The conservative EPP and the Socialists & Democrats lost 71 seats between them in May’s election. Could this change the face of European politics? As Portugal exits austerity and Romania confronts corruption in politics, liberalism and populism thrash it out in France. The European centre will hold but must reach out.
In the June issue of ‘Merkur’, Jan-Werner Müller responds to advocates of ‘talking to the right’. Liberals need to enter the political fray and try to win over their illiberal opponents. However, liberalism must also define its red lines when engaging with populists.
Since censorship in state socialist Poland was more lenient than in other countries of the Eastern Bloc, a peculiar counterpublicity was formed between samizdat, émigré publishing and western radio stations which amplified the voice of dissent.
Climate change is the biggest story ever – and yet the media have failed miserably to do it justice. To blame is a series of journalistic vices, from false construal of the principle of neutrality to a failure to contextualize; from slavishness to conventional media formats to a tendency to individualize the problem. A new climate politics starts by resetting the media agenda.
Can Tunisia’s Islamist party Ennahdha secure the gains of the 2011 uprising and adapt itself to secular democracy? The coalition has been praised for its progressiveness as its new constitution enshrined sexual equality, omitted Sharia law, and maintained the separation between ‘mosque and state’. Leftists, however, fear that these are ‘fig leaf’ measures, while former Islamist voters complain that the party cares more about governing than defending Islam and the revolution.
Stephen Holmes and Ivan Krastev argue that illiberal politics in central and eastern Europe should be understood primarily as a reaction to the ‘imperative to imitate’ the West after 1989. But to downplay the ideological substance of the new authoritarianism is reckless in the current situation, responds Aleida Assmann. Recalling the contribution of eastern European dissidents to Europe’s culture of human rights offers a corrective to the damaging myth of the ‘victorious West’.
Democracy is being denied by the EU’s leaders. At fault are not ‘Brussels bureaucrats’ but the member states and their representatives. Lack of transparency makes legislation vulnerable to lobbying and enables national interests to be put before the European common good. Preventing Eurosceptic reaction means democratizing the European legislature.
In the June issue of ‘Merkur’, Jan-Werner Müller responds to advocates of ‘talking to the right’. Liberals need to enter the political fray and try to win over their illiberal opponents. However, liberalism must also define its red lines when engaging with populists.
The Catalan journal reflects on the position of the refugee in society, and also delves into kitsch.
Drawing on Erdoğan’s war on the prices of certain agricultural produce, the June issue of the Turkish journal Varlik explores the politics of the potato.
When the Cold War came to a sudden end thirty years ago, the two halves of Europe declared in unison their intention to overcome the legacy of the division. Today, the hopes and ambitions of those heady days can be viewed as unrealistic at best. But is talk of a new East–West divide justified? A new Eurozine focal point asks what happened to ’89 in the intervening years.
Internet technologies are being used in ways that raise far-reaching questions about the resilience and sustainability of democratic systems. And they have fundamentally impacted on understandings of the political, transforming democracies from within.
Cultural journals have played a crucial role in the formation of the public spheres in Europe and beyond. Looking at their history helps understand where they are headed. A Eurozine focal point in collaboration with the Working Group on Periodicals Research.
Fake news has become big news. Post-truth is the new paradigm. Respect for facticity is becoming, by all accounts, a commercial anachronism. And behind it all, the spectre of an illiberal international waging ‘info-war’ against western democracies.
Eurozine monitors upcoming funding opportunities on the international level relevant to cultural journalists, such as translation funds, mobility grants and project funding.
