The European Council on Foreign Relations

The fall of a princeling; the fall of the Chongqing model?

Date: 21st February 2012 | Author: Thomas Koenig,

Categories: China,

It could have been so easy: Bo Xilai, Chongqing Communist Party Chief quickly poised himself as a serious contender for a much-coveted position in the upcoming 18th National Congress of the Communist Party. Despite initial opposition from the Chinese establishment, Bo used state subsidies to encourage investments from companies such as Apple and BASF, he launched social housing programs, extensively cracked down on organized crime in the city while singing the praises of Communism. In our November 2011 publication, China Analysis: One or two Chinese models?, we juxtaposed the recently emerged competing development models; the Chonqing model, irrevocably connected to Bo Xilai, and the Guangdong model, headed by Guangdong province party chief Wang Yang, who stressed a more liberal, rule of law approach. As expected, the two competing models increasingly entered the Chinese public

Reinventing ‘New Europe’

Date: 21st February 2012 | Author: Jana Kobzova ,

Categories: Euro Crisis, Wider Europe, Reinventing Europe,

My colleague Dimitar Bechev recently wrote this blog post about the slow but inevitable end of 'new Europe'. Diverging economic trajectories and political interests of newer EU members in Central and Eastern Europe, he writes, will slowly lead to a disintegration of this bloc into smaller groupings. The trend is visible already: Poland has reached out to Germany and tried to forge closer co-operation with Berlin on a number of issues including Russia; the Baltic states are trying to re-brand themselves as members of the 'Nordic' camp. These realignments have caused some friction in the region – for example, Poland's focus on Germany has prompted discreet reminders from other Visegrad grouping countries - the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia - that Warsaw should not forget about its closest allies in the region.

The disintegration of 'New Europe' may well be inevitable in the

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Reinventing Europe: Claus Offe

Date: 20th February 2012 | Author:

Categories: Euro Crisis, Reinventing Europe,

As part of ECFR's 'Reinvention of Europe' project, we are running a series of responses from leading thinkers and academics to Mark Leonard's recent paper, 'Four scenarios for the reinvention of Europe'. The paper outlined four possible routes towards solving Europe's current crisis, and argued that Europe's main challenge was to solve the acute euro crisis without exacerbating the chronic crisis of declining European power. In the tenth in this series of responses, we hear from Claus Offe, Professor of Political Sociology at Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

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Good point: Citizens of Euro-zone member states make it politically impossible to follow long term economic (and other) necessities. They antagonize what is good for all of them. A classical collective action problem, both in the longitudinal and the cross-cutting dimensions. The dissociation of (populist) politics

ECFR This Week: 17th February 2012

Date: 17th February 2012 | Author: Andreas Mullerleile, Nicholas Walton,

Categories: ECFR this week ,

Following the publication of ECFR’s Foreign Policy Scorecard 2012 we are running a series of blog posts covering many of the events we’re holding across Europe (and beyond) to discuss its findings. Hans Kundnani asked how smaller countries can punch above their weight while in Sofia – something also asked by Mark Leonard in Stockholm (Sweden was one of the Scorecard’s star performers). Hans also wrote a piece from Berlin. More events and more blog posts are on their way!

Over the last week we also published two more podcast interviews with the authors of different sections – Justin Vaisse talking about the EU’s relations with the US, and Richard Gowan on why Europe’s top score (again) was in the Multilateral Relations section.

Elsewhere:

Mark Leonard is wondering whether Europeans will ever get their act together on security - an argument that has also been made by Nick

Europe’s crisis of trust

Date: 17th February 2012 | Author: Ulrike Guérot,

Categories: Germany in Europe,

A couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon an article on “Cameron’s Munich” comparing the alliance between the English and the Czechs at the last European Council with the situation of Munich in 1938. This is just another example how ‘war rhetoric’ has returned into the public debate. I always thought that European integration was always about reconciliation, education, youth exchanges – and peace. Suddenly, this all seems to be forgotten as Nazi-rhetoric, Reich-allusions and war analogies are back in the mainstream media. “Toute est langage”, everything is language; Francoise Dolto’s famous concept applies once more to Europe these days. The best piece in this context - and on how careful we should be with our language came last week from Joschka Fischer in the German Daily SZ, where he argued that perceptions matter and that especially Germany should take into account how it is being

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