politics, economy and employment & labour
Social Europe is an award-winning digital media publisher that publishes content examining issues in politics, economy and employment & labour. This archive brings together Social Europe articles on political issues.
The French ‘patronat’, the business lobby group aka Medef, had for a long time the reputation of being the most stupid in the world. Today, the French political right is on the way to taking its place. Even a superficial analysis of the Brexit referendum and the US elections shows that the losers of unfettered […]
Where can we find the most lucid compact description of the predicament of today’s European Union? In a powerful plea for its creation written nearly 80 years ago. In “The economic conditions of interstate federalism” (1939), reprinted in his Individualism and Economic Order, Friedrich Hayek explains why he finds a multinational federation, much later exemplified […]
Tech giants like to be regarded as unicorns. Since the late 1300s, the unicorn has been the national animal of Scotland. Believed to be the natural enemy of the lion – a symbol that the English royals adopted around a century earlier –it is clear to every Scot that the mythical animal is stronger. Tech […]
It’s indeed rare but not unusual for voters to get rid of their political elites. Many western democracies now find themselves in a phase in which deep distrust towards the prevailing economic policy has developed. Via elections as in the USA or referendums as in the UK this distrust comes to a head and fundamentally […]
The picture is alarming. The latest report by London’s local authority (GLA) finds that domestic violence against women rose by 57% over the last four years. In Brussels, new figures show 30% of women have been the victim of violence of some form, and 60% have suffered sexual intimidation. Just two cities – and the […]
The rule of economic liberalism in the West is leading to the demise of political liberalism. A growing number of key countries are experiencing not elections, but plebiscites on liberal democracy – plebiscites decided by the votes of those who have lost out from liberal democracy. In the United States, Donald Trump’s election as president […]
It’s official: WikiLeaks and anonymous Russian sources are now major players in elections. A new and disturbing factor emerged during the US presidential campaign, one that may change elections forever: democracies are at the mercy of hacking and surveillance technologies, and of those who control them. Already there are disturbing signs that this may affect […]
And even in the confused and contentious context of the new US President-elect as well as the EU’s post-Brexit deliberations, it is hard to argue otherwise. But, while having a job in the first place is clearly of paramount importance to people – and society at large –, there is also a more sophisticated issue […]
US President-elect Donald Trump has announced a big building programme of schools, roads and hospitals. How is he going to do that while cutting back on government spending, as promised? You cannot look at Trump’s proposals as a coherent set of government proposals. They don’t add up. He said he’s going to increase spending on […]
When asked whom he would vote for on November 8, 2016 if he were an American, the man responded without a trace of hesitation: “Trump. I am just horrified about him, but Hillary is the true danger.” The respondent was none other than Slavoj Žižek, the neo-Marxist philosopher of the last decade and an online […]
I am asked now in Germany if the United States has just experienced a crisis of its Constitution. Sometimes this question refers to winning the popular vote while losing the electoral college vote, but suddenly this question also addresses whether we have installed a government that views the Constitution as an obstacle rather than as […]
Alone again. Since World War II’s end, Europe has looked at the world through a transatlantic lens. There have been ups and downs in the alliance with the United States, but it was a family relationship built on a sense that we would be there for each other in a crisis and that we are […]
