Tag / Political Communication

by Erik Jones

Europe Today — A Twenty-First Century Introduction (Sixth Edition)

European politics is changing, and fast. But the significance of that change is hard to appreciate without a deep understanding of ‘Europe’, meaning its history, politics, culture, and economics. Unfortunately, so much of what we ‘know’ about Europe is based on caricatures and stereotypes. (The same is no doubt true for the rest of the world as well. I blame the demise of area studies, but that is another conversation.) This edited volume — called Europe Today and published by Rowman & Littlefield — can help shed important light.

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by Erik Jones

Five Examples of the Strength of Area Studies

Universities do not like to study people who live in places anymore. Instead, they emphasize the importance of theory and method. There are many good reasons for doing so, particularly as you consider the wide range of skills involved in analyzing the enormous amounts of data that the internet makes available. But there are also costs. Theory is a relatively poor guide for understanding why Russia invaded Ukraine, for example. You can make arguments from theory after the fact, but a close examination of developments in the country offered a better chance for anticipating what Russia did and where we are likely to go from here. The first book in this collection is a good illustration of what I mean with that statement. That book was published just weeks before the Russian invasion. The insights it offers on the war as it is unfolding are compelling.

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by Erik Jones

The Italian Presidential Elections and the Politics of Trust

The Italian electoral college will start voting for the successor to Sergio Mattarella as President of the Republic on 24 January. Between now and then, at least two pages of every major national newspaper will be devoted to rumours and speculation about what Italy’s party leaders are planning, who might get drafted as a candidate, and how the votes are likely to line up. It is the usual blizzard of noise that comes at the end of the white semester — the last six months of any presidential mandate, during which the President of the Republic is no longer able to dissolve parliament. What is at stake is not just who will take over the leadership of the Italian state but also whether the current government can hold together and whether the any new President will send Italy’s parliamentarians back to face the voters. By implication, Italy’s successful implementation of its national recovery and resilience plan is also on the table — together with all that entails for the rest of the European Union.

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by Erik Jones

Why We Need More Diverse Central Bankers

US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome ‘Jay’ Powell opened a window on the central bank’s new monetary-policy strategy in August 2020 by stressing that he was focused on the Fed’s ‘core constituency, the American people’. A few days later, the Dutch central-bank governor, Klaas Knot, gave a speech in Amsterdam to underscore that the job of the central-banking community is ‘to manage the risks that normal people have to face’. This was no coincidence. Both men were responding to a call made in 2019 by the Australian central-bank governor Philip Lowe for monetary policymakers to ‘talk in stories people can connect with’. If former Fed chair Alan Greenspan could once pride himself on being incomprehensible, that time is over. Central bankers need to be understood – and quickly.

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by Erik Jones

Getting Ready for the 23 April European Council

The European Council will meet by video conference next Thursday.  When it does, the three main items on the agenda will be to approve the recommendations made by the Eurogroup on 9 April, to push forward the conversation about a European Recovery Fund, and to restart and restructure the talks about the upcoming multi-annual financial framework.  In English, that means the conversation will be about money.  Like any conversation about money it will be difficult.  The opportunities for misunderstanding are everywhere.  Now is a good time to sort out some of the issues.

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by Erik Jones

Citizens of the World and Citizens of Nowhere

During her first address to the Conservative Party as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in October 2016, Theresa May made it clear that: ‘if you believe you are a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere. You don’t understand what the word “citizenship” means.’ Moreover, this was not an off-the-cuff remark. As she explained at the top of the speech, May was setting out her governing philosophy. And central to that philosophy is what she called ‘the spirit of citizenship’, which she defined in terms of ‘the bonds and obligations that make … society work,’ ‘commitment to the men and women who live around you,’ and ‘recognising the social contract’ in a way that puts ‘local’ people ahead of people from ‘overseas’. That sort of thinking is attractive, but dangerous — now more than ever.

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by Erik Jones

Brexit and the British Ruling Class

The British ruling class once governed the world; now they struggle to govern the United Kingdom. The political parties are splintered, the people are divided, the institutions are in conflict, and the gap between England, Scotland, and Northern Ireland continues to widen. Worse, the British government has once again failed to negotiate to secure a majority in parliament to exit the European Union or to come up with a convincing plan for how to leave without one. Now the British head to the polls in the hopes that the people will deliver a clear verdict on how they want to proceed. The results may prove decisive. The worry is the voters may return another hung parliament — leaving the British ruling class to sort out what to do next.

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by Erik Jones

The Battle for Post-Crisis Europe

Europe needs a ‘new narrative’ if it is going to move forward rather than falling back into crisis.  That narrative cannot be a collection of policy initiatives or institutional reforms.  New policies are important; so are new institutional arrangements.  But politics and institutions do not by themselves speak to a democratic electorate – and particularly not to an electorate that has focused its attention on legitimate grievances of its own.  Only politicians with a clear vision of the future can wield influence with voters in such a context.  If the politicians with the best ideas are too afraid to forge a vision, they should not be surprised when voters attach themselves to politicians who run off in the wrong direction.  Europeans deserve better political leadership; so does Europe.

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by Erik Jones

Europe’s Complicated Democracy

Europeans are heading to the polls now in one of the world’s largest and most complicated democratic experiments. Moreover, these European elections are probably the most consequential we have seen since Europeans started voting directly for members of the European Parliament in 1979. This is a good opportunity to think hard about how Europeans are represented, how they make their decisions about voting, and what kind of Europe is on offer. Three recent books suggest new and important lines of argument. Christina Schneider shows that much of the responsiveness of Europe to the voters actually takes place through the Council of the European Union; Jennifer Fitzgerald reveals how votes on the extremes are more likely to be local than national, even if they have an anti-European tinge to them; and Sergio Fabbrini argues that many of the tensions we see surrounding the European project could be resolved if we just changed the way we think about constitutional federalism. These arguments are challenging and sophisticated in ways that much of the commentary that surrounds the European elections tends not to be; they are also counterintuitive. Now that everyone is focused on Europe, it is a good time for some well-grounded, lateral thinking.

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