AGI

Society, Culture & Politics

The AGI Society, Culture & Politics Program focuses on crucial topics within the German-American dialogue, including: demographic change, migration/integration, and aging societies; electoral politics at the national, state, and European levels, and comparative analysis of Germany and the United States; diversity within Germany, Europe, and the United States; the politics of collective memory and identity, Holocaust remembrance and reconciliation, and shifting conceptions of national identity that shape perspectives and policy responses.
Reset

Germany’s Alternatives

There is a new metric in Germany to measure its “normalization.” Just like many of its neighbors, Germany now has a political movement forming as a backlash against the euro. …

Croatia on the Verge of Joining the European Union: Outlook after the release of the latest EU monitoring report

On March 26th, the European Commission released its last monitoring report on Croatia, which concludes that the country is ready to join the EU in July 2013. This will, in …

Leadership and Responsibilities: Changing Parameters in German-American Relations

In 1989—on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany—President George Herbert Walker Bush asked Germany to be a partner in leadership with the United States. …

Finding the Elevator Door

The debates over the concept of a just society bring differing approaches to freedom, liberty, fairness, and the role of the state and the responsibilities of the individual. The argument …

Listening to Legacies

This week, millions of Germans watched a new made for television series called “Our Mothers, Our Fathers” (Unsere Mütter, Unsere Väter). The series presents the events of the Second World …

Napolitano’s Plan

At age 87, the President of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, is getting ready to guide Italian politics out of the deep hole it has sunk into. He will need to gather …

Papal Purposes

As the College of Cardinals gathered in Rome this week to choose—for the first time in 600 years—one pope to replace another who is still living, I reflected on two …

Government – Italian Style

While there is nothing better than watching Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni explain marriage Italian style, watching government styles is a bit more challenging. A recent editorial in The Washington …

The Debate over Betreuungsgeld

Viewed narrowly, the passage of Betreuungsgeld demonstrated the power of a small but determined party in a coalition government; it is a bit harder to determine its meaning for German family policy more generally. Considering Germany’s belated commitment to making adequate numbers of child care places available, does Betreuungsgeld simply represent the dying gasp of a deeply conservative strand of German family policy, one that has sought to maintain a housewife role for women since the early days of the Federal Republic?

Italy’s Electoral Chaos

The Italian elections have  resulted in gridlock. With polls increasingly painting a picture of utter confusion, and no obvious majority, Italian commentators displayed growing incredulity.  Many international observers are already …

Italian Election Scenarios

“If Italians want to vote for Silvio Berlusconi, the problem is not Berlusconi, it’s Italians.” Those few words uttered by Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti during a radio interview just …

Learning Lessons from a Decade

Sitting in the great hall of the Bayerische Hof during the recent Munich Security Conference, I found myself drifting back a decade to February of 2003 and the time I …