Volume 4 Issue 2
Animal Spirits
To understand how economies work and how we can manage them and prosper, we must pay attention to the thought patterns that animate people’s ideas and feelings, their animal spirits. We will never really understand important economic events unless we confront the fact that their causes are largely mental in nature. It is unfortunate that [...]
World Wide Webbed: The Obama Campaign’s masterful Use of the Internet
Just as President Barack Obama has shaken up the status quo in his first 100 days in office, his campaign overturned old formulas about how to win the presidency. The Obama campaign did not focus only on battleground states, but instead charged into states that previously had been solidly Republican turf. With a historic economic [...]
Strategy and Organising – Lessons from the Obama Campaign
Sun Tzu wrote that, ‘strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.’ Obama and his campaign internalised this maxim. They combined a political strategy that focussed on a singular narrative and open organisational structure with modern tools to maximise fundraising and voter mobilisation. The critical difference [...]
Where now for European Political Parties?
Political parties perform important roles in European societies. Parties are institutions in which citizens with similar political views organise, develop political programmes and actively participate in the political process. They are vital for democracy because parties offer the most clear-cut political choices that are put to the electorate. Parties are also recruitment organisations, through which [...]
European Parliamentary Elections 2009 – Time for a new Direction
Europe has been a fascinating idea of peace, stability and social justice. After decades of unstable balance of power systems, disastrous conflicts and two World Wars, a new era in Europe’s history began when the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) was established. The idea ‘to create peace through integration’ became a reality. Following decades [...]
Europe on the Way to a Social Union?
The European Commission’s ‘Renewed Social Agenda’, published at the beginning of July 2008, bears the auspicious subtitle ‘Opportunities, Access and Solidarity in 21st Century Europe’. The Agenda outlines a framework for European social policy in the areas of employment and social affairs, education and youth, health care and the information society. However, since social policy [...]
My Case for Europe
Malta is quite unique. Although we have our fair share of problems as anywhere else in Europe, few would doubt that, particularly in view of our small size, Malta offers experiences not easily replicated in other larger countries. At the same time, however, we must not allow this trait to stand in our way of [...]
