Ivan Krastev is a leading political thinker whose work delves into the complexities of contemporary democracy and its challenges. With a keen understanding of global political trends and protest movements, he dissects how mistrust and shifting societal obsessions impact political systems. Krastev's analyses extend beyond European crises to explore broader issues of trust between citizens and their leaders. His writings offer insightful perspectives on current political dynamics and their far-reaching consequences.
Why did the West, after winning the Cold War, lose its political balance? In the early 1990s, hopes for the eastward spread of liberal democracy were high. And yet the transformation of Eastern European countries gave rise to a bitter repudiation of liberalism itself, not only there but also back in the heartland of the West. In this work of political psychology, Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes argue that the supposed end of history turned out to be only the beginning of an Age of Imitation. Reckoning with the history of the last thirty years, they show that the most powerful force behind the wave of populist xenophobia that began in Eastern Europe stems from resentment at the post-1989 imperative to become Westernized. Through this prism, the Trump revolution represents an ironic fulfillment of the promise that the nations exiting from communist rule would come to resemble the United States. In a strange twist, Trump has elevated Putin's Russia and Orbán's Hungary into models for the United States.
A impassioned defense of the European Union and a concise analysis of its present challenges and future In this provocative book, renowned public intellectual Ivan Krastev reflects on the future of the European Union—and its potential lack of a future. With far-right nationalist parties on the rise across the continent and the United Kingdom planning for Brexit, the European Union is in disarray and plagued by doubts as never before. Krastev includes chapters devoted to Europe's major problems (especially the political destabilization sparked by the more than 1.3 million migrants from the Middle East, North Africa, and South Asia), the spread of right-wing populism (taking into account the election of Donald Trump in the United States), and the thorny issues facing member states on the eastern flank of the EU (including the threat posed by Vladimir Putin's Russia). In a new afterword written in the wake of the 2019 EU parliamentary elections, Krastev concludes that although the union is as fragile as ever, its chances of enduring are much better than they were just a few years ago.
A FINANCIAL TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR One of our most scintillating public intellectuals explores the political paradoxes of the pandemic and helps us think our way through it 'We are able to imagine anything because we are being besieged by something that was considered unimaginable...' Beneath the panic and bluster, beneath the confusing speeches and the conflicting advice, the Coronavirus pandemic acted, changing our world in the most profound ways. The tragic human cost and the economic devastation will be assessed and calculated for decades to come. But the pandemic also changed things in ways that are less easily expressed and understood. It has made bare the frayed contradictions of modern life. It has distorted things that seemed simple and settled. It has affirmed plain, uncomfortable truths. In this brilliant, thought-provoking essay, Ivan Krastev, one of our most interesting thinkers today, explores the pandemic's immediate consequences and conceives of its long-term legacy. Will things be different for the communities most harmed, and for those who escaped the worst? Where are we now with the US and China, with the UK and Europe? And how do we think our way through the unthinkable?
What if a policymaker charged with crafting a peace arrangement in an ethnic conflict situation would ask an academic what practical wisdom can theory of ethnic conflict and nationalism offer in support? Can a bridge be thrown between the world of academia, suffocated with political correctness and driven by the empty intellectual ambition of system-paradigms, and the world of those who have to craft policies of interethnic peace and cooperation with little knowledge of theory, scarce time to order proper research, and limited resources of money to invest? This book tries to analyze in this context what the postcommunist experience of ethnic revival and conflict has in common with other nationalisms and nation-related conflicts of our world, and what, if anything, is special about it; what the best practices are of managing different ethnic conflicts within a state or in neighboring states; and what institutions work and under what circumstances? The introductory chapter includes the only theoretical discussion, sketching briefly the basics recent research on nationalism and ethnic conflict with relevance for policymaking. The next three chapters look at the political economy of ethnic Vladimir Gligorov's chapter analyzes the system on incentives which pulled Yugoslavian Republics apart, and the one now in place trying to bring them together again; Charles King looks at the small separatist Republics of the post-Soviet world to understand why some of them were more successful than legitimate Soviet successors in building states and running economies; and Gerald Knause and his collaborators use a case study from Macedonia to highlight the difficulty of two ethnic groups sharing equitably the state and public sector. The primordial-type hypotheses of ethnic social capital and ancient hatreds are tested in the chapter by Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, which analyzes public opinion surveys on nationalism and ethnic cohabitation in Kosovo, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary. A critical analysis of political institutions which try to prevent and then contain ethnic conflict is provided by Valerie Bunce and Philip Roeder on ethnofederalism, from former Yugoslavia to the former Soviet Empire; by Florian Bieber on power-sharing arrangements, and by Mathjis Bogaaards on voting systems, both on the Balkans. The book concludes with a review of policy options by the editors.
22 Essays prominenter Autorinnen und Autoren erklären den Zustand Europas und der Europäischen Union. Sie sezieren die Geschichte des Kontinents und treffen Vorhersagen für die politische und ökonomische Zukunft Europas.
