These may seem like very different crises, but they are connected. The last few global economic crises all have something in common.


  1. The Key?
  2. .
  3. Clarity Is Divine.
  4. Ricky Black & Jeanne Silk: Teenager Rock Stars: Blue Diamond Pearl Band: Lets Rock N Roll !!!!.
  5. Die Parabel im Fremdsprachenunterricht (German Edition).
  6. Elaine and Donna: A Love Story, Part 1: Elaines Fetish.
  7. The Kingdom Come.

Although they were politically dislocating — producing major winners and losers — most governments responded by pretending that they had technical-economic fixes. Our governments contributed to the wider technocratic trend of narrowing political debate by pushing many of the most pressing questions — like inequality, which many of these policies ended up increasing — off the table.

I have spent much of my career trying to make sense of economic crises and the politics of our responses to them. I suppose this makes me something of an academic ambulance chaser!

Chantal Mouffe – Demonising populism won’t work – Europe needs a progressive populist alternative

While I began optimistically about how we could learn from our mistakes and make constructive changes, over time I have seen a depressingly familiar pattern emerge. I went back to grad school because of the Canadian debt crisis. Back then, Canada was a bit like Greece but on a smaller scale, happily. After the Mexican peso crisis, the bond markets were skittish, and the level of federal and provincial debt began to look worrying. To regain bond market confidence, we were told, the government must slash its debt through austerity measures.

We had no alternative.

Brave New Europe

This was simply a matter of necessity, not up for political debate. Of course, these decisions did have profound political consequences. In turn, the 1.

We will have to await the final deficit remember that the target is 2. Therefore any increase in income that exceeds this 0. In this sense, the new government has announced that during its term of office until it intends to increase its revenues with the following measures:.

Thomas Fazi and William Mitchell – The EU cannot be democratised – here’s why – Brave New Europe

These measures, even if they go in the right direction, are insufficient to finance the needs of Spanish citizens and the Spanish economy, given the limitations mentioned above due to the lack of financial and monetary sovereignty. Therefore, despite the fact that the music of the new government sounds good, for the moment the lyrics are not convincing.

It should be noted that the last word was in the hands of Partido Popular due to the absolute majority that they have in the Senate upper house , should Congress lower house ratify a spending ceiling. This was the first clear demonstration of weakness of the government that seemed to have second thoughts when it came to negotiate with the forces that supported it, since it probably considers that in the eyes of the majority of Spaniards it would be prejudicial to negotiate with the Catalan pro-independence political forces, as well as to make too many concessions to Unidos Podemos.

Admittedly, the search for the support of the forces that voted in favour of the motion has become complicated since Puigdemont, former president of the Catalonia who declared its independence unsuccessfully in October and had to flee to Belgium so as not to be imprisoned, has taken control of the PDeCAT at its latest party congress at the end of July. In any case, Spaniards deserve a government that does not engage in electoral tactical games and that is committed to developing budgets to reverse the cuts, eliminate unemployment, reduce inequality and promote a change of economic and energy model, budgets that are consistent with the enormous challenges facing Spaniards for Two non-economists explain the creation of money and what becomes of it.

It is a strightforward piece for those who get bogged down by technical economic terms. Regardless of the problematic forms that some of these movements may take, it is important to recognise the presence among many of them of legitimate democratic aspirations. It is the absence of a narrative able to offer a different vocabulary to formulate the resistances against our current post-democratic condition which explains that right-wing populism has an echo in increasingly numerous social sectors.

Instead of disqualifying their demands, they need to be formulated in a progressive way, defining the adversary as the configuration of forces that strengthen and promote the neo-liberal project. It is high time to realise that in order to fight right-wing populism, moral condemnation and demonisation of their supporters does not work. This strategy is completely counterproductive because it reinforces the anti-establishment feelings among the popular classes. The issues that they have put on the agenda need to be addressed by offering them a different answer, one that is able to mobilise common affects towards equality and social justice.

The only way to prevent the emergence of right-wing populist parties and to oppose those that already exist is through the construction of another people, promoting a left-wing populist movement that is receptive to the diversity of democratic demands existing in our societies and whose aim is to articulate them in a progressive direction. To live up to the challenge that the populist moment represents for the future of democracy what is required is indeed the development of a left-wing populism.

Its objective should be the constitution of a collective will that establishes a synergy between the multiplicity of social movements and political forces, and whose objective is the deepening of democracy. Given that numerous social sectors suffer from the effects of financialised capitalism, there is potential for this collective will to have a transversal character and to become hegemonic. Left populism is increasingly popular in the European left and in the last year we have witnessed very promising developments in that direction.