In a state election (Landtagswahl) in the Saarland that was widely considered another benchmark for the approval of the German federal government’s reform efforts, particularly of the labour market deregulation programme known as “Hartz IV” – these elections are, often to a significant extent, second order national contests – the Social Democrats have been dealt the predicted crushing defeat, gaining likely just under 30% of the vote, losing about 15% compared to their 1999 result, according to early, but usually very reliable exit poll data from Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, broadcast by ZDF television (German labelled graphics here).
Author Archives: Tobias Schwarz
Teething Troubles (comment system unavailable)
As appropriate for every one year old, afoe is currently experiencing some children’s disease. As you might have noticed, due to some still obscure reason, our MT installation has ceased accepting comments at some point on Wednesday.
Sorry for the inconvenience. Please bear with us as you would with your own toddler ;).
UPDATE: It seems the comments work again.
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While most people are still banging their heads against their respective walls trying to figure out how to make a penny and a half with their blogs, Crooked Timber’s Daniel Davies comes up with an interesting and appropriately unusual leveraging solution: Buying the UK – or at least some chunks of it. Here’s the plan…
Blogging as Substitute?
Dr. Bernd Marcus, Prof. Dr. Astrid Sch?tz und Dipl.-Psych. Franz Machilek are psychology scholars at the Technical University Chemnitz and probably know everything you always wanted to know about bloggers yet never dared to ask. Or so. Well, actually, I don’t know if bloggers were a particularly important part of their study given the saddening size of the German blogosphere.
Based on 266 questionnaires which the psychologists gathered online they assessed intentions and personality traits of people who own a homepage to answer the question whether “owners of personal websites” are “self-presenters, or people like you and me”. So the question of what exactly differentiates a “personal website” from a blog – as well as the entire “social software” discussion – might be spiced up a little from a psychological point of view.
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Power Projection Capability.
Every now and again, posts on afoe have given rise to a lively discussion about European power projection capability. Usually, in the wake of the Iraq induced “rift through the West” and in the spirit of Robert Kagan’s quip about “Paradise and Power“, these discussions focused on the relative military strength of European forces.
But once you stop focusing on the military and start looking to Athens, Greece, where the world’s youth is currently attempting to celebrate humanity, (as of earlier this Saturday afternoon) Europe’s power projection capabilitiy does look quite impressive, to say the least….
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Alright, here’s your joke for Sunday… if you can receive German ZDF television, you can enjoy your breakfast tomorrow making fun of me – Tobias – cycling on an ergometer for half an hour as a “surprise candidate from the audience”. Don’t ask me how I got into participating in a “Tour de Fernsehgarten” – a strangely popular “family oriented” (meaning entertainment without any real focus) tv programme I have never even watched in my enitre life – when I have to be on the set at eight on a Sunday and then proto-cycle while being forced to listen to “Overground” playbacks… (if you have to, ask my sister when she starts her blog eventually.) At least I did not have to rehearse 😉
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More on Football and the European economy – Slate’s Daniel Gross explains why Europe’s favorite sport is more American than baseball. In a nutshell, it’s because “American sports are virtually all socialistic while the European soccer leagues more closely resemble the entrepreneurial capitalism we Americans fetishize.” (via papascott.de)
Thanks, Kenneth!
Kenneth Rogoff, economics professor at Harvard University apparently felt that Europe needed a pat on the back…
“Today, if you really want to get a rise out of top European policymakers and business leaders, don’t berate them about Europe’s well-known economic ills. Don’t mention the rigid labor markets, the aging population, or the weak state-run university systems. Instead, tell them that there is a one in three chance that the world’s leading economic superpower in 2050 will not be the United States or China, but Europe. They’ll stand and stare at you, waiting for the punch line.
The truth is that Europe’s economy is far from hopeless. First, the notion that European firms and workers are much less productive than those in the United States is simply uninformed. The main reason why Europe’s output per capita stands at only 70 percent of U.S. levels is that Europeans work less than Americans?a lot less. Europeans work fewer hours per week, take longer vacations, and retire earlier. When it comes to leisure, it is the Americans, Japanese, and even the Chinese who have plenty of catching up to do. And as they and others start ?consuming? more leisure over the next 50 years, Europe’s relative economic size will expand. Second, Europe still has a spectacularly well-educated and versatile work force, even if dubious labor legislation holds it back, particularly in Germany. Third, recent empirical studies have convincingly shown that strong political and legal institutions drive economic growth. Say what you want about Italian politicians and the EU’s new draft constitution, but European institutions remain models of honesty and transparency compared to those in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.”
His entire column for Foreign Policy is available online. Not that we haven’t talked about these issues here before, but it’s nice to hear it from someone like Mr Rogoff. On the other hand, I think Europe’s odds are far better than one-in-three.
Euro 2004: close but no cigar?
it looks like Nick has beaten me by publishing his Euro 2004 thoughts first. But in a sense, this post begins where Nick ends his, with a look at the consequences of Europeanization, and Globalization, for the European, particularly the German, football.
As a reaction to the dissatisfactory results of a German team in yet another competition, the search for causes has now been extended from the sports section to the political and economic sections of many newspapers. For a reason: German Politicians of all brands have always believed their electoral fate to be inextricably intertwined with the successes of the Nationalmannschaft. ?The miracle of Bern? has probably been talked up a bit since 1954, but winning the world-championship after 1945 certainly became a, if not the, founding myth of German post war identity. Likewise, one could be tempted to identify similarities between the team?s current weakness and the generally gloomy German mood ? unfortunately, the three games played in Portugal did not become the cure against Weltschmerz, which the Economist is investigating this week.
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Go Vote.
It is not just my personal experience that many people’s opinions about the EU and its institutions are predominantly based on a political chicken and egg problem: No one knows what came first, ignorance or lack of interest; however, both do a great job in reinforcing each other.
A particularly eye-opening experience for me was the change of hearts of a conservative friend who is now a lonely Europhile in the Tory party. Only a couple of days of un-biased research for a paper about the EU and much of the previous Superstate rethoric had to become intellectually dishonest. Sure, institutional Europe does feature a certain, and often bemoaned “democratic deficit”. But more importantly, I’d say, Europe lacks citizens appreciating the importance of the democratic procedures already in place.
But this, I suggest, is much less the people’s fault than now suggested by the same media that usually avoids explaining the complexity and importance of European governance for our life; a little because many journalists have a hard time with complexity themselves, but more importantly, because the technocratic and rather invisible way politcs is done in Brussels – while appreciated by national politicians – does not make good tv.
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