Islam and democracy

The history of an approximation

In Iran, official revolutionary dogma has obliged "post-Islamist" philosophers to provide profound justifications for Islam's compatibility with democracy. Katajun Amirpur puts contemporary Iranian thinking on religion and politics in the context of Khomeini-era anti-westernism. [more]

Sovereign without the people: The putsch of the markets

"Sovereign is he who decides on the state of exception," wrote Carl Schmitt. The extent of the losses suffered by democratic sovereignty during the euro crisis is illustrated by the unelected "expert governments" of Italy and Greece, writes Albrecht von Lucke. [more]

Bank bail-out as a farce

Of all the absurdities in the latest banking rescue package, writes Lucas Zeise, the greatest is that the banks are being rescued at all. Widespread disbelief in governments and banks condemns the carefully constructed rescue structure to farcial failure. [more]

Sea and sun for Europe

A new project for the next generation

Democratic upsurge in North Africa can combine with the energy revolution to revive the European project. Two-way developmental traffic across the Mediterranean would leave new generations in both North and South with fair chances of a good life. [English version added] [more]

Cooperate or bust

The existential crisis of the European Union

The critique that Europe lacks representative legitimacy may well be correct, argues Ulrich Beck, but not when based on the principle of "no nation, no democracy". Cosmopolitanization demands post-national approaches to democratic accountability in Europe. [more]

Europe and the "new German question"

Political elites are not delivering Europe to its citizens, says Jürgen Habermas in a panel discussion on the renationalization of Europe. Is Germany's perceived withdrawal from the common European project at the heart of the current crisis? [more]

Literary demarcations

German writers and the construction of the Berlin Wall

With the construction of the Berlin Wall on 13 August 1961, the divide between East and West Germany reached its height. Vanessa Brandes looks at how young German writers of the time, including Enzensberger, Wolf, Johnson and Grass, saw the political divisions. [more]

Nuisance factor Gaddafi

Fear of appearing to sympathize with Gaddafi is preventing protest against the Nato war in Libya, writes Daniela Dahn. Beware of disinformation, she warns: experience of past revolutionary upheavals, 1989 included, shows that capitalist interests are never far behind. [more]

Which Germany does Europe need?

Euro-scepticism is rampant in the country formerly the driving force of European integration. In order to bring Germany back onside and prevent it feeling exploited, other big EU-states must take a more proactive role in European decision making, writes Ulrike Guérot. [more]

The Arab Spring

Religion, revolution and the public sphere

What has emerged in the Arab world is a thoroughly modern mass democratic movement, writes Seyla Benhabib. Speculations that Islamic fundamentalists will hijack the transformation process forget the contentiousness at the historical core of western democracies. [more]

Nuclear exit now: The time is ripe

The new respectability of renewable energy should not obscure the fact that spending on conventional sources is increasing worldwide, writes Hermann Scheer. Nowhere is the pseudo-consensus on the energy switchover exposed more clearly than in ongoing investment in nuclear power. [more]

Egyptian transformations

Sociologist Mohammed Bamyeh was present at Tahrir Square throughout the Egyptian Revolution and was able to see the popular political will unfolding. Here he singles out key elements in the uprising and describes the social transformations they have brought about. [more]

Misnomer Euro-crisis

The common "economic governance" being mooted in Berlin and Brussels indeed needs to happen, writes Michael Krätke. The crucial question, however, is what kind of policy the EU would operate. One thing is sure: the neoliberal course taken until now is unsustainable. [more]

World improvement reloaded

Why being on the Left means being progressive

Among the most fatal aberrations of recent decades is that free-market liberals have assumed the mantle of economic competence, argues Robert Misik. The Left needs to go on the offensive and prove that egalitarian economies are also stronger and more productive. [more]

Culture flat-rate: The new social contract

A "culture flat-rate" charged to all Internet users would reconcile the interests of copyright-holders and consumers, argues Daniel Leisegang. In the music branch, a reform of the copyright system would de-criminalize file-sharers and return autonomy to artists. [more]

Why the "mummies" are getting lonely

The end of the legend of the "upright" German foreign ministry

The clean image of the German foreign ministry during the Nazi era has been shattered by revelations contained in a recent study, whose loud public echo is not solely due to a controversial evaluation of historical events and ministerial customs. [more]

