debating progressive politics in Europe and beyond
The Flemish party Sp.a redefined its principles and values at a congress held in Leuven on 8th June. The heir to the glorious Belgian socialist party – which now uses the denomination ‘social democrats’[i] – began the process by posting all 103 pages of its draft resolutions online open to comment from anyone – even [...]
Attempting to emulate Germany’s economic model is not the cure-all that many British social democrats hope for. A long-standing current of thought within the Labour party has sought to rejuvenate British democracy and economic performance by looking to the ‘social market economies’ on the continent. Under Ed Miliband, the Labour Party’s ideological flirtation with this [...]
A unified Europe without dividing borders, with the certainty of a peaceful future and social security accompanied by social and economic progress – this has always been and still is the essence of the ‘European dream’. To us it describes the hope we associate with the project of a Social Europe. After all that we [...]
The new Progressive Alliance was launched in Leipzig last week and as I know that there is a lot of interest in the new organisation and rather little information out there I thought documenting as much as possible here is a good idea. First, what is the new organisation all about? This is its mission statement: [...]
The Good Society Debate, that was launched five years ago by the SPD Secretary General Andrea Nahles and the Head of the Labour Party Policy Review, Jon Cruddas MP, has certainly made a splash in Europe. According to a study by the Institute of Democracy Research of Göttingen University the debate, which has been driven by the [...]
Every time we analyse European social democracy the challenge is both more daunting and more exciting. From the publication of Building the Good Society by Andrea Nahles and Jon Cruddas to Europe & the Good Society: After the Crash by Thorben Albrecht and myself everything has changed. But things have now changed again. Events in Cyprus and the struggles [...]
The Good Society Debate – the most influential intellectual stream in today’s Social Democracy, has gone unnoticed by the Czech Social Democrats and the Czech Republic itself. According to the media database, between January 2012 and March 2013, Czech newspapers used the expression ‘good society’ just once in the context of the social democratic debate. [...]
A giant mental disconnect has opened up between the core of Europe and its periphery. A mundane existence in one part now coexists alongside a situation of disaster in the other, meaning that a sense of urgency is not shared across the Union when it comes to the euro crisis. According to one vision of [...]
Over the course of Arab Spring, the Socialist International (SI) hastily removed first the RCD (the party of Ben Ali in Tunisia) and then New Democracy (the party of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt) from its ranks. The slow response in North Africa typified the glacial pace of the organization. When it comes to being unable to [...]
Watch a panel of experts debate the future of social democracy. The discussion was recorded at the conference ‘The Future of the Left in Central Europe’, organised by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and CESTA in Prague on 21st November 2012. Unfortunately only the original audio was recorded so we only put the English speakers into the video, [...]
We are living through not one but two crises of capitalism. The first one – the economic crisis which has followed the financial crash of 2008 – everyone knows about. The second is less familiar. This is the crisis of the global environment. Of course environmentalists have been warning of ‘environmental crisis’ for over 50 [...]
Watch Hungarian MP Tibor Szanyi discuss the future of social democracy in Hungary. The talk was recorded at the conference ‘The Future of the Left in Central Europe’, organised by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung and CESTA in Prague on 21st November 2012.
All Content