Maciej Kisilowski on Central Europe’s Strategy in the Age of Trump

Network member Maciej Kisilowski (CEU) has alerted us to his timely new post on Euractiv.com, entitled Central Europe’s Strategy in the Age of Trump. The first three paragraphs are below and the remainder can be read here.

* * *

The United States has just elected Donald Trump, the candidate who openly questioned the future of NATO and the need to honour America’s commitments to its allies, who publicly complimented leadership skills of Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un. With Brexit and the rise of right-wing parties ahead of the Austrian, Italian, French, Dutch and German ballots, our Western allies seem poised to venture into the “Trump Age.”

Too many times in Central Europe’s history, our elites, consumed by internal infighting, were surprised by a rapid deterioration of the international environment. We should not repeat that mistake.

While we must continue to defend the historically beneficial transatlantic order, we should also prepare our governmental institutions for the eventuality of that order weakening significantly or even disintegrating completely. [continue reading here]

Jan-Werner Müller in The Guardian on Populism

Network member Jan-Werner Müller (Princeton) has a new piece out in The Guardian.  In the article, entitled "Trump, Erdoğan, Farage: The attractions of populism for politicians, the dangers for democracy," Jan-Werner offers a thoughtful and incisive examination of the various forms of populism and the complex relationships between populism, democracy, and identity.  

The first paragraph follows; the full piece may be found here.

* * *

After Brexit, and with a Trump victory in November still a possibility, liberals are in a panic about populism. They have struggled to comprehend what a figure like Trump is about ideologically – hence the enormous amount of ink spilt over the question of whether he is or isn’t a fascist – and the rather hapless attempt to coin the term “Trumpism” (Trump, you see, is really a representative of Trumpism). Alternatively, liberals have focused on actual Brexit and Trump supporters and jumped to conclusions about what they think and, especially, feel. As a result, the content of what, after all, is an “-ism” – that is to say, a political belief system – has become conflated with the supposed psychological states of its supporters, namely feelings of resentment and relative deprivation.

The piece continues here.