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Politics


Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher. We use the values of freedom, sustainability and equality as the foundation on which we examine society’s most pressing challenges. We are committed to publishing cutting-edge thinking and new ideas from the most thought-provoking people. This archive page brings together Social Europe articles on political issues.

There Are Alternatives To The Neoliberal Blind Alley!

João Antônio Felício 24th June 2014

In its Working for the Few briefing paper, Oxfam has called attention to a worrying trend: the wealth of 1% of the world’s richest people is equivalent to a total of US$ 110 trillion – 65 times the total wealth of the poorer half of the world’s population. In the last 25 years, wealth has been increasingly […]

Social Europe In A Climate Of Austerity

Christopher Pissarides 23rd June 2014

The Need For Social Dialogue To Improve Distribution Eurofound stands for Improvement of Living and Working Conditions through social dialogue. Currently, in the midst of high unemployment and increasing inequality, living and working conditions for ordinary people are worse than in 2007. But recession is not the only problem. Even when countries are recovering, the […]

Fiscal Rules: Politics And Economics

Simon Wren-Lewis 23rd June 2014 1 Comment

Jonathan Portes and I have an article in Prospect, which is a short summary of our discussion paper on fiscal rules (see here or here). In this post I want to use that paper to make two observations on the interaction of politics and economics. Jonathan and I are frequently accused of being against fiscal […]

It’s Time To Stand Up To Troika Austerity (Part II)

Thomas Fazi 19th June 2014 1 Comment

In the first part of this article I looked at the mounting evidence against austerity by organisations as varied as Caritas, the ILO, the Council of Europe and the IMF. So why is the European establishment pushing for more of the same? Social and economic misery and despair, growing inequality, dwindling public services, loss of hope and […]

Does Politics Dominate Economics In Eurozone Crisis Management?

Simon Wren-Lewis 18th June 2014 2 Comments

Athanasios Orphanides, leading academic macroeconomist and from 2007-12 Governor of the Central Bank of Cyprus, does not hold back in a recent paper. Here is just one quote: “During the crisis, key decision makers exhibited neither political leadership nor political courage. Rather than work towards containing total losses, politics led governments to focus on shifting losses […]

Rethinking Democracy

Dani Rodrik 12th June 2014 2 Comments

By many measures, the world has never been more democratic. Virtually every government at least pays lip service to democracy and human rights. Though elections may not be free and fair, massive electoral manipulation is rare and the days when only males, whites, or the rich could vote are long gone. Freedom House’s global surveys […]

Mending A Dysfunctional European Union

Jan Zielonka 11th June 2014 2 Comments

The EU is not an end in itself. Europe needs a vision of functional integration orchestrated and managed not just by states, but also major regions, cities, NGOs and firms. Elections create winners and losers; the former suffer from hangover due to the excess of champagne; the latter suffer from hangover caused by depression. These […]

Inequality, Freedom And The Politics Of Power

Shayn McCallum 10th June 2014 1 Comment

Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century has handed those of us interested in a better, more socially-just political economy a huge gift. I can only hope we don’t squander the energy it has given us by getting bogged down and distracted by the conservative backlash and smear campaign currently underway. For those of us […]

Failing Union Of Capitalism And Democracy Fuels Rise In Inequality

Wolfgang Merkel 3rd June 2014 4 Comments

Recent weeks have been all about elections and broken promises: from early April to mid-May, half-a-billion Indians went to the polls in what many described an astonishing display of democratic prowess. Later, millions of European citizens elected their representatives to the often-criticised and never much-loved European Union parliament. Meanwhile, Australian prime minister Tony Abbott decided […]

After The Elections The Real Battle For Europe Begins

Thomas Fazi 3rd June 2014 4 Comments

Taking stock of the results of the recent European elections is not an easy task. Many commentators have described the outcome as an ‘earthquake’, citing the surge in ‘anti-establishment’ parties, with voters supposedly lured by two ‘extremes’: the ultra-right and the extreme left. But this is a gross simplification of reality. As the Greek economist Yanis […]

