Despite examples of continued cooperation and resilience in the international order, there remains a growing consensus that we are witnessing the return of great power rivalry. This renewed period of contestation has produced two paradoxes that go well beyond the mounting liberal-populist divide. Confronting them will require the European Union to pose fundamental questions about...Read More

In moves that signify their strong desire to strengthen bilateral cooperation, the European Union and Vietnam have reached milestone agreements in recent months. On 30 June 2019, they signed a free trade agreement (FTA) and an investment protection agreement (IPA). Over a month later, on August 5, they inked a new defence agreement. In many...Read More

It is high time Brexiteers admitted they must either choose Brexit, or the preservation of the UK, but they cannot have both, says John Stevens. There is a spectre haunting Brexit: the spectre of the break-up of the United Kingdom. All the powers of the Brexiteers have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcise this...Read More

In this paper, we assess the relation between immigration and unemployment for a sample of 15 EU countries between 1997 and 2016. We estimate separate effects for Northern and Southern Countries based on the differences between the two groups in terms of skill intensity and flexibility of labour market adjustments. We use a panel Error...Read More

This paper draws attention to Max Weber’s commitment to federal democracy in a series of newspaper articles in 1917, which he wrote in the face of Germany’s military dictatorship.  He argued for the division of executive, administrative and political functions between the Reich and the separate German states, not unlike the constitution of today’s German...Read More

There are three major concerns with regard to Brexit for the UK: the internal UK economic and political damage caused by Brexit; the geo-political damage done to and by the UK in leaving the EU at a time of intensifying militant nationalism across not only Europe, but the world; the unconstitutional and undemocratic manner in...Read More

Winston Churchill has often been voted the most important/influential Briton ever. I was surprised to read claims that Churchill was a Eurosceptic, so I read through all his four great “European” speeches from 1946 to 1949. They were carefully prepared as a historic record of his views, delivered at grand events amidst great ceremony and...Read More

It is increasingly clear that for powerful elements of the Trump administration backed by the Israel lobby, the demand for a renegotiation of the Iran nuclear deal is only a thin cover for a strategy of regime change in Iran. This has been explicitly stated by some of them. Mike Pompeo’s twelve demands to Iran...Read More

“England’s danger is Ireland’s opportunity” is an old Irish nationalist nostrum. Some see it revived in the pressure which Dublin has exerted upon London over the border in the Brexit negotiations. A few even fear that the unification of Ireland is being pressed, in time for the centenary of partition. Yet the same parties readily...Read More

The Global Policy Institute’s Senior Fellow and Head of GPI China, Michele Geraci, has been in the running, among only few other candidates, to become Italy’s next Prime Minister, has argued in a conversation with Deutsche Welle that Italy must end austerity and spend and invest more. According to Geraci, ‘that’s exactly what Italy needs...Read More