Bloggingheads Community - All things European

Quote:

Originally Posted by PreppyMcPrepperson (Post 132976)

There's a lot happening politically in Europe--can we get a DV on
--German elections
--Greek elections
--UK elections
--Ireland referendum and the Lisbon treaty
--and what it all means for international things like climate change, NATO policy in Afghanistan, macro/financial policy, trade?
A Farrell/Drezner pairing might be good here.

I would pay to see Hulsman and Kupchan discuss this article:

The End of Socialism

Quote:

Is President Obama listening to the message of the German election? It couldn’t be clearer: no new taxes. Germany has decisively rejected the tired nostrums of the Social Democratic Party, which campaigned on raising taxes on the wealthy and was the junior partner of the Christian Democrats in a grand coalition during the past four years. The Social Democrats turned in their worst performance in the history of the Federal Republic, winning a mere 23 percent, while the Free Democratic Party (FDP) polled a record 14.6 percent. The Christian Democrats crawled across the finish line with 33.9 percent.

Thus the election, widely touted as boring and uninteresting, proved to be anything but. The FDP, which espouses a classical liberal program of slashing taxes and curbing government regulation, was led to its smashing victory by its chairman, Guido Westerwelle. The real winner of the election is not Christian Democrat Angela Merkel, who will return as chancellor in a coalition government with the Free Democrats. Instead, it is Westerwelle, who is slated to become Germany’s new foreign minister.

The election confirms a wider trend in Europe that Malte Lehming, an editor at the Berlin Tagespiegel, dubs “the end of socialism in Europe.” As Lehming notes, socialist parties have failed in France, Italy, Germany—and England is next. Meanwhile, Lehming tartly noted, Greece has a socialist government “and they’re rioting over there in the streets.” For Westerwelle, the election vindicates his strategy over the past eleven years to shun the Left and focus on an alliance with the conservative Christian Democrats. Westerwelle is young and dynamic, presenting himself as a kind of German Barack Obama.

If one of them couldn't make it, I suggest Jacob Heilbrunn, the article's author to join in. I like him a lot.