Responsible Government and Capitalism’s Cycles

This article explores the tensions Peter Mair identified between responsible and responsive government in relation to the constraints and opportunities of an internationally integrated and instituted economy. Drawing on the example of the short period of democratic stability and its subsequent breakdown in the Weimar Republic, the article argues that in Weimar Germany’s ‘golden twenties’, governments could bridge the gap between responsibility – defined as a commitment to deep international integration – and responsiveness to its citizens mainly through the availability of cheap credits. With the onset of the Great Depression, responsible government became tantamount to increasingly drastic austerity policies. These policies were not only an economic failure, they also made the gap between responsible and responsive government unbridgeable. The article also shows how a similar cycle of good and bad times, with similar consequences with regard to the tensions between responsible and responsive government seem to have occurred in the crisis that has been affecting the Eurozone since 2009.     

Two Cheers for Capitalism?

According to a popular view that I call “two cheers for capitalism,” capitalism’s effect on development is ambiguous and mixed. This paper empirically investigates that view. I find that it’s wrong. Citizens in countries that became more capitalist over the last quarter century became wealthier, healthier, more educated, and politically freer. Citizens in countries that became significantly less capitalist over this period endured stagnating income, shortening life spans, smaller gains in education, and increasingly oppressive political regimes. The data unequivocally evidence capitalism’s superiority for development. Full-force cheerleading for capitalism is well deserved and three cheers are in order instead of two.     

Electoral Participation in Iran’s Parliamentary Politics: Between Two Competing Explanations

Political Behavior - The paper uncovers determinants of turnout in Iran by studying the role of institutional and socio-economic variables in parliamentary politics since the 2000s. The paper...     

A New Paradigm? Peter Berger’s “The Two Pluralisms”

The article discusses Peter Berger’s suggestion to replace the secularization theory by a “new paradigm” of a double plurality: the plurality of religions and the plurality (rather: polarity) of the religious and the secular sphere. Whether this constitutes a new paradigm seems just as questionable as whether it is a paradigm at all. After having discussed these two questions the article engages with the basic tenets of Berger’s concept by asking whether the paradigm is convincing. The discussion focusses on Berger’s concept of religion, which puts the secular and the religious sphere in opposition to each other – not only in the society but also in the consciousness of the religious subject.     

Levi’s Auschwitz and Dante’s Hell

On reading Primo Levi’s Holocaust memoir If This is a Man, one is immediately struck by its literary quality, and especially its generous use of Dante’s Inferno, both of which point to the more general problem of Holocaust witnessing. This paper focuses on Levi’s reasons for using Dante’s poem in particular to communicate his experience. Levi’s choice of Inferno is pointed, not only because of the obvious trope of existence in Hell, but also because Levi conceived of Auschwitz as an experiment designed to destroy the “human,” created in part, at least in the West, by Dante’s poem. What I will be suggesting is that Levi emphasizes the distinctions between his and Dante’s experiences by including in his conversation with Dante’s Inferno (paradoxically) his rejection of that conversation. There may or may not be something “human” which persists after Auschwitz, and the only way to ask this question, without preconceiving an answer, is to dramatize silence. The resultant ambiguity urges readers to, as Levi puts it, “participate in” the events described and/or dramatized.

‘Democratic Socialism’ and the Concept of (Post)Capitalism

This article explores the ‘democratic socialism’ being proposed by new left movements on either side of the Atlantic, and evaluates its claim to be a form of anti- or postcapitalism. It argues that in the democratic socialist worldview, the line between capitalism and socialism rests on the balance of power between workers and capitalists in the economic sphere. While traditional social democracy seeks to redistribute wealth but leaves relations between workers and capitalists within firms untouched, democratic socialism seeks to abolish private property in the economic sphere. Production is controlled democratically by the workers themselves, in league with a workers’ state. The article critically appraises the claim that such a scenario constitutes a form of postcapitalism. Drawing on the work of critical Marxists such as Moishe Postone, it argues that capitalism is not primarily defined by private property relations in the economic sphere, but rather the peculiar social form of capitalist labour. Unlike in pre-capitalist societies, for labour in capitalism to secure a continued basis on which to reproduce the means of subsistence, it must be socially validated as ‘value-producing’. The criteria for value validation is not set in the workplace, or within a single nation state, but rather on the world market. The article concludes that, for all its merits, the democratisation of workplaces does not overcome the need for this social validation, but rather constitutes an alternative form of managing the process of production in this context. As such, democratic socialism, like social democracy, remains susceptible to the same imperatives and crises as other forms of capitalist production, and so cannot be said to constitute a form of ‘postcapitalism’.     

Libya’s conflict

With the battle for Tripoli, Libya’s civil war has entered a key stage. Powerful outside states are fuelling the conflict, and recent events have raised the prospect of more direct military intervention. No diplomatic solution is foreseeable while the United Nations Security Council’s permanent members support different factions. Moreover, each side in the conflict currently believes it can achieve more through fighting than through the necessary compromises of a peace settlement.     

Israel’s election

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears most likely to form Israel’s next government following its election on 9 April, although it is unclear how stable such a government would be. Further elections within the next two years are quite possible. Whatever the outcome of the election, Israel’s next leader will be forced to address a range of serious and interrelated strategic challenges.     

Tunisia’s troubles

Often considered the sole potential success of the Arab Spring, Tunisia is now in a perilous position. If Tunisia’s troubles persist, the best likely scenario it faces is stagnation, accompanied by a gradual return towards more authoritarian government. Yet recent unrest across North Africa and the broader region suggests that more turbulent outcomes are also possible.