Jan-Werner Müller in Foreign Affairs: ‘The Sleepwalking Giant: Germany’s Boring Election is Bad News For Europe’

Network member Jan-Werner Müller (Princeton) has published a new piece in Foreign Affairs, entitled ‘The Sleepwalking Giant: Germany’s Boring Election is Bad News For Europe’.  The first paragraph is below and you can continue reading the piece on the Foreign Affairs site here.

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Germany has been dubbed Europe’s most powerful country, the EU’s “indispensable nation,” but it would be hard to tell from its current election season. The country’s leading politicians have been focused on such weighty matters as whether foreigners should be charged for the privilege of driving on German autobahns and how to calibrate pension rates for civil servants. In the eyes of critics inside and outside the country, the election battle has not only been boring -- it has also been deeply irresponsible, a willful repression of the important issues facing the country. The philosopher Jürgen Habermas, Germany’s most eminent intellectual, has charged the elites with a “collective failure.” [continue reading here]