debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
The most widely held theory of politics is also the simplest: the powerful get what they want. Financial regulation is driven by the interests of banks, health policy by the interests of insurance companies, and tax policy by the interests of the rich. Those who can influence government the most – through their control of [...]
The annual spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have provided a window onto two fundamental trends driving global politics and the world economy. Geopolitics is moving decisively away from a world dominated by Europe and the United States to one with many regional powers but no global leader. And a [...]
US President Barack Obama’s nomination of Jim Yong Kim for the presidency of the World Bank has been well received – and rightly so, especially given some of the other names that were bandied about. In Kim, a public-health professor who is now President of Dartmouth University and previously led the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS [...]
Last week I blogged about how the euro-crisis poisoned the way we talk about each other in Europe and I argued that this starts getting dangerous. I am happy to see that this observation has found its way into the FAZ Feuilleton and that even the FAZ starts to get concerned about this, although the paper’s take on the [...]
It is now clear that the eurozone crisis will continue well into 2012, despite early February’s recovery in stock markets. Negotiations between Greece and the banks over Greek sovereign debt may yet be concluded, but sufficiently wide participation by banks in the deal remains very much in doubt. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has raised [...]
One of our era’s foundational myths is that globalization has condemned the nation-state to irrelevance. The revolution in transport and communications, we hear, has vaporized borders and shrunk the world. New modes of governance, ranging from transnational networks of regulators to international civil-society organizations to multilateral institutions, are transcending and supplanting national lawmakers. Domestic policymakers, [...]
European citizens today are confronted with increasingly histrionic specters of disaster: financial ruin, xenophobic regression, a catastrophic reversal of the pax Europaea achieved over the past half century. In response to this approaching threat, Europeans are offered two distinct—yet misleading—choices: either (a) embrace a strengthened European Union with broader authority to regulate the internal policies [...]
Yet again historians, sociologists, cultural studies academics, and political scientists betray their academic duty. Previously they’ve shied away, in numbers far too big for comfort, from the problems of immigration, integration and Islam. They became traitors to their own expert knowledge on human society by failing to, in a timely and loud fashion, single out [...]
The world economy is entering a new phase, in which achieving global cooperation will become increasingly difficult. The United States and the European Union, now burdened by high debt and low growth – and therefore preoccupied with domestic concerns – are no longer able to set global rules and expect others to fall into line. [...]
The defining political issue of 2012 won’t be the government’s size. It will be who government is for. Americans have never much liked government. After all, the nation was conceived in a revolution against government. But the surge of cynicism now engulfing America isn’t about government’s size. The cynicism comes from a growing perception that [...]
And again, historians, sociologists, cultural studies academics and political scientists betray their academic duty. Earlier, they shied away from the problems of immigration, integration and Islam en masse. They turned traitor to their expert knowledge of human society by failing to signal the shadow sides of multicultural integration in a loud and timely manner. They [...]
The euro member states and the European institutions have not yet managed to come up with a convincing plan to surmount the crisis afflicting the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This is due both to a false analysis of the causes and a reluctance to take decisive political measures. A review of Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung publications on [...]
SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: A Breakthrough Opportunity for Global Health http://t.co/VYXi6Wag SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: When Neo-Liberals drop their Mask http://t.co/saAJbUZH SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: At least nine EU countries in recession: stimulus urgently needed http://t.co/oNN0v98l SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: European Monetary Union: Doomed to fail or just another Stepping Stone? http://t.co/pMuqDvkA SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: Creating Jobs in recession-hit Communities in Europe: Why Microcredit will not help http://t.co/zJb4XxJl SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: German State Elections send Merkel an Economic Message http://t.co/yVG4Xr5n SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: Two dangerous Myths about a 'Grexit' http://t.co/vOhdnVIp SocialEurope Journal: SEJ Article: Finding a Way out of the Crisis – Growth and Employment in Europe http://t.co/Q8JhRRSg 
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