Hungary’s Covid-19 wars
For Viktor Orbán, the pandemic has offered an opportunity to undermine the European Union and curry favour with Hungary’s authoritarian allies.
Politics
Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher driven by the core values of freedom, sustainability, and equality. These principles guide our exploration of society’s most pressing challenges. This archive page curates Social Europe articles focused on political issues, offering a rich resource for innovative thinking and informed debate.
Lost an empire, not found a role
Paul Mason finds in the UK’s foreign and defence review a wilful refusal of its natural European engagement.
Inequalities and democratic corrosion
The right question to ask is not if inequality threatens democracy but which inequalities matter.
The four ‘I’s of a new socio-ecological contract
A ‘socio-ecological contract’ has emerged as a way to conceive the transitions needed to steer out of today’s crises to safer harbour. What does it entail?
Human-rights due diligence and Myanmar
Myanmar is a test case for engaged global companies’ commitments to due diligence. They must act to ensure suppression does not prevail.
Can Navalny take down Putin?
Today’s protest movement has a charismatic and sympathetic leader but Putin has spent the last decade consolidating a police state.
Have you met Dan Gertler?
Europe needs to step up its fight against money-laundering.
Why such an imperfect union?
US political dysfunctionality is put down to partisanship and polarisation. But Sheri Berman argues it’s the issue agenda that counts.
Will Biden restore worker and union power?
Joe Biden was the most pro-labour presidential nominee in years. But he’s fighting a pandemic and faces the antiquated US political system.
From moonshots to earthshots
The pandemic has created a huge opportunity to restore mission-driven governance in the public interest.
Time to act on pay transparency
The pandemic provides no excuse for inaction by the European Commission on gender pay transparency. It should be the incentive.
A time to celebrate … or worry?
Branko Milanovic worries that in the new global constellation a second cold war—with China—could be in the offing.
‘The day of liberation is a bit like a second birthday for me’
Knut Dethlefsen offers a personal reflection on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Unsplendid isolation: Britain after ‘Brexit’
Paul Mason writes that a Biden US presidency allied to an EU pursuing ‘strategic autonomy’ leaves a ‘sovereign’ UK with a bit-part role.
Belarus needs more than the Sakharov Prize
Strengthening of civil society, construction of democratic institutions and economic support must all figure in an EU agenda for a post-Lukashenka Belarus.
What saved American democracy?
Democracy in the United States survived the assault by Donald Trump and his supporting mob. But why it survived raises questions awkward for some.
Whither America?
It will take more than one person—and more than one presidential term—to overcome America’s longstanding challenges.