This report, building on a workshop held at LSE IDEAS in December 2018 and supported by the Horizon 2020 UPTAKE and Global Challenges Research Fund COMPASS projects, brings together some of the UK’s foremost scholars on Russia, the EU and the post-Soviet space to evaluate the challenges and opportunities facing Russia’s 'Greater Eurasia’ foreign policy concept.
Topic:
International Relations, International Political Economy, and International Affairs
This report explores the impact of Brexit from an Irish perspective, explaining Europe’s role in improving Ireland-UK relations since 1970s and outlining the threat posed by Brexit to the political settlement in Northern Ireland.
In April 2019, LSE IDEAS produced a second edition of this report, containing a new contribution from Michael Burleigh, important updates from Paul Gillespie and Adrian Guelke, and a refreshed introduction from Michael Cox.
Topic:
International Political Economy, International Affairs, and Brexit
The conventional narrative is that China is, or will, by 2030, be the largest economy in the world. Based on commonly held expectations historically about prewar Germany, the USSR and Japan, greater humility would not go amiss. It is not preordained that past economic trends will continue, especially in view of a much compromised outlook for both China and the rest of the world in the 2020s
Topic:
International Political Economy and International Affairs
The EU referendum has thrown up many questions around globalisation as well as how to reposition Britain in the world after Brexit. The UK government’s professed intent to leave the European Union and negotiate its own free trade agreements means that Britain would be setting its own trade policies for the first time since 1973, and would need to explicitly set out the aims of British trade and associated foreign investment policies for the first time in four decades. With this in mind, clearly defining the UK’s economic diplomacy is crucial. Current global and domestic conditions are politically challenging. However, this offers an opportunity for the UK to take a lead in setting a helpful direction for the rest of the world, and ensuring that trade and investment policies benefit all in society.
John Ryan, Gabriel Felbermayr, Clemens Fuest, Jasmin Katrin Gröschl, and Daniel Stöhlker
Publication Date:
12-2019
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
LSE IDEAS
Abstract:
This report explores a No-Deal Brexit which would leave the UK economically, politically and diplomatically weakened and isolated. It further examines the relationships with its two main allies - the European Union and the United States - which would become more difficult and complicated.
Topic:
Diplomacy, Politics, Treaties and Agreements, European Union, and Brexit
This LSE IDEAS Special Report - with senior contributors from politics, journalism, and academia - looks at the internal causes and consequences of the return of the 'Middle Kingdom'.
It explores the extent to which Deng's momentous economic reforms in 1978 have shaped modern China, what the country's expanded international role under Xi means, and who really makes Chinese foreign policy.
Topic:
International Affairs and Global Political Economy
Josefin Graef, Scott Hamilton, Benjamin Martill, Elke Schwarz, and Uta Staiger
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
LSE IDEAS
Abstract:
Can the work of the great European philosophers help solve Europe's problems today? This report explores what we can learn from Heidegger, Arendt, and Anders about how to tackle populism, climate change, and technological change
This report explores the need to make the ECB more transparent and democratically accountable to prevent the next Eurozone crisis.
The ECB can justly claim to have held together a poorly-designed system in difficult circumstances, but its overlapping roles create potential conflicts of interest. What does this mean for the countries, companies, and banks that have grown to depend so much on the ECB?
Topic:
International Political Economy and International Affairs
This report explores the impact of Brexit from an Irish perspective, explaining Europe’s role in improving Ireland-UK relations since 1970s and outlining the threat posed by Brexit to the political settlement in Northern Ireland
Even before Donald Trump won the US presidential election he left
an indelible mark on US politics and on views of the US in Britain and around the world. his victory means those views will now have to be turned into policy towards a president many in Britain feel uneasy about. Current attitudes to Trump can be as contradictory and fast changing
as the president-elect’s own political positions. They can be a mix of selective praise and horror. he has in the past been criticised by British political leaders from the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson to the Mayor of london Sadiq khan. In early 2016 a petition of over half a million signatures led Parliament to debate (and reject) banning Trump from entering the Uk. Yet he has also drawn the support of politicians such as UKIP leader Nigel Farage, and polling showed support amongst the British public for his 2015 proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US. After the presidential election British ministers were quick to extend an olive branch. Johnson himself refused to attend a hastily convened EU meeting to discuss Trump’s election. Instead he called on the rest of the EU to end its collective ‘whinge-o-rama’.
