Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Brussels Office

Sweden’s four messy months of right-wing government

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What role for democracy in progressive mobilisation in Europe today?

Event report on the launch of our new volume «The Crisis and Future of Democracy»

The Crisis and Future of Democracy

In 14 chapters, this book tackles a wide range of problems surrounding democracy and how it might evolve, often drawing the reader’s attention to less-discussed matters

“The rise of authoritarian populism and European integration: Central East and South East Europe”

We invite authors to focus on questions linked to the rise of authoritarian populism in the context of EU democratisation efforts in CEE/SEE. Original empirical research is welcome but not required, however the paper’s argument must be supported by empirical evidence.

Interview with Ethan Earle about the Gilets jaunes and French democracy

The takeover of the Bastille by ordinary French women and men represented a massive turning point in the French Revolution, and, while Bastille Day is now typically celebrated with Europe’s largest military parade and other accoutrements of crude nationalism and reactionary state power, the Place de la Bastille remains a major popular square, a meeting point for ordinary people from all over Paris and beyond, as well as a common site of protest and political demonstration.

“Closer to the people? On (direct) democracy in the age of digitalisation”

Call for contributions to edited volume “The Crisis and Future of Representative Democracy”

Call for contributions: the relationship of liberal democracy and racism

With its emphasis on human rights, equality, justice, freedom and participation, liberal representative democracy appears to hold many promises for marginalised and racialised people. Yet reality tells a different story.

On the Cusp: Reframing Democracy and Well-Being in Korchi, India

Mainstream governance and development models – characterised by seemingly democratic but inherently centralised and top-down governance systems and extractive, commercially motivated, capitalist economic policies – have failed to achieve minimum levels of well-being for a very large part of humanity.

Call for Authors

The RLS Brussels Office is issuing a call for authors for a report on European citizens' initiatives. This report should analyse the reasons for the failure of past citizens' initiatives and put forward proposals for alternative direct-democracy tools.

Corona Chronicles from Duisburg

Melanie Stitz, Regional Office Director, North Rhine-Westphalia, covers a variety of topics related to the current crisis.

Against Trade Wars

How global imbalances are threatening peace, justice and democracy

Introducing a new project

Nearly 150 years after French poet Arthur Rimbaud’s masterpiece, contemporary France is roiled by its own Season in Hell, a deeply fractured and unsettled political moment in which dark phantasms grow large and the path to a better world is anything but clear. Introducing a new series of political analysis from the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Brussels Office – A Season in Hell: Burning issues in French politics.

The "Ursula" affair splits Italian populism (and the left)

It is August 21, 2019, and at 15.09 in the afternoon the news of the day in Italy are the undocumented migrants who jump into the water near the island of Lampedusa out of the Open Arms ship that rescued them. The Italian Ministry of Internal Affairs and deputy Prime Minister, as well as head of the governmental party of the Northern League, Matteo Salvini, forbid the entry of the NGO boat into the harbor of Lampedusa ...

Alternatives in a World of Crisis: 2nd edition

This book is the result of a collective effort. In fact, it has been written by many contributors from all over the world – women, men, activists, and scholars from very different socio-cultural contexts and political horizons, who give testimony to an even greater scope of social change. Their common ...

Outgoing government: Infighting lead to the fall of the Danish right

Since its election in 2015, Denmark’s rightist government had been struggling to keep control of a chaotic coalition. The liberal party Venstre, led by Prime Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, insisted on keeping the minority government afloat by making a long range of devastating concessions to the ultra-liberalists in Liberal Alliance and the nationalists in Dansk Folkeparti ...

The core of the yellow vest movement rejects the far right

Quantité Critique (Critical Mass) is a group of sociology lecturers, doctoral students and undergraduates who have been investigating social movements in France since September 2018. For their survey on the ‘gilets jaunes’ (yellow vests) movement, they distributed questionnaires in a number of national Facebook groups linked to the movement ...

Global Working Group Beyond Development

About the Global Working Group The Global Working Group Beyond Development is hosted by the Brussels Office of the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung since 2016. It includes around thirty engaged researchers, activists and popular educators from all five continents which bring together knowledge and experience ...

Decline of the Left

Defenders of Czechia According to a survey by Ipsos MORI, although four out of five Czechs are interested in environmental issues such as the sustainability of agriculture, nature conservation and emission reduction, the most fundamental issue of European elections for 86% of Czech voters is terrorism ...

First Defeat of the »Levica« and Victory of the Traditional Established Parties

Political parties with a well-developed political network all around the country won 6 out of 8 seats. Before the elections, the public polls were showing a tightly matched battle for the 8 seats allocated to Slovenia in the European Parliament. According to these polls, even 1% of votes for a specific party could completely change the outcome of who would be moving to Brussels ...

European elections in Belgium: two countries in one

On May 26 2019 Belgium had European, federal and regional elections. What opinion polls did not show three months ago started to emerge two to three weeks before the elections: a surge of the far right in Flanders. The radical left also grew considerably and will, as expected, have one French speaking member in the European Parliament ...

Tag: democracy