Stuttgart 21: Back to the future

Plans to convert Stuttgart's rail terminus into an underground through-station have met with massive resistance. Supporters of the prestige project argue that there is no alternative to "modernization"; yet critics point to exorbitant costs, misguided rail policy and misuse of public funds. [more]

Sarkozy the firebrand

The high-profile deportation of Roma migrants was the prelude to a larger law-and-order campaign by the French government aimed at recapturing the rightwing vote and diverting attention from the Bettencourt scandal, writes Bernard Schmid. [more]

Bologna, or The capitalization of education

The German protests against the Bologna Process are the last opposition to what amounts to a cultural revolution, writes Richard Münch. The result of the exposure of German universities to purely economic demands will be an increasing hierarchization of educational institutions. [Spanish version added] [more]

The emancipation of African football

From colonialism to the World Cup 2010

The hopes for African footballing success raised by Cameroon's performance in the 1990 World Cup have yet to be fulfilled. However African football has long since stepped out of the shadow of its colonial origins. All that remains is for an African nation to capture football's most coveted trophy. [more]

Iceland: Stone broke wonderland

Overshadowed by volcanic ash, Iceland's economic condition has not changed for the better since the March referendum. As punishment for Iceland's insubordination, the 2.1 million dollar aid package has yet to find its way up north, and neither can Iceland count on help from Brussels in its negotiations with the IMF. [more]

Africa's blogosphere

Africa's blogger community is still in its infancy, but it has already demonstrated its importance in mobilizing opinion in Kenya and Nigeria and promises to be a significant player in the fight for democracy and free expression across the continent. [English version added] [more]

Digital civil rights: From Karlsruhe to Brussels

The overturning of the EU Data Retention Directive by the German Constitutional Court provides the impetus for a Europeanization of the data privacy campaign. The biggest challenge for the new civil rights movement is to create public awareness of the problem in individual EU countries. [more]

More security at any price

The Stockholm Programme of the European Union

The Stockholm Programme, the latest EU agreement on security policy, plans to enable the cross-border collection and sharing of data on a massive scale. Supposedly promoting "openness and security", the Programme is a further step towards a hi-tech Fortress Europe. [more]

Banking regulation? Malfunction!

The few regulatory measures introduced since the financial collapse are being supervised by the same banking sector that caused it in the first place, writes Lucas Zeise. Governments' delegation of regulatory responsibilities has deeply negative implications for democracy. [more]

Swiss self-defeatism

The Swiss vote to ban minarets has less to do with a "populist factor" inherent in referenda than with resentment at high-level corruption and the fear of social declassification. Celebrated by rightwing parties across Europe, the vote augurs more Islam-baiting to come. [more]

Propaganda of inequality

In a row over integration, prominent German intellectuals have supported elitist and determinist positions. All part of a campaign by "neo-Nietzscheans" to create acceptance of social inequality, writes Albrecht von Lucke. [Hungarian version added] [more]

Are newspapers still relevant?

It is not the Internet that is responsible for the "crisis of the press", but subordination of journalism to the market, writes the political editor of the "Süddeutsche Zeitung". For the first time since 1945, German journalism risks becoming trivialized. [Polish version added] [more]

The future of knowledge

The Bibliothèque National de France is the latest library to strike a deal with Google Books. Despite what amounts to Google's worldwide monopoly on information, the EU continues to support such private-public partnerships. Time for alternative structures, writes Daniel Leisegang. [more]

More experiments!

Camouflaged behind the "politainment", the CDU and FDP are promising the same neoliberal tax cuts that were among the causes of the financial crisis, writes Albrecht von Lucke. No wonder they have avoided mentioning concrete policy in their election campaigns. [more]

The threat of green gene technology

Six EU countries have banned the cultivation of the genetically modified corn MON 810. The ban is a rebuff to the hopes of the agro-chemical multinationals to dominate one of the world's most important agricultural markets. [more]

Cosmopolitanism and democracy

From Kant to Habermas

Justice within and justice beyond borders is increasingly interconnected, writes Seyla Benhabib. In the cosmopolitanism of Jürgen Habermas, who turns eighty on 18 June, "the will to include the Other, regardless of national origin, has been present from the start". [more]

