Jacob Funk Kirkegaard has been a research fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics since 2002 and is also a senior associate at the Rhodium Group, a New York-based research firm. Before joining the Institute, he worked with the Danish Ministry of Defense, the United Nations in Iraq, and in the private financial sector. He is a graduate of the Danish Army's Special School of Intelligence and Linguistics with the rank of first lieutenant; the University of Aarhus in Aarhus, Denmark; and Columbia University in New York.

He is author of The Accelerating Decline in America's High-Skilled Workforce: Implications for Immigration Policy (2007) and coauthor of US Pension Reform: Lessons from Other Countries (2009) and Transforming the European Economy (2004) and assisted with Accelerating the Globalization of America: The Role for Information Technology (2006). His current research focuses on European economies and reform, pension systems and accounting rules, demographics, offshoring, high-skilled immigration, and the impact of information technology.

Jacob Kierkegaard interviews on the European financial crisis can be found in the following NPR articles:

"Why European Leaders are Suddenly Backing More Bank Bailouts"

"Ireland Went Down with its Banks.  Why Didn't that Happen in the U.S.?"

"Is This Europe's 'Lehman Moment'?  Banks Don't Think So"

Greek Nationalism had an early start in late 18th century because of the preponderance of the Greek language in Balkan institutions of learning. The early enlightenment was transmitted by learned prelates before the French Revolution launched its anti-clerical onslaught. Whereas 19th-century exponents of nationalism were children of the secular enlightenment, the second half of the century was dominated by the romantic and irredentist nationalism of Konstantine Paparrigopoulos that believed in the cultural, not racial, continuity of the Greeks. Turkish Nationalism was a late comer in the Balkans. The views of the Young Ottomans constituted at first ambiguous attempt before the Young Turks and Ziya Gökalp made their nationalist mark. Ataturk evicted religion from the Gökalp blueprint and kept the other two pillars, secular nationalism and modernization. Both Greek and Turkish 20th century nationalisms were influenced by the French post-1870 prototype.

Thanos Veremis is Professor Emeritus of Political History in Department of European and International Studies at the University of Athens and Founding Member of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP). He has held teaching and research positions at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), Harvard University’s Center for European Studies, Princeton University’s the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, St. Antony’s College (Oxford), the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and the Hellenic Observatory of the LSE. From 2004 to 2010, he served as President of Greece’s National Council for Education. His publications include Modern Greece: A History since 1821 (with J. Koliopoulos, 2010); The Balkans: Construction and Deconstruction of States (2005), Greece: The Modern Sequel (with J. Koliopoulos, 2002), Greece (with M. Dragoumis, 1998) and The Military in Greek Politics (1997).

Mediterranean Studies Forum, 2011-12 Greece & Turkey Lecture Series. 
Co-sponsored by The Europe Center

Inaugural lecture for the Institute for Social Banking, Canterbury, UK Summer School.  A link to the video of this talk can be found below:

• July 3, 2011 "Money, Politics and the Future of Globalization"

Professor Van Nieuwerburgh's research lies in the intersection of macroeconomics, asset pricing, and housing. One strand of his work studies how financial market liberalization in the mortgage market relaxed households' down payment constraints, and how that affected the macro-economy, and the prices of stocks and bonds. In this area, he has also worked on regional housing prices and on household's mortgage choice.

Professor Van Nieuwerburgh has published articled in the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Economic Studies, and the Journal of Monetary Economics, among other journals. He is an Associate Editor at the Review of Financial Studies and at the Journal of Empirical Finance. He is a Faculty Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and at the Center for European Policy Research.

Professor Van Nieuwerburgh earned his Ph.D. in Economics and Masters in Financial Mathematics at Stanford University and his Bachelor's degree in economics at the University of Ghent in Belgium.

Advanced reading material:  "European Safe Bonds"

Co-sponsored by The Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies and The Europe Center

Event Synopsis:

The End of Hungarian Democracy? International Implications
October 21, 2011

After an introduction by Professor Dornbach, Professor Wittenberg asserts that while a spirit of bipartisan ship is a nice feature of the U.S. legislature, it is not a fundamental requirement of democracy and  has historically not characterized the Hungarian parliament. He traces a decades-long tradition of ruling parties using Parliament to limit the presence and influence of minority parties. The current Fidesz government, which ended up with 2/3 of the seats after the 2012 election, now has a supermajority necessary to alter the constitution. Professor Wittenberg attributes Fidesz’s victory to three factors: the incompetence of older right wing parties, partly resulting from lack of governing experience during last four decades of Socialist rule; 2) the arrogance of the Socialist party; and 3) a simple lack of alternatives for voters. Wittenberg points out that Hungary’s complex electoral system resulted in more Fidesz parliamentary seats than the party’s actual popularity with voters would predict. He concludes that the 70% of parliamentary vote won, cumulatively, by extreme nationalist parties, does not bode well for the future of liberal politics in Hungary.

Professor Scheppele describes how the Fidesz party under the leadership of (Victor) Orban has taken its victory as a “mandate to change everything,” often in ways that will allow Fidesz to stay in power in the future. The constitution was amended 10 times during the party’s first year in power. Key changes included reducing the size and jurisdiction of constitutional courts, limiting media activities, allowing election commission representatives to be appointed with a 2/3 majority, and fast tracking the process of voting on new laws to approximately 3 days, leaving little room for discussion and debate. Scheppele echoes Professor Wittenberg’s argument that many voters simply did not have an attractive alternative to Fidesz, which would be less of a danger if the country’s constitution were not so easy to amend. She predicts that Hungary’s current situation should offer lessons to other countries on how to design constitutions.