Re-Winning Europe

Javier Solana 2nd June 2014

The European Parliament election revealed the full extent of voters’ frustrations, discontent, and lack of confidence in both the European Union and their national governments. The EU’s institutions will now confront a legislature marked by growing disaffection, while rising Euroskepticism is bound to have a profound impact on national policies. If the EU is to […]

How ‘Competitiveness’ Became One Of The Great Unquestioned Virtues

William Davies 2nd June 2014 7 Comments

Widening economic inequality is the academic topic du jour, but the trend of growing wealth and income disparity has been underway for several decades. How did mounting inequality succeed in proving culturally and politically attractive for as long as it did? Will Davies writes that rather than speak in terms of generating more inequality, policy-makers have always favoured […]

European Wage Depression Since 1999

Ronald Janssen 30th May 2014 2 Comments

Probably one of the most popular slogans of the entire European Semester is the catchphrase that wages should be aligned with productivity. The reason for its popularity is that this phrase can be used with a lot of flexibility. On the one hand, the Commission can make use of it to discipline wages and undermine […]

The European Elections, Politics And Inequality

Zygmunt Bauman 30th May 2014 1 Comment

Throughout most of our electronic exchanges we tackle the issue of the “self” as such, and its “production” as such, concentrating on the features all selves and all cases of their production share, and only occasionally mentioning their diversities. But “selves” come in many shapes and colours, and so do the settings, mechanisms, procedures of […]

Inequality And Post-neoliberal Globalisation

Frank Hoffer 29th May 2014 5 Comments

Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believe, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable. […]

After The European Elections – How Will The EU Leadership Respond?

John Palmer 27th May 2014

Following the dramatic results of the elections to the European Parliament, the focus now shifts to whether the European Institutions and governments are capable of effective response. They will need to react radically and rapidly even if the election post-mortem EU leaders’ summit in Brussels produces little except hand wringing. It would be fatal if […]

After The Swiss Minimum Wage Referendum

Andreas Rieger 22nd May 2014

On 18 May 2014, Swiss voters clearly rejected the popular initiative for the introduction of a statutory national minimum wage of CHF 4000 per month respectively CHF 22 (Euro 18) per hour. The initiative was launched by the Swiss Trade Union Confederation (SGB-USS) which collected enough signatures to force the Swiss government and parliament to hold a […]

Angela Merkel Was Right In The End, Wasn’t She?

Sebastian Dullien 19th May 2014 1 Comment

When travelling across Europe these days, I have noticed how once again the economic policy debate in Germany has completely decoupled from that in the rest of Europe. While the euro periphery is still licking its wounds from the euro crisis, in Germany a new narrative of the crisis management of the past years is […]

A Citizens’ Initiative For A European Green New Deal

Francesca Lacaita and Nicola Vallinoto 19th May 2014 3 Comments

Several people and organizations have recently called for a “New Deal for Europe”: the German Trade Union Confederation DGB with its “Marshall Plan for Europe”; the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) with its “New Path for Europe”; many a contributor to the book Shaping a Different Europe, and others. Underlying all such proposals is the […]

Where Now After Ten Years Of Eastern Enlargement?

László Andor 13th May 2014 1 Comment

The ‘Eastern enlargement’ in May 2004 opened the EU’s doors to ten countries. Of these, the four Visegrád states, the three Baltic countries and a former Yugoslav state had at that time completed their 15-year transition towards a market economy. In the first half of the 1990s these countries’ income, measured in terms of GDP, […]

Scotland And Oil: Avoiding A Disastrous Precedent

Paul Collier 13th May 2014 8 Comments

In September the Scots will vote on secession. For decades, the key slogan of the Scottish Nationalist Party has been ‘Its Scotland’s oil’. Yet this claim has never been subject to serious scrutiny. I will argue that it is spurious: ethically, legally, and practically. The philosopher of justice, John Rawls, grounded justice in those social […]

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Towards a new Minimum Wage Policy in Germany and Europe: WSI minimum wage report 2022

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