Books & ideas

The four paradigms of the European regulatory state

Samuel B.H. Faure — 2025-02-06T08:14:00Z

The “Europe of the market” has dominated European social and economic policy since 1945. Yet three other models have opposed the liberal paradigm: solidarity, neomercantilism, and ultra-liberalism.

Private Means for Public Ends

Ingo Venzke — 2024-09-24T04:30:00Z

The EU aims for net climate neutrality by 2050, utilizing the Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) as its main tool. But the climate crisis demands more than market mechanisms. It requires comprehensive planning and legal frameworks that prioritize public over private interests.

In Defence of a Federative European Republic

Valéry Pratt — 2024-05-23T10:52:00Z

The political construction of the European Union has broken down. Restarting it would require profoundly changing our ways of thinking about sovereignty, the people and democracy – we must find a new way of thinking about our citizenship.

The ecclesiastic roots of the modern state

Pierre-Bénigne Dufouleur — 2023-07-14T08:30:00Z

Anna Grzymala-Busse, a political scientist, argues that the medieval church played an important role in the foundation of the modern state. Yet this revival of an old argument runs into a number of obstacles.

Living in a dictatorship

Karine Clément — 2023-07-11T06:30:00Z

A new book uses an ethnological approach to shed light on the spaces of freedom and solidarity created by citizens in rural Belarus, Europe's last dictatorship. But these spaces, in some cases, also accommodate the regime.

The Cosmopolitical Epiphany

Nicolas Leron — 2023-03-21T08:00:00Z

Jean-Marc Ferry tries to determine the conditions for the implementation of Europe's philosophical principle: the realization of the cosmopolitical hypothesis. But the well-ordered co-sovereignty that results from it struggles to convince us of its ability to resolve contradictions and make political Europe a reality.

Northern Irish Society in the Wake of Brexit

Agnès Maillot — 2021-06-07T07:00:00Z

Since the 2016 referendum, Brexit has dominated the political conversation in Northern Ireland, launching a debate on the Irish reunification and exacerbating communitarian tensions within Northern Irish society. What are the social and economic roots of these conflicts, and what is at stake for Northern Ireland's future?

The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum

Chowra Makaremi — 2021-02-15T08:00:00Z

As the European border control agency is being criticized for its violent methods, the European Commission is working on a reform of the European Union migration policy. In this interview, the legal scholar Elspeth Guild explores the relation between decision making and the reality of migrations.

Brexit and the Two Irelands

Ophélie Siméon — 2020-05-04T07:00:00Z

Signed in 1998, the Good Friday Agreement brought the three-decade civil war in Northern Ireland to an end. Most significantly, the treaty opened the Irish border, a move that played a key part in the peace process. But as Brexit looms, the border might be shut back once again.

Knowledge Decolonized

Laura Singeot — 2020-03-23T08:00:00Z

While the “cognitive empire” feeds on a single conception of knowledge forged by European modernity, epistemologies of the South validate the knowledges produced by the resistance of groups having systematically suffered oppression.