I’m quite fond of representative democracy, and don’t think replicating the Swiss or Californian system would be a particularly good idea. I do however think that referendums are an occasionally vital and necessary part of democracy, and to do away with them, like the German constitution does, would be a great mistake.
There are situations where [...]

Many early proponents of democracy believed that public education was of utmost importance for the people to be able to exercise democracy. I am not sure whether they thought of graduation ceremonies of the kind Viktor Yushchenko is planning to hold in Kyiv today - yet it seems that everyone wearing orange will receive a [...]

Some orange in Brussels.About a week ago, I wondered what the chances were for an explosion when hundreds of thousands of people are smoking at a gas station. Unfortunately, now their leaders seem to have begun fooling around with the gas pump handles in truly ‘zoolanderesque’ manner.
More and more commentators seem to be afraid about [...]

It?s interesting that American conservative bloggers like Glenn Reynolds and Jonah Goldberg are touting the idea of making Vaclav Havel the UN Secretary General. I like the idea ? but for what I suspect are completely different reasons than the Instapundit crowd.

Read more… [...]

This is an intersting night. Checking news sites and blogs one last time before getting some sleep - reading about Mr Yushenko’s declaration that the “struggle had only just begun” and rumors about a $21,6m bribe to the head of the election commitee, I can’t fight the impression that the quiet winter night the live [...]

US Secretary of State Colin Powell has addressed the Ukrainian situation in a statement. He said the US does not accept the results of the election. Reuters has a summary (check the State Department website later for a full transcript):
Secretary of State Colin Powell said on Wednesday the United States did not accept the results [...]

The European Commission has recommended that accession talks for Turkey should begin, but hasn’t laid out any dates for the process:
Commission officials are reporting on the progress Turkey has already made, along with Bulgaria and Romania.
The final decision on Turkey rests with the leaders of all 25 EU member states in December - with accession [...]

The European Commission won’t release its report on the possibility of opening accesion talks with Turkey until 6 October. But after expansion commissioner G?nter Verheugen’s comments yesterday, the report will not be much of a surprise. ‘There are’, said Verheugen, ‘no further barriers‘ to beginning talks.
(All the links to outside sources in this post, incidentally, [...]

On February 6th, just when I thought it was actually possible to escape the ?German reform debate? for only a couple of days, on the way from the slopes to the fireplace, Gerhard Schroeder hit back through the airwaves. A coalition of campaigning regional party establishment and the inevitable loony lefties had apparently won their [...]

Once upon a time, there was a large, intellectually hegemonic, somewhat totalising ideology rooted in a heterodox school of economics. Its advocates proposed to make massive changes to the structure of society and claimed that only such a revolutionary realignment could alleviate the contradictions and failures of the existing order and save the world [...]