debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
“People joked that watching Finnish politics was about as interesting as watching paint dry. Until now.” (The New York Times 22.4.2011) In December 2010, I wrote about the rise of the True Finns movement in SEJ. I argued that if Timo Soini`s True Finns are able to mobilize their polls support in the general election [...]
Reading this article about Wal Mart stocking guns reminded me of a post just over a year ago about the US-EU divide. That focused on health-care and included some other major trans-Atlantic differences. The ability of American citizens to buy shotguns and hunting rifles in supermarkets (and the latter’s freedom to sell them) were not one [...]
Europe’s reaction to the historic revolutions in North Africa has vacillated between exhilaration and fear. The natural instinct to celebrate and support democratization across the Mediterranean has been tempered by concerns that the crisis will spill onto European shores. A few leaders have invoked the post-World War II Marshall Plan as a model for large-scale [...]
Obama’s defiance of the right on the budget is a ray of sunshine amid gathering clouds. The deeper problem remains the fact that the American centre-left has utterly failed to win the public over to its Keynesian explanation of the Great Recession. Progressives in the United States enjoyed a rare feeling of encouragement on April [...]
Nearly everywhere, it seems, there’s a populist revolt against established politics. From the True Finns in Finland, to the Front National 2.0 in France, to the Tea Party movement in America, and to the Sarrazin-upheaval in Germany the populist revolt continues. But what are the common causes? Why is it happening? Why now? What is [...]
For the past year, all the PIGS have been made to squeal that they are unlike the others. We have heard that Ireland is not Greece (only later to be told that Greece is not Ireland), that Portugal is neither Greece nor Ireland, and that Spain is different. This is to miss the point. Every [...]
George Osborne may be trying to put a brave face on today’s 0.5% 2011Q1 growth figure for the UK, but he knows things are bad. One-half of one percent was at the lower end of the range of what most economists were forecasting. Critically, though, it means that over the past two quarters (6 months) [...]
The U.S. massively wastes money on defence spending, health care, energy/transportation, and income disequilibrium. The Battle of the Budget Deficit has become centre stage in the United States and will dominate for many months – most likely into the presidential campaign in 2012. The battle in the U.S. mirrors similar ones in Europe, Japan and [...]
Sergei Magaril, teaching at the Moscow University of Humanities, published (in the 9th February issue of the Nezavisimaya Gazeta) an article under the title “In Search of Social Quality”, which starts from a quotation from Ivan Pavlov, the first Russian Nobel laureate: “The fate of nations is determined by the minds of their intelligentsia”. In [...]
The significant fall of Merkel’s CDU in Baden-Württemberg marked a resounding success for the Green party. How should the SPD respond to this political shift? In George Orwell´s 1984, the ruling party’s Ministry of Truth carries three slogans: ‘War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.’ Analogously, following the elections in three German Länder [...]
Reactions to today’s publication (Eurostat) of government debt and deficit data for 2010 were predictable. Greece was chastised because its deficit has been revised up from 9,6% to 10.5% of GDP. Portugal was criticised because of a similar revision from 8,6% to 9.1%. In both cases the figures are considerably higher than government targets. If [...]
President of the European Central Bank, Jean Claude Trichet, was once head of the Paris Club – the group of government creditors who negotiated debt restructuring during the Latin American debt crisis of the 1980s. This column asks how such experience will help Europe now that the problems are on its doorstep. It introduces a [...]
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