Finland | openDemocracy

“Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technical resources while maintaining the property system.”

- Walter Benjamin, 1936

Europe’s guns, debt and corruption

Frank Slijper 27 April 2013

This second of two essays on military spending and the EU crisis, explores the role of the European arms trade, corruption and the role of arms exporting countries in fuelling a debt crisis, and why these 'odious' debts need to be written off. See Part One here.

The crumbling of Finland’s consensus culture: silence into rumpus

Johanna Korhonen 30 November 2012

Finland underwent a spectacular populist upheaval in 2011, when the True Finns won over nearly one fifth of the vote and went on to become the main opposition party to the current government. The prelude to this was growing disquiet towards Finland’s consensus-dominated political culture.

Who are the Finns? Ask The Finns!

Anna Vesterinen 14 November 2012

Combining support for the welfare state with xenophobic populist sentiments, The Finns have clouded and shaken the traditionally straightforward Finnish political landscape. Beyond this textbook example of mainstream recognition for a previously radical faction, what do the Finns really stand for?

After Copenhagen

Michael Bartlet 9 July 2011

There is a vital need, for the sake of the future, for new forms of collective action to combine feeling with thought, neither denying the seriousness of the crisis nor closing our minds to a ‘radical hope’ that deep political change is possible. Empathetic imagination is as necessary as science.

Old and new demagoguery: the rhetoric of exclusion

Ruth Wodak 10 May 2011

Right-wing populist parties tend to be anti-multinational and anti-intellectual: they endorse nationalistic, nativist, and chauvinistic beliefs, embedded - explicitly or coded - in common sense appeals to a presupposed shared knowledge of ‘the people’.

Crisis - what crisis?

Albena Azmanova 9 May 2011

Why is widespread social anxiety fuelling xenophobia rather than criticism of neoliberal capitalism? What role has the state played? Have we arrived at the paradoxical situation where the best we can do is to call on the state to do its job?

This week's editor

Niki Seth-Smith is a freelance journalist and co-editor of OurKingdom.

Europe from the bottom up

European Union stars in Paris. Flickr/notarim. Some rights reserved.

A new Europe can only come from the bottom up
Etienne Balibar

A social Europe must be a political Europe
Bo Stråth

As Europe is provincialized: a reply to Etienne Balibar
Sandro Mezzadra

European debate

A republican call for a basic income
Daniel Raventos and Julie Wark

Nuclear non-proliferation

oDRussia at journalismfestival .com

Mali - the plot thickens

Remote control war

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Conference coverage from 50.50

Conference. Moving beyond Militarism and War to a Nonviolent World: A Forum Devoted to Sharing Women-Driven Solutions

Articles exploring the themes of the fourth international Nobel Women's Initiative conference May 28-31. Jennifer Allsopp and Heather McRobie will be reporting for 5050

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James Warner Standing Perpendicular, as books do

Markha Valenta Inter Alia: religion, politics, culture

Paul Rogers on Global security

Mary Kaldor on Human security

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Arab Awakening

In the months following the start of the Arab Revolutions, articles and analysis poured into openDemocracy from contributors across the Middle East and Europe. Gradually, the impact of Tahrir Square began to extend well beyond the Middle East as democratic inspiration travelled from east to west. Arab Awakening tries to capture that inspiration and use it to help us read a rapidly changing world.

"As students of politics is it is vital to study the power of imagination." -Professor Charles Tripp, SOAS

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