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| Author: | Sunder Katwala |
|---|
September 13, 2008
Europe's left is in trouble. In the 1990s the third way—the center-left of Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder and Lionel Jospin—governed almost everywhere. Now, it is out of office or struggling almost everywhere. Britain's Gordon Brown has a mountain to climb in the polls. The German Social Democrats hang on as junior coalition partners. Only the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, re-elected in Spain, bucks the trend in Western Europe. Indeed, for a generation of social democrats heavily influenced by Bill Clinton's New Democrats in the United States, an era has drawn to a close.
If the many policy lessons they promoted about governance and how to prosper in an era of globalization remain relevant, they are now failing as politics. "We know what we must do to govern, but we do not know how to be elected, having done it," one senior European ex-minister says of the fragmenting electoral base for social democracy.
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Start-Up Nation addresses the trillion-dollar question: How is it that Israel—a country of 7.1 million, only sixty years old, surrounded by enemies— produces more start-up companies than large, peaceful, and stable nations like Japan, China, India, Korea, Canada, and the UK? With the insights of geopolitical experts and investors, the authors examine this nation’s adversity-driven culture to answer this question and offer prescriptions for a global economy on the rebound.
In Forces of Fortune, Vali Nasr presents a paradigm-changing revelation that will transform the understanding of the Muslim world at large. He reveals that there is a vital but unseen rising force in the Islamic world—a new business-minded middle class—that is building a vibrant new Muslim world economy and that holds the key to winning the cold war against Iran and extremists.
In Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know, Julia E. Sweig presents a remarkably accessible portrait of Cuba's unique place on the world stage over the past fifty years, including its internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.
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