Lefteast
Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. The original publication can be found here. Liviu Dragnea, the head of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), recently survived a small rebellion. A few of his colleagues asked him to resign his positions as head of the party and […]
The failed referendum in the small Balkan state represents a major upset for the West, argues Vladimir Unkovski-Korica The 30 September 2018 was a disaster for the EU and NATO in the Balkans. The vast majority of the electorate of Macedonia boycotted a referendum that asked: ‘Are you in favour of membership in NATO and […]
Note from LeftEast Editors: In June an agreement was signed between Greece and Macedonia. According to it, the latter’s name will be changed into the Republic of North Macedonia. One of the attributes of the agreement is that Macedonia will be promised membership of the EU and NATO, which Greece had previously blocked. The agreement […]
In this interview, Hungarian sociologist Tamás Gerőcs discusses the Orban government’s plans for centralizing academic research and more tightly controlling its funding. As the Hungarian Academy of Sciences states, “The Government of Hungary has recently established a Ministry for Innovation and Technology responsible for the centralized management of national science policy.” In a statement approved […]
We are publishing this article in collaboration with the online journal Bilten, which has made it available in Serbo-Croatian here. The month of September has been widely described in Macedonia as a key defining period for the future of the country. The date for the referendum on accepting the Prespa Agreement on changing of the name […]
Introduction The Tsipras-Zaev agreement on Macedonia stipulating, on Greek insistence, that Macedonians must call their country ‘North Macedonia’ instead of simply ‘Macedonia’ has garnered support even from some well-regarded names on the left. In July, the liberal British newspaper, the Guardian, published a letter backing the agreement signed by a host of left-leaning intellectuals including […]
We present here a discussion of the Liaison collective’s new book, In the Name of the People, to be published by the Common Notions publishing house. This discussion took place in New York in late July 2018. This truly internationalist and collectivist publication boldly examines the forms of right and leftwing populism emergent in the fissures […]
Ideology has several speeds and very little memory: in July 2012, when the alliance between the Social Democrats and the Liberals organized a referendum on the dismissal of president Băsescu, a segment of the media supporters of the then president, journalists or public, mainly right-wing, intellectuals, urged the boycott of the referendum, while philosophizing on […]
Political theorist Chantal Mouffe speaks about populism and its relation to democracy, models of left-wing populism and the strategies opened to the left at this historical juncture. Chantal Mouffe is professor of Political Theory at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster. She is a cowriter of the seminal Hegemony […]
Romania came into worldwide attention again recently. On August 10, an 80,000-strong protest against the current ruling coalition and its perceived policies to curb anti-corruption turned violent. The police intervened brutally, using tear gas, water canons and truncheons against demonstrators. Close to 500 people requested medical assistance and hundreds more filed complaints against the gendarmes […]