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Showing posts with label Liberal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Liberal. Show all posts
4/15/18
EU Economy: A daunting task for the EU’s economic liberals
As the Brexit process grinds on, attention elsewhere in Europe is turning to the political dynamics of the EU without one of its most reliably free-market member states.
For many years, the UK, both because of its economic heft and the often under-appreciated skills of its civil servants, has led an informal economic bloc pushing for liberalisation in the single market and external trade. Some members, usually including the Nordic nations, have frequently relied on the UK to persuade other states.
A new counterweight to economic mercantilism is sorely needed. EU member states have, regrettably, been moving in a more protectionist direction in recent years. They have, for example, rewritten their laws on antidumping and antisubsidy duties, giving themselves more leeway to impose emergency blocks on imports.
Germany, traditionally the swing voter in the EU, has shifted more towards the protectionist end of the spectrum, dominated by France and Italy. In theory, the accession of Emmanuel Macron as France’s president, with his talk of freeing up markets to boost growth, should shift the centre of gravity back towards the liberal side.
In practice, Mr Macron’s commitments to liberalisation tend to stop at the French frontier. In order to buy some political space for his changes to labour law, Mr Macron has taken restrictive positions on cross-border issues including migration, foreign direct investment and signing trade deals that will endanger France’s perennially vocal farmers.
Read more: A daunting task for the EU’s economic liberals
For many years, the UK, both because of its economic heft and the often under-appreciated skills of its civil servants, has led an informal economic bloc pushing for liberalisation in the single market and external trade. Some members, usually including the Nordic nations, have frequently relied on the UK to persuade other states.
A new counterweight to economic mercantilism is sorely needed. EU member states have, regrettably, been moving in a more protectionist direction in recent years. They have, for example, rewritten their laws on antidumping and antisubsidy duties, giving themselves more leeway to impose emergency blocks on imports.
Germany, traditionally the swing voter in the EU, has shifted more towards the protectionist end of the spectrum, dominated by France and Italy. In theory, the accession of Emmanuel Macron as France’s president, with his talk of freeing up markets to boost growth, should shift the centre of gravity back towards the liberal side.
In practice, Mr Macron’s commitments to liberalisation tend to stop at the French frontier. In order to buy some political space for his changes to labour law, Mr Macron has taken restrictive positions on cross-border issues including migration, foreign direct investment and signing trade deals that will endanger France’s perennially vocal farmers.
Read more: A daunting task for the EU’s economic liberals
12/29/16
POLITICS: Liberal Democracies and the Rise of Populist Politics - by Yascha Mounk
After years of simmering disenchantment with status quo politics, “2016
was a watershed” for populist parties and movements, says Yascha Mounk,
a political theorist at Harvard University.
Major democracies have seen movements that challenge democratic norms and institutions score victories at the ballot box amid rising economic anxieties and mass migration. Meanwhile, leaders in Hungary and Russia have modeled an alternative to the liberal democratic order that has predominated since the end of the Cold War, says Mounk, who holds fellowships at the German Marshall Fund and New America Foundation. The trend toward populist politics “is seemingly still accelerating,” he says, as the coming year is set to bring at least three elections in Europe.
Read more: Yascha Mounk on Illiberal Democracies and the Rise of Populist Politics - Council on Foreign Relations
Major democracies have seen movements that challenge democratic norms and institutions score victories at the ballot box amid rising economic anxieties and mass migration. Meanwhile, leaders in Hungary and Russia have modeled an alternative to the liberal democratic order that has predominated since the end of the Cold War, says Mounk, who holds fellowships at the German Marshall Fund and New America Foundation. The trend toward populist politics “is seemingly still accelerating,” he says, as the coming year is set to bring at least three elections in Europe.
Read more: Yascha Mounk on Illiberal Democracies and the Rise of Populist Politics - Council on Foreign Relations
1/27/16
Democracy: The Problem With 'Illiberal Democracy' - by Jan-Werner Müller
Poland’s turn toward
authoritarian rule has set off alarm bells across the European Union and
within NATO.
Since coming to power in October, Jarosław Kaczyński’s Law
and Justice party (PiS) has attacked the country’s Constitutional
Court, politicized the judiciary and the civil service, and launched an
assault on media pluralism.
Critics of the PiS
government, which is led by Prime Minister Beata Szydło (with Kaczyński,
ruling from behind the scenes as he holds no official post), have
described its actions as a blitz to install “illiberal democracy,” similar
to what Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has done in his country
over the past six years.
