Categories
All posts

Kosovo: Spring of the great loneliness

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been published in collaboration with the Serbo-Croat web portal Bilten.Org What was predicted to be “The Kosovar Spring” in fact turned out to be opposition’s “Spring of the great loneliness”, if we can raise an analogy with one of the masterpieces of the Albanian novelist, Ismail Kadare, […]

Categories
All posts

Serbia’s election outcome: More of the same or worse?

Serbia held early parliamentary elections on 24 April 2016, the second set of early elections in just over two years. Serbian premier and leader of the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), Aleksandar Vučić, appears to have believed that, with the opposition in disarray, and his own popularity still sky high, he could win an even more resounding victory than on 16 […]

Categories
All posts Video

VIDEO: TalkReal in Vienna: Towards a Plan ‘D’ for Democracy in Europe

Note from the LeftEast editors: In this video of European Alternatives’ ‘TalkReal’ series the debate is on how to go beyond the pessimism that has taken over our contemporary political climate. TalkReal is published in co-operation with OpenDemocracy and Roarmag. For years we have been told ‘There is No Alternative’, that the status quo is both […]

Categories
All posts Video

VIDEO: TalkReal in Madrid: Beyond the Ballot Box

Note from the LeftEast editors: following the first show of TalkReal on the Greek Crisis, European Aleternatives’ Lorenzo Marsili and the team of TalkReal explore the situation with the upcoming Spanish general elections. Together with ROARmag and OpenDemocracy, LeftEast publishes the talk as a kindred web portal to the TalkReal initiative. From the indignados and 15M to […]

Categories
All posts

The association that dissociates: on the Kosovo-Serbia Agreement

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article was originally published by the Balkan web-portal Bilten.org. On August 25th, in Brussels, Kosovo’s Prime Minister, Isa Mustafa and his Serbian counterpart, Aleksandar Vucic, signed the Agreement on the Association of Serb majority municipalities in Kosovo. This was the flash point and most disputable event of the three year negotiation […]

Categories
All posts

Mapping the Hungarian Left: parties and movements

By 2010, after eight years in government the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) had eroded the popularity to such an extent that MSZP lost 60% of its former voters (1.4 million people) and its traditional coalition partner, the liberal Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ) disappeared from the political map of Hungary. In parallel with the weakening […]

Categories
Insert

Greece: first thoughts on the electoral outcome

Note from the LeftEast editors: we post this comment written by an author with pseudonym Quincey, first published on AnalyzeGreece. We are looking for more analyses and reactions on the electoral results in Greece in the following week, so if you have authored anything or are planning to do so, consider submitting it to lefteasteditors [at] […]

Categories
Insert Interviews

The state of the British left. An interview with Luke March.

Note from the LeftEast editors: this interview with political analyst Luke March (University of Edinburgh) was made by Artem Koretsky. It has originally been published by RabKor collective in Russian.  Almost all the polls before the election showed that it is hardly one of the leading parties will win a clear. However, as a result […]

Categories
All posts Interviews

Kurds, Labor, and the Left in Turkey. An Interview with Erdem Yörük

With Turkey’s parliamentary elections on Sunday fast approaching, all eyes are on the Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) contesting its first ever election as a party, rather than a coalition of nominally independent candidates: a momentous decision on the part of the party leadership, which stands to gain clout in parliament and solidify its position as […]

Categories
Interviews

Podemos: between populism and social movements. Interview with Jaime Pastor

The ballots which Spanish voters will cast in the municipal and regional elections on the 24th of May, will be the litmus paper for the potential of the party to get to the highest positions in Government, as SYRIZA did. Meanwhile, Web-sites and social networks pages are filled with slogans such as “Podemos gañar Madrid”, […]