Failing all the way to the top

On the career of German Federal President Horst Köhler

Horst Köhler, who has just been re-elected Federal German President, has recently publicly condemned the excesses of capitalism. This apparent gesture of self-critique was nothing other than an attempt at self-exculpation, writes Albrecht von Lucke. [more]

Battlefield Europe

Transnational commemoration and European identity

A pan-European memory cannot be reduced to the Holocaust and the Gulag alone, no matter how central these are, and must be able to compare memories without offsetting each against the other. On the "concentric circles" of European memory. [more]

Expansion and escalation

60 years Nato

On the sixtieth anniversary of Nato, Andreas Buro and Martin Singe take a hard line against the military alliance: "As an instrument of capitalist expansion, Nato will go on contributing to the destruction of human livelihood." [more]

What is the gender of the economic crisis?

The stimulus packages now put into action are in no way gender equitable, argues Alexandra Scheele. On the contrary, they are based on a gender-political conservatism characterized by a concentration on the concept of the male breadwinner. [more]

EU law as brake

The foreseeable failure of financial market regulation

The role of EU law in hindering financial regulation is rarely analysed. Andreas Fisahn and Lars Niggemeyer argue that European states are captive to their own legal contracts, preventing a departure from the neoliberal path. [more]

An unfulfilled promise

Sixty years Universal Declaration of Human Rights

While there has been considerable progress in standardization and institution building in the field of human rights, articles of the UDHR are still violated around the world almost every day. [more]

Panic in the financial casino

Self-regulation by the market has turned out to be an illusion: what's needed now is more governmental regulation of financial markets along with caps on managerial salaries, writes Heiner Flassbeck. [more]

The end of humility

After Georgia, the Kremlin is back in the dock. Yet many western states have themselves been less than squeamish about military intervention. The West should talk more to Russia and less about it. [more]

Halfway to a half of heaven

Four decades of the new women's movement

In 1968, feminists broke onto the male-dominated German Left with a well-aimed tomato and demands for anti-authoritarian day-care centres. Forty years on, Stefanie Ehmsen reviews German feminism's march through the institutions. [more]

From '68 to '89

What is the meaning of '68 almost twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall? In an East-West dialogue placing '68 in a European and global perspective, leading protagonists of events in eastern Europe converse with their western counterparts. [more]

The global chessboard

The new cold war of Obama's adviser Zbigniew Brezinski

Barack Obama's main geostrategic adviser, the Cold Warrior Zbigniew Brzezinski, believes that if America is to remain a superpower, it must expand its influence in Eurasia and confront both Russia and China. [more]

Right of Berlusconi

Italy's fascists, hooligans and radical Catholics

The extra-parliamentary far-Right is once again in a position to influence Italian politics. Karin Priester surveys the ideological background of the far-right spectrum in Italy and the careers of its leading figures. [more]

The next bubble

Former venture capitalist Eric Janszen analyzes the causes and consequences of speculative bubbles. After the crash of the New Economy and the so-called subprime crisis, which bubble will burst next? [more]

The dialectic of secularization

The opposition between "multiculturalism" and "Enlightenment fundamentalism" is misconceived, argues Jürgen Habermas. "The universalist claim of the political Enlightenment does not contradict the particularist sensibilities of a correctly understood multiculturalism." [more]

Financial crisis and European ignorance

The global financial system is in deep crisis as recession dawns upon the US. Heiner Flassbeck analyzes the dangers for Europe -- and the ignorance of European economists and politicians. [more]

The Putin regime

The managed transition from Putin to Medvedev conceals a necessary insight: that the principles of the Putin regime are fundamentally unsustainable, since they combine a nostalgic view of the past with purely cyclical economic successes. [more]

Legend of legality

From the Reichstag fire to the Nazi regime

After 75 years, the death sentence of the Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe has been officially lifted. The theory of a "single perpetrator" was central in legitimizing the Nazi takeover of the German state. [more]

The Google empire

Internet users increasingly reveal private data on social networking platforms. Yet a great deal of information is also gathered for commercial purposes without users' consent. Google is at the forefront of the data-tracking business, writes Daniel Leisegang. [more]