Suchergebnisse

A review essay on books by (1) Willian J. Bernstein, A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World (Atlantic Monthly, 2008); (2) Stribe Talbott, The Great Experiment: The Story of Ancient Empires, Modern States, and the Quest for a Global Nation (Simon & Schuster, 2008) & (3) Amy Chua, Day of Empire: How Hyperpowers Rise to Global Dominance -- and Why They Fail (Doubleday, 2007). William Bernstein's A Splendid Exchange, Strobe Talbott's The Great Experiment, and Amy Chua's Day of Empire take up the challenge of "Big History"-and in the process shed light on the real choices policymakers face.

With the Spanish general election approaching, this article considers the political lessons for social democratic parties to be drawn from the PSOE's experience in government and argues that its strategy has been based on contrasting approaches in the economic and non-economic policy areas. Continuity has characterised the PSOE's economic policy orientation, as it has broadly maintained the policy inherited from the previous PP government. In contrast, the PSOE has put in place a number of innovative reforms in areas beyond the economic policy arena, particularly with respect to policy on civil and gender rights. This combination has allowed the government under Rodrguez Zapatero to prioritise macroeconomic stability whilst at the same time distinguishing itself from previous PSOE and PP governments via a package of reforms which, it argues, has formed the basis of a distinctive national social democratic agenda founded on economic efficiency, social justice and individual freedoms.