A Citizen’s Guide to Greece 2015
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Juergen Habermas on the future of the EU
Posted April 27, 2013 by Politis
German philosopher Juergen Habermas spoke at the Catholic University of Leuven last week to an audience that included students and Herman Van Rompuy, current President of the European Council. Habermas entitled his lecture “Democracy, Solidarity and the European Crisis.” What Europe needs, he said, “is solidarity and a cooperative approach that results from a shared […]
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Greece: mostly not free
Posted March 30, 2013 by Politis
2012 World Map of the Index of Economic Freedom (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:2012_World_Map_of_the_Index_of_Economic_Freedom.PNG).
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Wanted: Laugh Doctor
Posted March 6, 2013 by Politis
Ζητούνται Γελιολόγοι στην Ελλάδα του σήμερα, όχι άλλοι Γελωτοποιοί… By Fotinie Efstratiadou Τις προάλλες, η οχτάχρονη κόρη μου ντύθηκε αστυνομικίνα στο καρναβαλίστικο πάρτι του σχολείου. «Μαμά, εσύ τι θα ντυθείς;» με ρώτησε. Σκέφτηκα… «Γιατρός», της είπα. Μου φάνηκε εύκολο. Θα απευθυνόμουν στους γνωστούς μας στο φαρμακείο για τα απαραίτητα. Πράγματι, οι συνεργάτες ήταν πρόθυμοι και […]
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Paid for services rendered
Posted November 4, 2013 by pdcadmin
By Fotinie Efstratiadou Here is a story about a public servant — an employee at the public ambulance service in Northern Greece — who missed work for five years from 2006 to 2011 and yet was payed throughout without his superior having been notified. One is almost left speechless. What can one think of these […]
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Entrepreneurship in Greece: the state of play
Posted October 17, 2013 by Politis
Excerpts from an article in the Harvard Business Review by Michael G. Jacobides of the London Business School. “On the economic front, the government is trying its best to play up Greece’s ‘success story’: its return to stability, the achievement of a primary surplus, and the increasing interest of global investors such as John Paulson. […]
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Are we all gypsies?
Posted October 30, 2013 by Politis
Politis invited regular contributors Krysta Kalachani and Maria Patsarika for their reaction to a recent commentary by Andreas Zamboukas in capital.gr entitled “The identity of being a gypsy,” in reference to the spate of media attention to the blond gypsy girl found by Greek authorities in a gypsy encampment in central Greece and erroneously believed […]
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Saying of the day: 3/15/13
Posted March 15, 2013 by Politis
“Neither right nor left, but above (and beyond).” — Tiziana Ciprini (M5S MP)
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Send an SMS to your Congressman
Posted April 3, 2013 by Politis
We all know the expression, “Send a letter to your Congressman.” A company in India has just launched a Short Message Service (SMS)-based grievances redress mechanism in India, essentially to do just that. There is no indication yet how frequently citizens will use the service, or how well the system will function.
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In praise of subjecthood (of the right sort)
Posted June 10, 2013 by Politis
Living in Europe today is akin to being a subject in some latter day Holy Roman Empire, that “political commonwealth under which the Germans lived for many hundreds of years.” So says Brendan Simms of Cambridge University in today’s New York Times. While the Empire lasted nearly a thousand years, however, the comparison is not […]
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Sport and politics
Posted February 1, 2013 by Politis
This bit was posted by a wag yesterday on the BBC web site, relative to the transfer of soccer star Mario Balotelli from Manchester City to AC Milan (the latter owned by Sylvio Berlusconi). “When Inter president Massimo Moratti said yesterday that Silvio Berlusconi would have many uses for Mario Balotelli he was absolutely right. […]
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Blockupy
Posted May 31, 2013 by KK
Newsworthy, I think… “Our main goal is to show that the regime that is governing Europe through this crisis is neither democratically legitimate nor acting in any responsible way for the people. It’s really working for profit. One of it’s symbolic places is the ECB – the place that has economic and financial reign over […]
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The European response to the global migration crisis
Posted November 10, 2016 by Politis
By Lauren Rothschild NB Lauren Rothschild is a Freshman at Northeastern University majoring in international relations and political science and studying abroad at ACT and interning at the Dukakis Center during the Fall 2016 semester. On Saturday October 22nd, the Olympion Theater in Thessaloniki hosted the 5th annual symposium on World Affairs, with this year’s […]
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From Delacroix to Dorian Grey
Posted February 10, 2013 by DW
By David Wisner If I were a photographer, I would take portraits of individual sitters. I would try to capture one’s eternal youthfulness, and yet simultaneously project the whole of one’s temporal experience. As I write these lines, I find myself thinking also that I might be able to discern the countenance of their personal […]
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Who wants to …?
Posted January 25, 2015 by DW
Election day is nigh upon us. With this in mind, there are three dimensions to the question I have been thinking of asking: Who wants to run, who wants to vote, and who wants to govern. In May 2014 the Dukakis Center examined an apparent inflation in the number of candidates running for local and […]
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Center right, center left: the original
Posted March 24, 2013 by Politis
“The Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) drives principled solutions through rigorous analysis, reasoned negotiation, and respectful dialogue. Founded in 2007 by former Senate Majority Leaders Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole and George Mitchell, BPC combines politically-balanced policymaking with strong, proactive advocacy and outreach. As the only Washington, DC-based think tank that actively promotes bipartisanship, BPC […]
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Civic engagement in the digital age — a Pew report
Posted May 12, 2013 by Politis
Social networking sites have grown more important in recent years as a venue for political involvement, learning, and debate. Overall, 39% of all American adults took part in some sort of political activity on a social networking site during the 2012 campaign. This means that more Americans are now politically active on social networking sites […]
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Why the future of Greece lies in the rise of a new civil society and education
Posted January 15, 2013 by pdcadmin
By Yannis Theocharis A light breeze of transformation stems to have started blowing silently in Greece. The younger generation has inspired a wave of voluntary initiatives and actions targeted at resolving collective problems in the last couple of years. The recent manifestations are numerous and exciting: voluntary-based events that encourage structured debate and spreading new […]
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Why is competitiveness important?
Posted May 31, 2013 by Politis
Economists and others have stqated repeatedly that Greece needs to become more competitive to remain within the eurozone. We are rarely told why. Here, Stefan Garelli of IMD explains the meaning of competitiveness in this clip marking the release if the IMD’s 2013 World Competitiveness Ranking.