About Albena Azmanova

Associate Professor in Political and Social Thought at the University of Kent’s Brussels School of International Studies. Her most recent book is Reclaiming Democracy: Judgment, Responsibility and the Right to Politics, ed. with Mihaela Mihai (Routhledge, 2015).

Syriza And The 21st Century Left

by Albena Azmanova on 4th May 2018

Costas Douzinas’ Syriza in Power (Polity, 2017) carries a wondrous resemblance to Niccolò Machiavelli’s The Prince (1513). The latter is penned by a state official turned humanist philosopher; the former by a humanist philosopher turned an accidental state official. Both works scrutinise without moralization the world of politics at a critical historical juncture – the experimentation with republican rule […]

Abuse Of The Rule Of Law In The EU

by Albena Azmanova on 24th October 2017

Spanish Premier Mariano Rajoy is about to suspend Catalonia’s autonomy, and EU leaders have ruled out involvement in the crisis, with the justification that the Spanish government is acting to “restore the constitutional order”. There seems to be a consensus among the European leadership that Madrid’s handling of the 1 October Catalan referendum is completely […]

There are high levels of optimism for the future in most EU candidate countries – including for future generations. However, current material hardships, deprivation, urban-rural disparities, gender inequalities and demographic ageing are fundamental challenges, and could undermine the current positive climate and future social cohesion. Eurofound’s European Quality of Life Survey (EQLS) provides unique insight into life in the candidate countries, based on a detailed analysis of a range of indicators on living conditions and quality of society. This new report, and associated working life country profiles, present these findings in detail, and serve as a comprehensive source of information on life and society in the candidate countries.

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Zygmunt Bauman was a towering intellectual who saw and analysed – right up to his death in early 2017 – the great socio-political changes, often convulsive, in modern western society long before his peers. Here we highlight his prescient insights into what he dubbed ‘liquid modernity’ with 24 chapters on topics ranging from online loneliness via precarity/poverty/inequality to migration, fear of the ‘Other’ and the decline of the nation state. Chronicle of Crisis, 2011-16, written by one of the great chroniclers of our times, will be read and re-read for decades and more to come.

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Time for substantial minimum wage rises and a European minimum wage policy

Minimum wages in most European Union (EU) countries were increased at the start of 2019, with an median increase of 4.8 % compared with the previous year, continuing the recent trends towards faster minimum wage growth. Much of this is accounted for by substantial increases in Eastern Europe together with efforts to undertake permanent and structural increases in minimum wage levels in countries such as Spain. There is also a growing debate over the role of minimum wages for the concept of Social Europe, which is expected to play a significant role in the 2019 European Parliament elections. In this context, the German government has indicated that one of its priorities during its EU Council Presidency in the second half of 2020 will be elaborating a framework for a European minimum wage policy.

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The platform economy and social law: Key issues in comparative perspective

This Working Paper brings together two parallel but complementary approaches to the impact of the platform economy on working conditions and social law. The first part of the study shows that the business models of some platforms is a combination of technological disruption and social evasion. The second part of this working paper confirms that it is in the gaps and ambiguities in social legislation that platforms are trying to legitimise a business model abrogating all social responsibility. It is in this sense that we can talk about the risk of “social evasion” of several major platforms, exactly in the same way as fiscal evasion.

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About Albena Azmanova

Syriza And The 21st Century Left

Abuse Of The Rule Of Law In The EU

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