I’ve been thinking about the challenges of blogging in Ethiopia – and the best solution I can come up with is to set up a Posterous blog to let me post by e-mail. I had originally chosen a very light WordPress theme for this blog, but I think even that will be too difficult. Logging…
Democracy in the EU – Part Two: Two Pillars
Welcome to the second part in my series examing democracy in the EU. Last time, I attempted to define the “democratic deficit” – and looked a bit at the history of the phrase. In this post I will continue by exploring the two pillars of democracy: popular and constitutional. Again, apologies for the “dry” nature…
Democracy in the EU – Part One: The Problem
So just what is this term “democratic deficit” that everyone uses when they talk about the EU? I’m going to publish a series of posts examining democracy in the EU – starting with a look at the term itself. The content will mostly come from an essay I’m working on, so apologies if the material…
EUFOR – Très Fort!
In 2006, there was a European Union Force (EUFOR) deployment in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in support of the United Nations election-monitoring mission. To reassure the Congolese that EUFOR came in peace, the EU commissioned a 5 minute video which was broadcast on national television in the DRC. The video has to be…
A Remarkable Weekend
What an exhausting, confusing, chaotic, exciting, unexpected, depressing, remarkable weekend. For the last several weeks, EU leaders have been struggling to get ahead of the story. Instead of leading, they have been reacting to events in the financial markets (and reacting slowly). Every time they thought they had put enough money on the table to…