
Much has been written about the world becoming multipolar, but nobody seems to be able to tell what such a world would actually look like. After the spectacular nuclear deal between Turkey, Brazil and Iran, the picture becomes a little clearer and it seems that the P5, the mighty five permanent members of the Security [...]
The population in parts of southern and central Poland currently battles with the flood waters from the Vistula river. An early estimate of the economic damage from the flood amounts to about €2.5 billion. This tragedy is a timely reminder of the importance of adapting to climate change. Changing precipitation patterns as a result of [...]
Every country, rich and poor, should ensure universal coverage of primary health care, including safe childbirth, nutrition, vaccines, malaria control, and clinical services. Each year, nearly nine million children die of conditions that could be prevented or treated, and nearly 400,000 women die because of complications during pregnancy. Almost all of these deaths are in [...]
Angela Merkel may have got just about everything else wrong, but she was right to tell the German parliament that urgent action is needed to save the euro area, otherwise the future of Europe is at stake. Europe’s reaction to the sovereign debt crisis has been an almost unmitigated disaster – denial, delay and dithering [...]
In early 2009, Paul Krugman gave a series of lectures at the London School of Economics on the global economic crisis in which he warned about the danger of a ‘perfect storm’ hitting the economy. The scenario he sketched was that of a fragile recovery in 2010-11 being hit by an inflationary spike, leading to [...]
Given that empire remains a wide-ranging and hugely influential phenomenon it is surprising how little academic attention has been directed towards it. Those few texts that do examine the processes by which empires gain power tend to focus upon the most obvious method, conquest. Yet there remain a surprising number of alternative strategies for expanding, [...]
The European project is in deep crisis. Angela Merkel’s ban on the short selling of Eurobonds in Germany is symptomatic of the European political elite’s lack of a coherent response to the crisis, just as was the confused ‘shock and awe’ bailout ten days ago. Ironically, the financial markets have recognised this confusion by redoubling [...]
Current developments in Greece have raised doubts over the efficacy of the European Stability and Growth Pact. This column proposes a new framework for fiscal policy consolidation in Europe to deal with the ongoing fiscal exit and its related phenomena of crisis. On centre stage should be a European Consolidation Pact. Eighty-one years after Gustav [...]
For some, like the former President of the Italian Democratic Party Walter Veltroni, all nowadays’ fragmented and allegedly ‘liquid’ societies want from a party is an attractive narrative. The rest of the party organising task can be limited to primary elections and electoral volunteering. I do not share this view. We still need a modernised [...]
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