Professor Halmai concludes the panel by crediting the arrogance (and corruption) of the Socialist coalition with the success of Fidesz in the 2010 elections. He highlights three central problems with the new constitution: 1) It leaves questions regarding who is to be subject to the constitution – for example, does this include the Roma population within Hungary, or Hungarian-Americans living within the United States? 2) The constitution intervenes in the private lives of Hungarians with respect to religion, marriage, abortion, etc. 3) It limits constitutional courts to narrower jurisdictions. He also laments the lack of consensus within the Hungarian government on a set of liberal democratic values.

A discussion session raised such questions as: What prospects are there for pushback from the European Union against some of the recent constraints on rule of law in Hungary? Does the fact that the Hungarian constitution considers the 1.4 million Hungarian-Americans in the United States as Hungarian citizens raise any legal challenge from the U.S.? Does the fact that Hungary has to operates within the frameworks of the European Union and NATO put constraints on its actions with regards to democracy and the constitution? Where does Fidesz’s funding come from?

Synopsis:

Robin Niblett, Director of Chatham House, delivered the following talk in The Europe Center series “The European and Global Economic Crisis”.

With measured optimism about the prospect for a way out of the current Eurozone crisis, Dr. Niblett argues that the introduction of the common Euro, seen by many in past years as a vanguard tool for European integration, is now potentially a functional wedge between ‘debtor’ and strongly capitalized nations.  

Dr. Niblett, arriving directly from participating in the World Economic Forum in Dubai, and based on Chatham House research, described the “perfect storm” of the past two decades of credit-driven growth, divergence within the EU, rising debt-to GDP ratios of member nations especially in the cases of Italy and Greece.  His analysis combines these economic details with the following:

• Demographics – high levels of unassimilated immigrants
• European welfare economies still distributing resources at twentieth-century levels now in the twenty-first century
• The rise of anti-immigrant and anti-free-trade populist parties
• The weakening of Europe’s center parties
• The “Russification” of Europe’s East – especially in recent events in Ukraine
• The stalled integration of Turkey into the EU

The totality of the above paints a grim portrait of Europe under the weight of nearly impossible conditions.   And yet, Dr. Niblett underlines evidence for measured optimism:

• Ireland is making strides to reform its economy
• Ireland’s educated and yet unemployed workforce does have the possibility to immigrate to Europe
• The UK is finally rebalancing its state budget and market liberalization
• France is facing, albeit with massive labor protest, its state budget levels
• Spain will likely turn over its government in the face of its massive youth protest
• Italy is evaluating in its political process a series of budget reforms

These are the structural side of what Dr. Niblett sees as Europe’s tools for recovery.

On the side of European practice, the Franco-German proposals for European Central Bank “bailout funds” include new rules for transparency of internal government operations. This promises innovation to make the EU into an area of political and financial transparency, and to enable the EU to engage in direct investment, as evidence is beginning to show, in the world’s emerging economies.  In this sense, Dr. Niblett sees for Europe a competitive edge over the US in engaging in world markets.

Perhaps most sanguine of Dr. Niblett’s analysis is his reading of the Eurozone crisis as a force to push the member nations of Europe further towards supra-national economic strategies.  In order to participate in the investment in emerging markets, the Benelux countries, not to mention France, Germany, and neighboring European states, are responding to the crisis by considering policy that promotes investment and outsourcing for service-sector employment, instead of export commodities which have been undercut in recent years.

There is a risk, in Dr. Niblett’s view, that Europe will respond to the Eurozone crisis by fracturing into rival “clubs” of small and large or debt-restructuring and creditor nation-states.  But the European nations, especially those currently participating in the Eurozone, have untapped capacities for growth:

• Educated youth
• Underemployed female laborers
• Outstanding higher educational institutions
• Pent-up small- and medium-enterprise markets
• Potential for growth in the service sector labor market
• Room for more tightly integrating and rationalizing the region’s energy market.

Those interested in further detail and analysis are invited to visit the work and productivity at:

The Europe Center, at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies: http://tec.fsi.stanford.edu

Chatham House, at the Royal Institute for International Studies: http://www.chathamhouse.org/

Speaker bio:

Robin Niblett became the Director of Chatham House (the Royal Institute of International
Affairs) in January 2007. Before joining Chatham House, from 2001 to 2006, Dr. Niblett
was the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Washington based
Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS). During his last two years at CSIS, he
also served as Director of the CSIS Europe Program and its Initiative for a Renewed
Transatlantic Partnership.

Most recently Dr. Niblett is the author of the Chatham House Report Playing to its
Strengths: Rethinking the UK’s Role in a Changing World (Chatham House, 2010) and
Ready to Lead? Rethinking America’s Role in a Changed World (Chatham House,
2009), and editor and contributing author to America and a Changed World: A Question
of Leadership (Chatham House/Wiley-Blackwell, 2010). He is also the author or
contributor to a number of CSIS reports on transatlantic relations and is contributing
author and co-editor with William Wallace of the book Rethinking European Order
(Palgrave, 2001). Dr Niblett is a frequent panellist at conferences on transatlantic
relations. He has testified on a number of occasions to the House of Commons Defence
Select Committee and Foreign Affairs Committee as well as US Senate and House
Committees on European Affairs.

Dr Niblett is a Non-Executive Director of Fidelity European Values Investment Trust. He
is a Council member of the Overseas Development Institute, a member of the World
Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Global Institutional Governance and the
Chairman of the World Economic Forum's Global Agenda Council on Europe.

He received his BA in Modern Languages and MPhil and DPhil from New College,
Oxford.

Presentation of Timothy Garton Ash's draft of editorial content for Freespeechdebate.com, a global, multilingual website for the discussion of free speech in the age of mass migration and the Internet.