Tag archive for ‘Politics’
Why Growth is Good
Economic growth is slowing in the United States. It’s also slowing in Japan, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Canada. It’s even slowing in China. And it’s likely to be slowing soon in Germany. If governments keep hacking away at their budgets while consumers almost everywhere are becoming more cautious about spending, global demand will shrink [...]
Why the European Union is Dying
Ok, the headline is exaggerating the problems of the EU and I certainly don’t want it to die. But the headline is meant to attract your attention to a very real issue that has the potential to send the Union into terminal decline: the complete lack of any European identity or ambition of any of Europe’s political leaders. Gary [...]
The Myth of Authoritarian Growth
On a recent Saturday morning, several hundred pro-democracy activists congregated in a Moscow square to protest government restrictions on freedom of assembly. They held up signs reading “31”, in reference to Article 31 of the Russian constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly. They were promptly surrounded by policemen, who tried to break up the demonstration. [...]
Is Post-Ideology coming to a Voting Booth near You?
I hadn’t planned on writing about Hungary again quite so soon – not unless our domestic politics raised some point of larger significance to European progressives in general. But a few days ago our new right-wing (?) prime minister, Viktor Orbán announced that the time of the old ideologies that had shaped the 20th century [...]
New Transatlantic Relations with a “Pacific” President
By his own definition, Barak Obama is the US’ first „Pacific“ President. Indeed, raised in Hawaii and Indonesia there are few “Atlantic” ties to be found in his biography. Obama’s remarks, delivered during a visit to Asia, may be only intended as a polite gesture; nevertheless they indicate a shift of attention away from Europe [...]
Russia’s Great Gas Game
Russia and the European Union are geopolitical neighbors. Whether or not their relationship is in fact neighborly, rather than tense and confrontational, is of critical importance to both. Unless it modernizes its economy and society, Russia can forget its claim to status as a world power in the twenty-first century and will continue to fall [...]
The Market Confidence Bugaboo
A specter is haunting Europe – the spectre of “market confidence.” It may have been fear of communism that agitated governments when Karl Marx penned the opening line of his famous manifesto in 1848, but today it is the dread that market sentiment will turn against them and drive up the spreads on their government’s [...]
New World Order? The Aftermath of the Financial Crisis
The financial crash of 2008 rocked the foundations of the global economy. Banks went bust, many countries almost followed suit. But just how big was the crisis? And what will its long-term effects be? Andrew Gamble takes a look at the worldwide implications of the credit crunch. The crash of 2008 is already recognised as [...]
Put Advertising on the Political Agenda
The problems of advertising have not been high up the political agenda in many countries, yet it seems to me that we should try to tackle them much more firmly, responding to advertising’s important role as essentially a form of political and cultural bias in mass communications. The problem now is not so much that [...]
Amartya Sen on Power, Justice and Capabilities
I have just come across the lecture of Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen talking about Power, Justice and Capabilities at the annual lecture of the Demos think tank a few days ago. This is the Demos blurb of it: For the Nobel prize-winner Amartya Sen, a good society is one populated by individuals with the [...]
Towards a Co-operative Europe
Human flourishing requires conditions of relative equality. Progressives have always realised this and have traditionally looked to the state to deliver. This has led to many successes, particularly in the 1945-75 period when robust profitability (rooted in the re-stocking of manufacturing capacity destroyed in World War II) and the communist threat obtained many social concessions [...]
Where now? The Future of European Social Democracy
Moving on from the analysis of social democracy’s plight, the future of social democratic politics in Europe was the focus of attention for many contributors to the Good Society Debate. Changes to the general approach of social democracy appeared necessary to some authors. Stefan Berger of Manchester University for instance stressed the need for a [...]