Topic:
International Relations, Political stability, Post Truth Politics, and Populism
In November 2017 the Global Strategies Project at LSE IDEAS brought together a group of British politicians, senior officials, and other experts at Ditchley Park to discuss options for the UK’s foreign, defence, and security policy after Brexit.
This report summarieses that discussion, which covered the UK’s future relations with Europe, the US, and China, as well as the relationship between policymakers and the British public.
In late 2016 thirty British politicians, officials and former officials, officers, and experts met to discuss ways in which the UK foreign policmaking leaves the country vulnerable to strategic errors.
This report considers the hybrid warfare techniques of Daesh, Al Qaeda, the Taleban, and Iran, and makes specific suggestions on how the UK and other Western countries can better counter this threat.
The report is sistilled from discussions with senior British officials, academics, and current practitioners in the media, strategic communications, and cyber security
The future of the transatlantic relationship is rarely out of the headlines in Europe or North America. Despite the closeness, the relationship faces – as it has always done – new and familiar challenges.
On 4 February 2015, the European Central Bank (ECB) unexpectedly and suddenly cancelled acceptance of Greek bonds as collateral for liquidity funding unless Greece obeyed the Troika agreement.
The ECB’s irresponsible and incompetent actions call into question their respect for the Greek government’s attempts to resolve its debt crisis in a sustainable way. The ECB may or may not have good reasons to cut off Greece, depending on your point of view, but it is clear that such a move would be political. A central bank that is supposed to be the lender of last resort and guardian of financial stability would be taking a deliberate and calculated decision to undermine the Greek banking system. The ECB is now seen in some quarters as arrogant, unaccountable and authoritarian.1
This Strategic Update discusses the most recent problems for the Eurozone, namely the Greek crisis and the European Central Bank’s (ECB) lack of democratic accountability which has contributed to considerable difficulties for the stability of the Eurozone.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance and Financial Crisis
While the close British decision to get out of the European Union was made in a referendum a while ago on 23 June, there is still the feeling in the UK: What have we done? Where do we go? How do we get there?
Questions that should have been asked at the referendum, rather than after it. But there you are. When raw emotion and shallow argument reign, profound decisions are made without proper reflection or preparation.
Since then the question has also been raised whether or not such a thing could occur in ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. It won’t but then again it may.
First of all, let’s be clear. It is not likely there will ever be such a surplus of democracy in ASEAN, whether among individual member states or as a group, that there could be an ‘In or Out’ referendum like the one which resulted in Brexit.
Topic:
International Cooperation, International Affairs, Global Markets, and Global Political Economy
A British withdrawal from the EU would be a process not an event.
This Strategic Update sets out the nine overlapping series of negotiations that would be triggered and the positions the 27 remaining EU countries and the EU’s institutions would take, gathered from a network of researchers across the continent.
A vote by the British people to withdraw from the EU – also known as a ‘Brexit’ – will have significant implications for the EU, the ideas and structures of European integration, and European geopolitics. Opinion polls show that a vote to withdraw is a distinct possibility.
The EU, the rest of Europe, allies around the world and the UK itself need to prepare for the wider international implications of such a move. This Strategic Update examines how likely a Brexit is and explores what it could mean for the EU, European integration, and Europe’s economics and security.
This Strategic Update discusses the most recent problems for the Eurozone, namely the Greek crisis and how the European Central Bank’s (ECB) lack of democratic accountability has contributed to the instability of the Eurozone.