Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY AND EUROPE’S CRISIS

Thursday 16 February 2012, 6p.m.

Room B33, Birkbeck College, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HX

 The financial crisis, the subsequent economic crisis and the crisis in the Eurozone have multiple facets that highlight and, in some respects, exacerbate social democracy’s malaise. They are crises of values, programmatic beliefs, policies, leadership and institutions. They raise in the most pressing manner the issue of the real contemporary meaning of reformism, internationalism and solidarity, the relationship between the political sphere and the economic sphere, the boundary between the public and the private, the appropriate level(s) of action (national, European, global), and the search for leadership and effective institutions. However, the ongoing crisis is above all a crisis of neo-liberalism and not enough (as well as a particular kind) of Europe. Yet, it was the Centre-Right and its allies that won the 2009 European elections. Crucially, they did so on the basis of a theme and slogan with clear social democratic overtones: to help create “l’Europe qui protège”.

 The event is supported by the London Office of the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, and the Department of Politics at Birkbeck College, University of London.