Social Europe articles on politics

The International Monetary Fund has been caught, red handed, plotting to stage a “credit event” that forces Greece to the edge of bankruptcy, using the pretext of the Brexit referendum. No, this is not the plot of the next Bond movie. It is the transcript of a teleconference between the IMF’s chief negotiator, Poul Thomsen and Delia […]

All over the world today, there is a sense of the end of an era, a deep foreboding about the disintegration of previously stable societies. In the immortal lines of W.B. Yeats’s great poem, “The Second Coming”: “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world… The best lack all […]

During a recent visit to the United Kingdom, I was struck by the extent to which the question of whether the country should remain in the European Union is dominating the media, boardroom discussions, and dinner conversations. While slogans and sound bites capture most of the attention, deeper issues in play leave the outcome of […]

Something peculiar is happening. Up until recently, many central bankers were looking at robust collective bargaining and wage formation systems as a possible source for inflationary wage developments. Indeed, central banks, and the ECB in particular, have on numerous occasions called for more flexible and decentralised (read: weakened) wage bargaining systems so as to remove […]

For a great many voters, the side they will end up taking in the referendum will be a verdict on the kind of country we have become and how we got here. Voter stereotypes are often wrong. Forget Mondeo Man and Worcester Women: there was – is – nothing special about them. On most issues, […]

Shortly after his appointment, the new President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, promised to strengthen the social dimension of the European Union. The so-called ‘European Pillar of Social Rights’ (EPSR) is a central element of his project. Recently, the Commission published a first draft version of how the EPSR could look. The EPSR has […]

When it comes to the rise in economic inequality since the 1970s in the United States and some other advanced economies, it doesn’t really matter which measure of income distribution we choose: They all show the increase. And, while many competing explanations have been proposed, we do not need to agree about causes to concur […]

In three months, British citizens will have to decide whether or not to remain in the European Union. But they are not the only ones who must consider their political future. The upcoming referendum also poses two important questions for the rest of Europe. The first question is which outcome Europeans would and should prefer. […]

Living in a post-modern city like New York has many advantages but some disadvantages too. Among the latter is the absence of bookstores. Practically the only bookstore that I go to in midtown Manhattan is owned by Kinokuniya, a Japanese company, and it carries some 90% Japanese books, whether in Japanese or in English, by […]

The Democratic Party establishment has recently found itself discomforted by Senator Bernie Sanders’ campaign to return the party to its modern roots of New Deal social democracy. The establishment’s response has included a complex coupling of elite media and elite economics opinion aimed at promoting an image of Sanders as an unelectable extremist with unrealistic […]

Let me start by enquiring about the importance assumed by inequality in the public debate during these last years. As we know, inequality has been marginalised both in academia and in politics – also and especially on the left, which should have been the most sensitive to social issues. Then, all at once, with the […]

I used to enjoy researching European integration because the subject struck me as a rich laboratory for distilling evidence on the dark undersides of national governments. I have learned quite a bit about how the governments of my original and adopted countries (Turkey and the UK) defended the ‘national interest’ in Europe. My reading of […]