Feb 23, 2022
In 1997, the Chicago School guru and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman eerily foresaw the challenges that a common European currency would eventually face through the following decade. “The drive for the euro”, he wrote that year for Project Syndicate, “has been motivated by politics, not economics. The aim has been...
Feb 16, 2022
Charles de Gaulle famously asserted that the French presidential election was an “encounter between a man and the people.” This inherently Bonapartist spirit of the Fifth Republic lives on to this day, as illustrated recently by Emmanuel Macron’s diplomatic offensive on behalf of the European Union (EU)...
Feb 9, 2022
When exactly are electoral observation missions warranted in a democracy? Hungarians are heading to the polls on April 3rd this year, and a substantial share of the opposition to Prime Minister Viktor Orbán seems to fear that the election will be neither free nor fair. Last month, a coalition of Members of the European...
Feb 2, 2022
"Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal São lágrimas de Portugal!” “O salty sea, so much of whose salt Is Portugal tears!” Verses like this one by the acclaimed 20th century poet and critic Fernando Pessoa were somberly recited in his native Portugal throughout the 2010s, as the country went through a bruising cycle...