Global Development Institute’s Post

Better late than never: Before I overwhelm my fellows with quality content and reports from Brussels, I’d like to do some overdue self-promotion for this year's publication: **Available where good books are sold: Radunz/Riedel 2024** Together with Rafał Riedel, I analyze party offerings and popular demand for differentiated European integration in the UK, Germany, Poland, and Switzerland. We find that the distributive consequences of economic and political integration in the 21st century hold significant restructuring potential for the still primary arena of political decision-making: national elections and party systems. We illustrate this with our country sample, where the idea of further or deeper European integration is more likely to evoke fears of cultural subversion through migration on the new political right, rather than concerns about unfettered capitalism on the political left. This is true even for the non-member states in our sample, situated at the inner and outer periphery of European integration. You can now read about how the "new" cultural conflict line - between traditional-authoritarian-nationalist and green-alternative-liberal values - impacts national political decision-making processes and, ultimately, the system of (differentiated) European integration in our second joint publication.

Reallly enjoyed doing the World Cafe on democracy at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). I actually had to cut a few lines as I was running low on time, so here is the full text of what I said (sorry due to LinkedIn character limits it runs over a few posts). —- Key question I have been asked to address: What are the main challenges faced by democracies? I wanted to identify a few challenges, some of which are new and quite context specific, others of which are very long-standing and recognisable from history. The first challenge in addressing this question is definitional: specifically, what do we mean when we talk about a democracy? While there are have always been examples of pseudo-democratic practices in authoritarian regimes (elections in East Germany for example), I think we can safely say that today we see a greater blurring between the democratic and authoritarian. There are many more countries that hold elections. At the extreme level those are pseudo elections (Russia). But there are plenty of examples where important elements of the institutional machinery required for a truly free and fair election are captured (electoral commissions, media etc), or where recent years have seen a growing threat of political violence. This is happening both in newer democracies (such as Hungary), but also in older democracies (India, the United States). So when we think about the challenges faced by democracies (in the plural) we also need to recognise that we are talking about a range systems. [1/n]

Timely piece in BDay on allowing for diversity of ideas: https://lnkd.in/dPbrEa9E Timely, because it just makes sense in an era of the GNU (government of national unity) where leaders have to work together. I especially recommend the three levels of application: the political terrain, the media and the personal.

My latest essay - reflecting on the background to the situation in France

Important read.

Very important research on field work practices, discussing and reflecting on impartiality and proximity when researching in conflict-affected contexts!

⏳ Only a few days left to enter our Instagram prize draw for "Enlargement and the Future of Europe: Views from the Capitals"—giveaway closes December 2nd! 📅 This book, edited by Michael Kaeding, Johannes Pollak, and Paul Schmidt, explores EU enlargement through 41 national perspectives, offering critical insights into the future of Europe. Enter on Instagram while you still can! 👉 https://lnkd.in/eMVDhPtj TEPSA - Trans European Policy Studies Association #EUEnlargement #FutureOfEurope #EuropeanIntegration #EUStudies #PolicyMaking #EuropeanUnion #InternationalRelations #PoliticalScience #EuropeanAffairs

Re-upping this from Bradley, Pete and me which is now open access @polstudiesreview. We trace the coexistence of centralisation and fragmentation in the British state, arguing that the phrase 'power without capacity' helps to capture these dynamics. We situate a snapshot analysis of current UK politics in the longer history of debates regarding 'power-hoarding' tendencies of the British state vs. accounts which identify diffusion of governance and polycentric policymaking. Pls read & share!

The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, by Martin Wolf. Wolf’s book on democratic capitalism is a significant tome, some 500 pages with detailed background information and logical argument. It is certainly not a book for the fainthearted! Wolf is a British journalist who focuses on economics. He is the chief economics commentator at the Financial Times.   This review may give enough to whet your appetite on which to attempt the read. Audio book recommended for the long commute!   For me I took away the need to improve political systems, Wolf suggests that we think about how we select political leaders, how parties work, the role of the media, and restoring the credibility of experts, in addition to his ideas for restoring social responsibility.   Just a couple of simple steps! https://lnkd.in/g4GrxAf6

Have you discovered this paper at Si yet "Political Systems In an Age of Complexity"? You can download the full paper here: https://bit.ly/3XqkLc6 This paper explores the evolution of political systems in an age of globalization and information technology. In the paper we trace the past, present and emerging future to systems of governance, looking at the changing sociopolitical context as we move into a network society and the institutional reconfigurations required for political organizations to survive and thrive within this context. In this paper, we trace the past present and future of sociopolitical systems in an attempt to answer this question. We go in-depth in our analysis of the current period of sociopoltical transition; tracing the primary vectors of change that are working to take us into this more complex reality of the 21st century. Our focus will be on understanding this emerging context in order to try and identify and give an outline to what forms of political organization might be best aligned with the workings of a network society.