About John Ryan

Professor John Ryan is a Fellow at LSE Ideas (International Strategy and Diplomacy). He works as a senior Brexit adviser for private and public sector organisations.

The SPD May Deal The Final Blow To Angela Merkel’s Chancellorship

by John Ryan on 6th November 2018

Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered another poor state election result on Sunday October 28 with 27 per cent, down 11.3 percentage points from the 2013 election in Hesse. Her grand coalition partner the Social Democratic Party (SPD) slumped to 19.8 per cent of votes, down 10.9 percentage points, its worst showing since 1946. […]

Power Is Draining Away From Angela Merkel

by John Ryan on 2nd July 2018

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s fourth election has turned into a heavily qualified victory. She is facing criticism over how she has handled the refugee crisis and some say that she should not have let in over one million refugees into the country. That sentiment is more widely felt in Germany than the public debate that […]

The European Central Bank: A Central Bank Operating In A Democratic Void

by John Ryan on 24th June 2016

To say that the Euro is facing existential threats is no exaggeration. The European single currency was hailed until not too long ago as an aspiring global reserve currency, second only to the US Dollar. But the Eurozone’s handling of the Greek debt crisis is putting the Euro’s future in question. The potential for Greece […]

The ECB’s Troubling Future Policy Conundrum

by John Ryan on 21st May 2014

In the German Constitutional Court ruling on the Outright Monetary Transactions (OMT) programme by the European Central Bank (ECB), judges said they were “inclined to regard the OMT decision as an Ultra Vires act”, adding that this “creates an obligation of German authorities to refrain from implementing it”. The court judgment has ruled that the […]

Sustainable Equality Report. Well-being for everyone in a sustainable Europe

Our societies are in the midst of political, economic, social and ecological crises, which permanently feed into each other, and already undermine democracy. Progressive politics with a common and strong vision are crucially needed. Ahead of the next European elections, the Sustainable Equality Report championed by the S&D Group through its Progressive Society initiative addresses this need, resulting in more than 100 concrete policy proposals by thirty policy-makers and renowned experts.

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Work in the platform economy

This paper presents a case study of the food delivery platform, Deliveroo, in Belgium in 2016-2018. The case offers insights on the nature of platform work, the workers who perform it, the preferences of workers, the strategy of the platforms, and the role of local regulations. Interestingly, Deliveroo in Belgium employed workers through an intermediary, SMart, and we also observed the termination of their co-operation in the period under analysis. Using administrative data provided by SMart and a survey of workers, we analyse patterns of work and also focus on pay.

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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.

The Positive Economic Impact Of Germany's Statutory Minimum Wage

With the empirical analyses of the macroeconomic effects of the introduction of the statutory minimum wage in Germany, the IMK tries to determine the short-term and expected medium- to long-term growth, price and employment effects with the help of a macro-econometric model. As a result, economic growth tended to be stimulated by the introduction of the minimum wage. This was mainly due to the higher wages of the minimum wage beneficiaries and a spillover effect on adjoining wage groups. In particular, this benefited people whose low savings rate led to a particularly strong increase in real private consumption. The price increases triggered were negligible on a macroeconomic scale.

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Societal change and trust in institutions

Overall trust in institutions such as national governments, the legal system, the EU, and the media has rebounded in Europe following the recent economic recovery – showing that the ‘crisis of trust’ in European societies following the Great Recession was largely temporary. However, in a number of the Member States most adversely impacted by the crisis, trust in national institutions has still not returned to pre-crisis levels. This new report details the different factors in maintaining and developing trust in institutions in Europe, including the important role of improving the quality of public services.

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