In our recent readers ballot we asked you who you think are the thinkers with the most influence on the European left-of-centre political agenda. Here are the top 50 of your vote:
1. Paul Krugman
2. Juergen Habermas
3. Slavoj Zizek
4. Anthony Giddens
5. Daniel Cohn-Bendit
6. Umberto Eco
7. Zygmund Bauman, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen
9. Oskar Lafontaine
10. Ulrich Beck
11. Manuel Castells, Ed Miliband
13. Alain Baidou
14. Julian Assange, Joschka Fischer
16. Helmut Schmidt
17. David Held, Alain Touraine
19. Neal Lawson, Jacques Ranciere
21. Martine Aubry, David Miliband
23. Henning Meyer, John Monks, Ignacio Ramonet, Goran Therborn, Guy Verhofstadt, Jean Ziegler
29. Wolfgang Streeck
30. Tony Blair, Jon Cruddas, George Monbiot, Chantal Mouffe, Andrea Nahles, Pierre Rosanvallon, Andrew Watt
37. Fintan Farrell
38. Gordon Brown, Stefan Collignon, Ann Pettifor, Gerhard Schroeder, Frank Vandenbroucke
43. Rene Cuperus, Gustav Horn, Peter Kellner, Loic Wacquant
47. Heiner Flassbeck, Hans Joas, Paavo Lipponen, Olaf Scholz, Franz Walter, Per Wirten
Here also a visual of the proportions:
The results are of course only a snapshot of SEJ readers’ opinions.
No related posts.
RT @jppastor: Le plus influent penseur européen est un Américain! 
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Very interesting result. And it looks like Krugman won it by quite some margin. What does this tell us about the state of the European public debate? I know we have language problems but why does Krugman seem to get through and others don't? Don't they even try?
Habermas' second place is probably due to past merit. I haven't heard anything from him recently. The result shows that the state of the European public debate is very, very poor indeed.
Don't be concerned, the list is so nutty that Blair's on it but not Chomsky.
It seems like Paul Krugman has found out that he won the poll and also thought that the result was weird. Come on public intellectuals in Europe! Get more involved!
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/30/take-…
With no knock on Mr. Krugman, whom I admire, the list is grossly incomplete without Noam Chomsky on it, period.
What? Where's Thomas Piketty? He's brilliant and has an uncanny resemblance to Ewan McGregor.
Intellectual rock star material folks !!!
Paul Krugman looks like an older, bearded Jim Dangle. Just saying.
Paul, I think Krugman is the odd man out as an American. Unless you think that Chomksy belongs on any list of left-of-centre intellectuals there is no reason why he should be there. Krugman is a well-known columnist and as far as I know a lot of his stuff gets translated in European languages and published by European papers (I have read him a few times in German papers).
38. …, Frank Vandenbroucke? The recently deceased professional cyclist?
Krugman understands Europe not. He is rabidly anti-euro, and that helps the TBTF banks, because it confuses the issues. A sad day for all those who participated in this poll. I am writing more on the subject on my blog.
It’s probably all the anti-European, anti-Euro thinkers on the left. There are lots of those… The European left barks up the wrong tree. When the left starts to attack derivatives, blind globalization of exploitation, TBTF banks, and the fractional reserve system, should Krugman still stay pretty silent on these, we will see what happens to his popularity. Was not Obama’s the Euro left’s darling last year?
By the way, welcome Estonia! Long live the euro! Down with the dollar, as world currency, as Keynes used to say!
The evil empires are shrinking every year…
http://patriceayme.wordpress.com/
Mazel Tov! You deserved it.
Now maybe he can get some of their govts to listen to him.
His criticisms of the Euro are debatable but he mostly favours the
European social model which could do wonders for the US. I think
he should emphasize Europes ancient stately dignity rather than its
supposed schlerosis.
Good guess
But I am sure it is this Frank Vandenbroucke  ;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Vandenbroucke_(politician)
Krugman is an old fashioned American patriot in an era of the rising barbaric and fascist right in the Republican party and in the right wing think tanks.
Krugman isn't anti European, he just believes that when monetary policy is separate from national policy, that when a state is in fiscal crises that I leave them with fewer options. Thus Europe has a split in the road coming up; either fiscal joins monetary policy at the European level or monetary policy is brought back to the verious states by dropping the euro.
European.
No I’m not.
I'm thinking of leaving for Europe too. Right behind you Prof. Krugman.
Amazing how hyperbole wanders around the web. The suggestion that Krugman is rabidly anti-Euro is absurd – he's hardly rabid about anything. Rather he advances ideas clearly, with plenty of reasoning and supportive evidence. Of course when this crosses up someone's ideological agenda, they don't know what to do with it but bluster.
It would be helpful to know how many people participated in this survey.
USA! USA! USA!
I love watching left-of-center Europeans align themselves with the party of George W. Bush against Krugman.
Anthony Giddens??!
I thought this was about leftofcentre thinkers, not rightofcentre thinkers…
It's Alain Badiou, not Baidou