Ivan Briscoe: A Soundbite for the Poor
[Ivan Briscoe is a fellow of the Conflict Research Unit at the Clingendael Institute in The Hague.]
The resurrection of John Maynard Keynes did not save him from being entombed once again. Dedicating his first term to the cause of social welfare has not prevented the Spanish prime minister from kindling a bonfire of his reforms. Sooner than anyone could have predicted, more rudely than in Hamelin, the state that rode back in 2008 has been shown the road out of town.
How the battle to reverse the Keynesian drift was played and won is central to this story. One quote chosen from the Washington Monthly by Mike Edwards, in his speech to the recent Hivos conference in the Hague, underlined the scale of the enterprise: “The new game in town is to dominate the entire intellectual environment in which decisions are made.”
Intellectual is perhaps an ambitious word to describe a process thrust along by the cable news cycle, panic selling, Greece and the Tea Party. But the issue of how to respond is where Edwards and his audience of grassroots NGOs and activists showed signs of differing. Since the latter’s cherished values are those of dignity, inclusion and equality, spanning rich and poor nations, is the best method to promote them that of the opponents or through dialogue? Must they campaign by soundbite and the “fog of ideology”, as Edwards put it, or should they rely on softer ways to convey the complexity of social experience and possibilities of mutual understanding?...
Read entire article at openDemocracy
The resurrection of John Maynard Keynes did not save him from being entombed once again. Dedicating his first term to the cause of social welfare has not prevented the Spanish prime minister from kindling a bonfire of his reforms. Sooner than anyone could have predicted, more rudely than in Hamelin, the state that rode back in 2008 has been shown the road out of town.
How the battle to reverse the Keynesian drift was played and won is central to this story. One quote chosen from the Washington Monthly by Mike Edwards, in his speech to the recent Hivos conference in the Hague, underlined the scale of the enterprise: “The new game in town is to dominate the entire intellectual environment in which decisions are made.”
Intellectual is perhaps an ambitious word to describe a process thrust along by the cable news cycle, panic selling, Greece and the Tea Party. But the issue of how to respond is where Edwards and his audience of grassroots NGOs and activists showed signs of differing. Since the latter’s cherished values are those of dignity, inclusion and equality, spanning rich and poor nations, is the best method to promote them that of the opponents or through dialogue? Must they campaign by soundbite and the “fog of ideology”, as Edwards put it, or should they rely on softer ways to convey the complexity of social experience and possibilities of mutual understanding?...