Wolff, Guntram B., (2017), “What will drive political uncertainty in 2017?”, Bruegel, 3 January 2017 promises to be another challenging year for Europe’s liberal democracies. The EU is facing three, or even four, elections in major member states. The Netherlands, France, Germany and possibly also Italy will go to the polls. The results of all four elections are far from certain at this stage. Indeed, voting behaviour seems to have …Read More

Pisani-Ferry, Jean, (2017), “The Abandonment of Progress”, Project Syndicate, 2 January Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan are remembered for the laissez-faire revolution they launched in the early 1980s. They campaigned and won on the promise that free-market capitalism would unleash growth and boost prosperity. In 2016, Nigel Farage, the then-leader of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) who masterminded Brexit, and US President-elect Donald Trump campaigned and won on a very …Read More

Fratzscher, Marcel, (2016), “Will Europe Let Germany Lead?”, Project Syndicate, 27 December The United Kingdom’s Brexit vote, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s referendum defeat and subsequent resignation, and Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States have created a power vacuum in the West, and in Europe. At a time when Europe needs to make important collective economic and foreign-policy decisions, domestic issues are preoccupying larger European Union member …Read More

Kaletsky, Anatole, (2016), “The Crisis of Market Fundamentalism”, Project Syndicate, 23 December The biggest political surprise of 2016 was that everyone was so surprised. I certainly had no excuse to be caught unawares: soon after the 2008 crisis, I wrote a book suggesting that a collapse of confidence in political institutions would follow the economic collapse, with a lag of five years or so. We’ve seen this sequence before. The …Read More

Mugnai, Iacopo, (2016), “Renzi’s referendum defeat is part of the legitimacy crisis plaguing left wing parties in Europe”, LSE EUROPP blog, 12 December The rejection of Matteo Renzi’s constitutional reform occurred in the context of a highly personalised referendum, hinting at a wider rebuff of his policies. Iacopo Mugnai argues that the outcome of the referendum was not a victory for the populists, but a defeat of an electoral machine without …Read More

Fischer, Joschka, (2016), “How Much Europe Do Europeans Need?”, Project Syndicate, 2 November In his final address to the European Parliament in 1995, then-French President François Mitterrand, whose failing health was evident to all, found the following indelible words to characterize Europe’s great scourge: “Le nationalisme, c’est la guerre!” Nationalism and war were the defining experiences of Mitterrand’s political career, and he was referring not only to the dreadful past …Read More