Professor Michael Keating: The Fractured Union. State and Nation in the United Kingdom

Michael Keating argues that the United Kingdom should be understood as a plurinational union in which they key issues of demos (the people), telos (the purpose of the state), ethos (values) and sovereignty have always been contested. It worked because multiple understandings could coexist. Understood this way, the United Kingdom was a good fit with the European Union, which shared these qualities. Brexit, on the other hand, was based on the need to restore the sovereignty of a unitary Parliament and people.

Germany after Merkel: recalibrating EU and foreign policies

On the 26th of September, Germans will go to the polls. As Chancellor Angela Merkel will not stand for re-election, this vote will mark the end of an era. The country's proportional electoral system will force two or more political parties to seek common ground to try to form a government. The new political balance that determined by the ballot box will have a significant impact on the country's EU and foreign policies and, by the extent, on the European Union's stand on the global stage. Our guest is Katja Kipping MdB, leader of "Die Linke" in the German Budestag.

Financial Patterns and International Architectures: Grand corruption, Nigeria and the Role of the West

There is a growing recognition that the enablers of large-scale (‘grand’) corruption lie in transnational financial networks. Literature suggests that a large proportion of illicit flows from Nigeria are invested in the UK. But illicit flows are, by their nature, illegal and deliberately hidden from view, making them a particularly challenging object of research.

The Historical Rawls

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John Rawls (1921–2002) and his work are now squarely a subject for history. In the more than fifteen years since his death, a rich body of scholarship has emerged which attempts, in different ways, to understand the nature, development, and impact of Rawls's thought from a variety of historical perspectives. With 2021 marking fifty years since A Theory of Justice (1971) was first published, this special forum examines what we here call the “historical Rawls.”

Teresa Bejan article attracts most views in Modern Intellectual History journal

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This article explores Rawls's evolving orientation to “the tradition of political philosophy” over the course of his academic career, culminating in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (2001). Drawing on archival material, it argues that Rawls's fascination with tradition arose out of his own pedagogical engagement with the debate around the “death of political philosophy” in the 1950s.

Cold War, Trade War: The Soviet Union, the EEC, and UNCTAD’s battle for free trade

In 1964, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) was born with an ambitious objective: convincing UN member states to lower or remove all barriers to the free circulation of goods and commodities worldwide. According to the liberal convictions of UNCTAD founders, free trade was the best tool to boost development in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and reduce the inequality gap with the “Global North”. The Soviet Union and most of the socialist world jumped on the UNCTAD bandwagon immediately.

Protests in the Balkans: Do they have an impact?

Throughout the last years all the states in South East Europe at some point or another experienced mass protests and rallies some of which had a severe impact on the stability of the political systems and even led to the fall of governments. The panellists will be discussing the importance of protests, social movements and broader public discontent as reactions to state incompetence, authoritarianism, elite corruption, neoliberal state building or the handling of crises, from a regional and comparative country perspectives.

EU - China relations in 2021: challenges and responses

The People's Republic of China has recently overtaken the United States to become the top trading partner of the European Union. China and the EU increasingly work together across a number of policy areas and are constantly seeking to deepen their dialogue. Having said that, the interdependence between these two economic giants cannot fully disguise the presence of deep-seated problems, mistrust and rivalries in the broader relationship between Brussels and Beijing.

The Happy Traitor: Spies, lies and exile in Russia: The Extraordinary Story of George Blake

Unravelling the life, character and motivations of the last known Cold War double agent, George Blake, The Happy Traitor paints a chilling portrait of a thoughtful and idealistic man, responsible for passing on key intelligence, including the identities of hundreds of British agents, to the Soviets. George Blake was the last remaining Cold War spy. As a Senior Officer in the British Intelligence Service who was double agent for the Soviet Union, his actions had devastating consequences for Britain.

'Where does Populism stand at the beginning of the 2020s?'

Populism is often defined as an ideology that opposes two homogeneous and antagonistic camps, ‘the common people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’. Populists are seen as a negative image of what liberal democracy is supposed to be: intolerant and refusing pluralism. Other definitions insist on the mobilization and empowerment of the people that populist politics makes possible. The well-known scholar Chantal Mouffe, the leading theoretician of left-wing populism, will debate with Federico Taragoni, who has recently published a book on the issue (L'esprit démocratique du populisme, 2019).
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