politics, economy and employment & labour
Instagram, a photo-sharing platform owned by Facebook, recently caved in to a demand by the Russian government that it remove posts by opposition leader Alexey Navalny alleging misconduct on the part of Russian Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko. In a YouTube video that has garnered almost six million views (and which is still available), Navalny […]
After decades of serving as the backbone of a rules-based global order, the United States, under President Donald Trump, is touting an “America First” agenda that extols narrow economic nationalism and distrust of international institutions and agreements. But a new type of international cooperation may be emerging – one that works around Trump. To be […]
The crisis of liberal democracy is roundly decried today. Donald Trump’s presidency, the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, and the electoral rise of other populists in Europe have underscored the threat posed by “illiberal democracy” – a kind of authoritarian politics featuring popular elections but little respect for the rule of law or the […]
The Polish government has provoked yet another international crisis, this time by adopting a law that is ostensibly meant to combat the phrase “Polish death camps.” The law targets a geographical shorthand, sometimes used abroad, for the extermination camps that the Nazis established on Polish territory during World War II. But there is more to […]
In 2016, the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum and Donald Trump’s election to the US presidency created an impression that Eastern European-style populism was engulfing the West. In reality, the situation in Western Europe and the United States is starkly different. As political scientists Martin Eiermann, Yascha Mounk, and Limor Goultchin of the Tony Blair Institute […]
Populists abhor restraints on the political executive. Since they claim to represent “the people” writ large, they regard limits on their exercise of power as necessarily undermining the popular will. Such constraints can only serve the “enemies of the people” – minorities and foreigners (for right-wing populists) or financial elites (in the case of left-wing […]
[clickToTweet tweet=”One reason why automation is so frightening today is that the future was more unknowable in the past: we lacked the data for alarmist forecasts. (Robert Skidelsky)” quote=”One reason why automation is so frightening today is that the future was more unknowable in the past: we lacked the data for alarmist forecasts.”] Dispelling anxiety […]
As Christmas approached last year, the United Kingdom accelerated the rollout of a social security scheme only Ebenezer Scrooge could have loved. The “universal credit” program replaces six different welfare benefits – such as the child tax credit and the housing benefit – with one. The goal is to incentivize employment, and to create an […]
[clickToTweet tweet=”Young voters, in particular, seem to have less interest in working for traditional parties, which they view as overly bureaucratic, and thus boring. (Jan-Werner Müller)” quote=”Young voters, in particular, seem to have less interest in working for traditional parties, which they view as overly bureaucratic, and thus boring.”] Many people expected the big political […]
Robots, machine learning, and artificial intelligence promise to change fundamentally the nature of work. Everyone knows this. Or at least they think they do. Specifically, they think they know two things. First, more jobs than ever are threatened. “Forrester Predicts that AI-enabled Automation will Eliminate 9% of US Jobs in 2018,” declares one headline. “McKinsey: […]
At least since Mary Shelley created Victor Frankenstein and his iconic monster in 1818, humans have had a morbid fascination with man-made beings that could threaten our existence. From the American television adaptation of “Westworld,” which depicts an amusement park populated by androids, to the “Terminator” films, in which super-intelligent machines aim to destroy mankind, […]
Greece’s combative former finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, and his nemesis, former German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble, were at loggerheads on Greek debt throughout Varoufakis’s term in office. But they were in full agreement when it came to the central question of the eurozone’s future. Monetary union required political union. No middle way was possible. This […]
