In: Crisis and Critique 9 (2022) 2, 427-431.

Interview by Frank Ruda and Agon Hamza

1) We cannot not begin with the ongoing war in Ukraine. It appears on some level to be very difficult to assess or analyze such a situation, which is not only heated but also still intensely developing. In addition, none of us is a military analyst. But we nevertheless want to start with a rather huge question: What should we expect from this war?

However the war ends, or more likely: drags on, it will result in a resurrection under American leadership of what is called “the West”, with Western Europe closely tied to the United States, and NATO rather than the European Union as the dominant international organization for Western Europe. For a long time, there will be no rapprochement between Western Europe and Russia, therefore no French-led third-party role for Europe in the evolving post-neoliberal global system. Russia will be allied with China, Europe with the United States, both blocs getting ready to battle over global dominance or, alternatively, the structure of a bipolar world order. NATO will be the European arm of the United States, the EU the bridgehead of the United States on the other side of the Atlantic.

Interview by Chris Bambery, Conter, September 30, 2022.

The economic crisis in Britian, the war in Ukraine, and the disorder in the Eurozone are all intimately connected. Chris Bambery spoke to Wolfgang Streeck, an economic sociologist at the University of Cologne and a leading commentator on European capitalism, about the crisis in the EU and the implications for Scotland.

Chris Bambery: Once again we seem to be seeing a renewed debt crisis emerging in the EU with Portugal, Italy and Spain paying higher interest on its state debt than Germany and its satellites? How serious is this and how uneven is the EU today?

Wolfgang Streeck: It is getting more uneven by the day. Economic convergence has been promised but was never delivered. Instead divergence between the center, Germany in particular, and the Mediterranean periphery has long been growing. This is a direct consequence of EMU, the EU’s monetary union. Lagging countries may be able to catch up with more competitive countries in a common market by internal devaluation, meaning essentially lower labour costs. But this has never been successful without being flanked by external devaluation, adjusting a country’s international terms of exchange to its real productivity. (…)

Read the entire interview on conter.scot

Podcast by Paris Institute for Critical Thinking, September 6, 2021.

Our thirty-first interview is with Wolfgang Streeck, economic sociologist (Brühl, Germany) by Kristof K.P. Vanhoutte (Basel, Switzerland) Monday, July 12, 2021

PICT Voices is an interview series conducted by PICT faculty with notable members of the broader PICT community. Our goal is to present our community with a variety of voices across the spectrum of the humanities and critical, creative thinking. To achieve this, we will interview a broad spectrum of thinkers ranging from scholars to journalists.

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Interview by Justinas Šuliokas, Lietuvos radijas ir televizija / LRT, September 5, 2021.

With the general elections due in Germany next month, observers are talking about the end of the ‘Merkel era’. What has characterised this era and will things change once Angela Merkel is gone?

WS: I think this era was one in which policy became more event-oriented and less strategic than ever before. Her particular skill was to leave aside any long-term ideological and strategic orientations and respond to the challenges of the moment.

If you have a traditional idea of politics, then you call this opportunistic. If you subscribe to a postmodern view of politics, then you call it a particular kind of responsiveness. Namely, to the moods of the voters and the needs for the next coalition that you want to form: moving between the Social Democrats and the Liberals, with an eye to the Greens that you want to co-opt into the government. (…)

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