Democracy / Transit
Knowns and Unknowns behind Turkey’s Failed Coup
Although Turkey has meager democratic credentials, a military intervention is not a solution for re-establishing or consolidating democracy in Turkey. Surprisingly, the deeply divided Turkish political scene was unified in condemning the coup attempt and Gulen’s movement.
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The Case for Europe: An Interview with Donald Tusk
The fact is that around Europe, and within it too, there’s no lack of enemies of liberal democracy, and it certainly requires constant mobilization and readiness to defend it. But I am much calmer about it. If we take the area surrounding our continent into consideration, liberal democracy is still doing pretty well in Europe.
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Hungary’s Anti-European Immigration Laws
Viktor Orbán, who has styled himself as the defender of Europe’s “Christian civilization” against an Islamic invasion, has encouraged other eastern European governments to follow his example in violating EU norms. If Hungarians ultimately opt for an illiberal democracy, as Prime Minister Viktor Orbán publicly advocated over a year ago, they must accept certain consequences. These include parting from the European Union and the wider community of liberal democracies.
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The Refugee Crisis that Europe Solved
The refugee crisis in Europe after the Second World War was far worse than the EU faces today, but a successful structure arose in 1945 because the world assumed it could solve the refugee problem. Today, we accept refugees as a permanent consequence of modern global affairs and respond to each individual crisis without looking for long-term solutions.
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Hungary’s Response to the Refugee Crisis: An Orchestrated Panic
Why is Hungary, the first communist country to dismantle the Iron Curtain, now busy building a fence in order to keep refugees out? The answer is: domestic politics.
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If You Push for Regime Change, You Get the Refugees Too
Indians, Pakistanis and others have a right to question Europe on its immigration and citizenship policies, not just because of the presence of Asians and Africans in Europe but because none of the European countries have borne the flow of refugees that the South has seen.
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Warnings from Another Refugee Crisis
The last world war began amidst a refugee crisis. In discussions of refugees today, many European politicians neglect to mention how exclusion led to murder the last time around.
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Towards Democracy and Competitive Economies: Divergent Pathways, Shifting Goals and Looming Reversals
Review essay on Philipp Ther’s book: Die neue Ordnung auf dem alten Kontinent – eine Geschichte des neolilberalen Europa, Suhrkamp, Berlin 2014.
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The Fragility of Federalism: Aleš Debeljak in Interview with John Feffer
“It is nationalism that tore Yugoslavia apart, and it will be nationalism, albeit masked in economic terms, that may rip apart the Eurozone and the enlarged EU,” the Slovenian poet and cultural critic Ales Debeljak said in an interview in August 2013 in Vienna, where he was a Robort Bosch Visiting Fellow at the IWM.
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Students Take Bulgaria’s Protests to the Next Level. Can They Break the Political Stalemate?
Since late October, Bulgarian students, demanding the resignation of the government, have occupied and blockaded lecture halls at universities in Sofia and beyond. The students’ actions have come following more than four months of continuous anti-government demonstrations which were provoked by the cynicism of the country’s political class and its perceived endorsement of widespread state-sponsored corruption.
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