Tag archive for ‘Social Democracy’
Tony Judt’s lessons of the 20th century
Last week I was interviewed on Dutch radio about Ill Fares the Land, the alarming intellectual testament of the late Tony Judt. In fact, it was a double interview together with a conservative-liberal academic/politician. He expressed the usual criticism against the book, namely that it is an old-fashioned, nostalgic defence of the social-democratic European welfare [...]
Angela Merkel: The World’s ‘Most Valuable Leader’
Forget Barack Obama. Forget the Hu Jintao/Wen Jiaboa duo, or David Cameron or Vladimir Putin. Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel is the world’s most important leader. The latest report showing Germany’s economy growing at a blistering annual rate of nearly 9%, well into recovery from a US-made economic collapse, is just further evidence of the obvious. Despite [...]
Who is reforming Europe’s Economic Governance?
After the crisis, European policy makers are now crafting reforms to strengthen the Union’s economic governance. It is an opportunity to make Europe more democratic. Instead, conservatives increase the democratic deficit under the pretext of closing budget deficits. This will not work. The European Commission has proposed measures to enhance economic policy coordination. ECB President [...]
The Economic Crisis, US Progressivism, and West European Socialism and Social Democracy
It occasionally is rewarding to think of ideal solutions to current crises rather than of outcomes dictated by evident and immediate constraints. It is rewarding because it invariably teaches us humility about our current political capacities – and because, even in that lesson, we may find new ways of looking at our situation. I designate [...]
English Football Needs Root and Branch Reform… And so Does the Labour Party
I can’t seem to separate two momentous recent events in my mind: the England team crashing out of the South African World Cup and the battle for the Labour leadership. The dynamics of the two keep colliding in my brain. Will an analysis of both help the other? Lets start with the football team. England, [...]
Squalid Isolation – Social Cohesion, Quality of Life and Losing the Ties that Bind
A few weeks ago I called on social democracy to come to terms with the fact that many of its voters are not on loan to other parties, but for the most part gone for good. One of the key problems behind this, I argued, is that the traditional bases of all mass parties are [...]
Keynes and Social Democracy
For decades, Keynesianism was associated with social democratic big-government policies. But John Maynard Keynes’s relationship with social democracy is complex. Although he was an architect of core components of social democratic policy – particularly its emphasis on maintaining full employment – he did not subscribe to other key social democratic objectives, such as public ownership [...]
The Demographic Schizophrenia of the Left: Which response?
The problems of the European center parties are a pars pro toto for what’s happening in society at large. A possible split within the people’s parties (Volksparteien) may be a foreshadowing of the split in society. What we urgently need is a new social deal, a new pact between the privileged and the less privileged, [...]
Divide and Conquer: Diversification is the Way Forward for the Left
For social democrats, the decline from parties that regularly poll over 40% and dominate the left-wing of the political spectrum to 20-30% parties that uneasily cohabit with a mix of green and far-left upstarts has been marked. And it has been one of struggle, too: the intra-left contest has often been as intense as the [...]
The British Labour Party has a great Opportunity!
Ok, one day after a party was removed from office after 13 years it might not seem to be the time to talk about opportunities. But if you look at the fundamentals, the British Labour party has a great opportunity to regroup and go for office again in the near future. Social democratic parties have [...]
Taming the Tiger – The Challenge for European Social Democracy
Can social democracy hold the tiger of capitalism in check or is global capital now too liquid for any social democracy to control? Is the carefully managed European balance between people and capital becoming unsustainable and should we be looking for alternative, more humane, economic strategies? Capitalism has brought many benefits to western Europe and [...]
After the Election Disaster – The Future of the Left in Hungary
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. This phrase keeps springing to mind following the first round of the Hungarian elections on Sunday. The right-wing opposition swept to power in all but one of the 176 constituencies. To put this in perspective, if a first-past-the-post system were used, the Socialist Party (MSZP) would only have 1 [...]