But to call what is being constructed in Poland
illiberal democracy is deeply misleading – and in a way that undermines
efforts to rein in would-be autocrats like Kaczyński and Orbán. After
all, it is not just liberalism that is under attack, but democracy
itself.
The concept of “illiberal democracy,” attributable to a 1997 essay by
the American foreign-policy thinker Fareed Zakaria, was an effort to
describe regimes that held elections, but did not observe the rule of
law and regularly overrode their political systems’ constitutional
checks and balances.
It was an idea born of disillusion. In the heady
days after the fall of communism, a kind of democratic ecstasy prevailed
(at least in the West). The “end of history” had been achieved, and
elections, representative institutions, and the rule of law would, it
seemed, always go neatly together.
Read more: The Problem With 'Illiberal Democracy' - by Jan-Werner Müller
10/31/14
The US Political Divide: The 10 most conservative (and liberal) cities in America - Allegra Kirkland
Americans have countless stereotypes about people from different
regions of the country. There’s the polite Midwesterner, the abrasive
New Yorker, the Berkeley hippy, the gun-toting Texan. There is red
America and there is blue, and never the twain shall meet. But a study of conservative cities published in American Political Science Review suggests that the United States has a much more complicated political patchwork than we might expect.
In order to determine which cities are most conservative, researchers analyzed large-scale surveys that questioned residents of over 1,600 towns and cities about a range of policy areas, from education to healthcare. Study authors Chris Tausanovitch of UCLA and Christopher Warshaw of MIT created an ideological score for each city based on these responses. The final study looks at the 51 U.S. cities that have at least 250,000 residents.
Some of their findings, like the fact that the U.S.’ biggest urban centers lean toward the liberal side of the spectrum, are unsurprising. But there is a remarkable ideological range within states, and beyond the top contenders, the rankings aren’t what you might expect. Mesa, Arizona’s title as the most conservative city in the country fits in with our preconceptions about national politics, but the fact that Buffalo, New York is more liberal than Chicago or that Portland doesn’t even crack the top 10 is more of a surprise. According to their results, San Francisco is the most liberal city, followed by Washington DC and Seattle.
The most interesting takeaway of the study is that ideology has tangible effects on policy at the municipal level. Academic literature has long held that city officials are unresponsive to their constituents, thanks to the constraints placed on them by state and federal governments and the impossibility of catering to a constantly changing demography. Yet as it turns out, “the substantive impact of citizens’ preferences on policy outcomes is quite large.”
The most liberal cities have higher taxes per capita, rely on less regressive tax systems, and spend twice as much per person as their most conservative counterparts. And as Hunter Schwarz points outat the Washington Post, “even cities with governments designed to be less partisan, with institutions like nonpartisan elections and professional managers instead of elected mayors, are in line with residents’ political beliefs.”
Read more: The 10 most conservative (and liberal) cities in America - Salon.com
In order to determine which cities are most conservative, researchers analyzed large-scale surveys that questioned residents of over 1,600 towns and cities about a range of policy areas, from education to healthcare. Study authors Chris Tausanovitch of UCLA and Christopher Warshaw of MIT created an ideological score for each city based on these responses. The final study looks at the 51 U.S. cities that have at least 250,000 residents.
Some of their findings, like the fact that the U.S.’ biggest urban centers lean toward the liberal side of the spectrum, are unsurprising. But there is a remarkable ideological range within states, and beyond the top contenders, the rankings aren’t what you might expect. Mesa, Arizona’s title as the most conservative city in the country fits in with our preconceptions about national politics, but the fact that Buffalo, New York is more liberal than Chicago or that Portland doesn’t even crack the top 10 is more of a surprise. According to their results, San Francisco is the most liberal city, followed by Washington DC and Seattle.
The most interesting takeaway of the study is that ideology has tangible effects on policy at the municipal level. Academic literature has long held that city officials are unresponsive to their constituents, thanks to the constraints placed on them by state and federal governments and the impossibility of catering to a constantly changing demography. Yet as it turns out, “the substantive impact of citizens’ preferences on policy outcomes is quite large.”
The most liberal cities have higher taxes per capita, rely on less regressive tax systems, and spend twice as much per person as their most conservative counterparts. And as Hunter Schwarz points outat the Washington Post, “even cities with governments designed to be less partisan, with institutions like nonpartisan elections and professional managers instead of elected mayors, are in line with residents’ political beliefs.”
Read more: The 10 most conservative (and liberal) cities in America - Salon.com
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