Social Europe articles on politics

Poland’s turn toward authoritarian rule has set off alarm bells across the European Union and within NATO. Since coming to power in October, Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law and Justice party (PiS) has attacked the country’s Constitutional Court, politicized the judiciary and the civil service, and launched an assault on media pluralism. Critics of the PiS government, […]

Although West European policy makers have been slow to recognise the fact, the Iron Curtain was never the only or necessarily the most important feature dividing the continent. As governments in Hungary and now Poland neutralise many of the key institutions of liberal democracy – robust and impartial courts with far-reaching powers of constitutional oversight, […]

In 2007, the United States caught a serious – and highly contagious – economic cold. Eight years later, it is finally making a convincing recovery – so convincing that last month the US Federal Reserve raised the country’s base interest rate for the first time in almost a decade. Europe, however, remains in bad shape. […]

The economic governance structures that have emerged in response to the Eurozone crisis have been widely and rightly critiqued for their anti-social and anti-democratic consequences. We argue in a recent SPERI paper that one pragmatic way in which we might attempt to reform such governance is by asserting the EU’s own rhetorical and constitutional commitment […]

Viktor Orbán has posed critical challenges to concepts of human rights and democracy in Europe since his election in 2010. But there is every sign that, rather than managing and curtailing the influence of Hungary’s far-right government, other European democracies are icreasingly susceptible to comparable social and cultural pressures. Over the last five years, Orbán’s […]

Poland has now emerged as the latest European battleground in a contest between two models of democracy – liberal and illiberal. The overwhelming election victory in October of Jarosław Kaczyński’s far-right Law and Justice party (PiS) has led to something more akin to regime change than to a routine turnover of democratically elected governments. Prime […]

The creation of the new European governance regime requires an explanation. In contrast to the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), the EU’s business and political leaders rejected until very recently the need for any coordination in the field of industrial relations at EU level; arguably because self-regulating market forces would automatically lead to the desired […]

The European question is the grim reaper of British politics – dividing parties, debilitating governments, and destroying careers. But never before have the stakes surrounding the question been so high. Prime Minister David Cameron’s decision to hold a referendum – perhaps as early as June – on the United Kingdom’s continued membership in the European […]

This new year of 2016 has begun badly. ISIS attacks in Istanbul and Jakarta. Stock market jitters. Violence, including rape, upon women in Germany, Sweden and Zurich – apparently by asylum-seekers in some cases. Deflation. Breaches of the separation of powers/rule of law in Poland. The unexpected death of David Bowie, who incorporated the changing […]

Civic Platform, the former ruling party in Poland, suffered a clear defeat in the country’s parliamentary elections in October. However, as Aleks Szczerbiak writes, the polarisation of politics during the first few weeks of the new Law and Justice administration have integrated the opposition and allowed it to mobilise support around the claim that the government is undermining […]

The refugee crisis has exposed cracks in the EU’s political foundations. Failure to agree over how to implement refugee quotas and inability to coordinate humanitarian actions has allowed Eurosceptics to vaunt their populist talents. Information chaos has wreaked havoc in Europe, radicalising public opinion. The Right joined forces, holding a hard line on immigration policy […]