#56 - July 2011

Vol. 25, No. 2
Democracy vs Neoliberalism in the European Union
Edited by: 
Steve
McGiffen
Alexander van Steenderen and Karel
Koster

“As its foreign policy shows, the United States is clearly distancing itself from the common set of values defined after the tragic experiences of World Wars I and II and shared by Europeans and Americans in the...

Steve
McGiffen

The European Union presents itself to the world as an example for others to follow, a model of ‘good governance’ and democracy, and an ethical player on the world stage. Much of the academic debate surrounding it revolves around the...

Stine
Vejlby

This paper analyzes how the Danish welfare state and socialism in Denmark have declined since the 1970s, and how this has accelerated since the beginning of the century. The reasons for this can be found in the hegemonic shift in...

Photos by Piet
den Blanken

Piet den Blanken’s photographs of migrant workers and asylum seekers show the reality behind the European Union’s bogus internationalism. The situation for would-be migrants has deteriorated significantly since these photos were taken,...

Patrick
Clairzier

Historical background

Since its inception in 1957, the member states of the European Economic Community (EEC) have been actively expanding their trade with the more dependent states in the Global South through...

Stuart
Shields

Introduction

The issue of globalisation and its impact in Eastern Central Europe’s (ECE) post-communist transition has at best been dealt with parsimoniously, and at worst long ignored, in both the International...

Raj Chari and Daniel Hillebrand
O’Donovan

It is already widely recognized not only that there is little popular involvement in the European Union’s decision-making, but also that there is scant public knowledge of ‘who’ its decision-makers actually are (McGiffen 2005; Chari...

Articles

Mario
Kessler

At the 29th session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1931, delegates met in Barcelona, Spain to determine the location of the 11th Olympic Summer Games. One month later the IOC awarded the 1936...

Sanya
Osha

The Fallen House

Political commentators are quick to comment on Nigeria’s capacities for survival. They are puzzled by how the barely cohesive country manages to stumble from one crisis to another without leading...

Book Reviews

Reviewed by Robert
Ross

Steve Early, Embedded With Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009)

Only Steve Early, writing about the recent succession to the...

Reviewed by Peter
Rachleff

Carl Mirra, The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945-1970 (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 2010)

I enjoy opening my introductory History classes by telling the students...

Reviewed by Stephen
McFarland, Jr.

Al Sandine, The Taming of the American Crowd: From Stamp Riots to Shopping Sprees (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009)

Early in this book Sandine gives a brief account of the Baltimore bank riots of...

Reviewed by Ronald
Paul

José Saramago, The Notebook. Translated by Amanda Hopkinson and Daniel Hahn (London: Verso, 2010)

In September 2008, the Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese novelist, playwright and journalist, José Saramago...

Reviewed by John
Maerhofer

Michael E. Brown, The Historiography of Communism (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009)

From David Harvey to Slavoj Žižek, Marxist thinkers have addressed the question of how to organize...

Reviewed by Peter
Seybold

Antonio A. Santucci, Antonio Gramsci (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2010)

Antonio Gramsci has long been regarded as one of the most creative political theorists since Karl Marx. In the social sciences...

Reviewed by Howard
Pflanzer

John Gerassi, editor and translator, Talking with Sartre: Conversations and Debates (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009)

From the imaginary “crabs” which haunted him in his earlier years...

Reviewed by Cliff
DuRand

Michael A. Lebowitz, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development (Monthly Review Press, 2010)

Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution has been blazing the path to a 21st century socialism, a...

Reviewed by Peter
Roman

Martin Carnoy, Cuba’s Academic Advantage (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2007)

Over the past thirty years, when researchers and educators visited classrooms in Cuba and in other countries,...

Reviewed by Gerald
Meyer

Ennis Carter, ed., Posters for the People: Art of the WPA (Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2008)

Ennis Carter, has assembled almost 500 artistically accomplished and socially consequential posters produced by...

Reviewed by Shannon
Brincat

Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson, eds., Raya Dunayevskaya, The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2002)

This...

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Notes on Contributors

Piet den Blanken is a documentary photographer and photo-journalist based in Breda (Netherlands). His reportages have been published in national and regional newspapers,...