Alexandre Afonso

Alexandre Afonso

Leiden University

Author: alexandre afonso

  • Syriza shows the failure of ‘cartel politics’

    As expected, the radical left party Syriza was the big winner of the Greek elections, coming only two seats short of an absolute majority in parliament. But it’s unclear if new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will be able to effectively pursue his anti-austerity agenda and renegotiate the terms of the Greek bailout with creditors — and he will… Read.

  • Charlie Hebdo: In praise of outrage

    The kind of humour practiced by Charlie Hebdo has no equivalent in the English-speaking world. They did not care if its satire offended governments, the pope, the clergy, Islam, the police or the army. While it has received international attention for its satire of Islam and religious extremism, nobody has been spared by its vitriolic humour.… Read.

  • On the top-down governance structure of British universities

    My university has decided to rebrand itself as “King’s London”, abandoning the name it has sported since 1828/. According to an email sent by the principal Ed Byrne, market research “revealed that our current name was causing considerable confusion: is King’s a residential college, is it an academic college akin to the colleges of Oxbridge,… Read.

  • A Theory of (British) University Business Cycles

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    Put simply, the theory of political business cycles goes like this: in the run up to elections, governments increase public spending or/and lower interest rates (if they can control them) in order to stimulate the economy and reduce unemployment. They supply voters with more goods or cheap credit as a way to make them happy… Read.

  • The Big European Political Party Network

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    A new European Parliament has been sworn in on July 1st, with a greater number of populist Eurosceptic MEPs than ever before. Out of the 751 seats in the European Parliament, 48 are now held by the Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy group, uniting essentially Nigel Farage’s UKIP and Beppe Grillo’s Movimento Cinque Stelle,… Read.

  • A modest proposal to curtail the political influence of the elderly

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    Modern political economies are strongly skewed towards the interests of older people. In the United states, per capita spending on the old via pensions or medicare stood at $26’000, while spending on the young via child benefits or other programs was at less than $12’000 (data for the graph below from here). Pensions in particular… Read.

  • What the Piketty-Financial Times Affair says about journalism and academia

    Thomas Piketty has issued a response to the FT’s criticism claiming that bad computations and flawed estimates undermined the overall thesis of his book, namely that wealth concentration had increased. I have read the 10-page letter by Piketty and found it extremely convincing. Basically, he doesn’t give an inch, explaining each and every point that… Read.

  • The man who is wrong about everything, and especially the EU

    Reading the columns by Conservative eurosceptic MEP Daniel Hannan in the Telegraph is a somewhat masochistic pleasure: I suppose the reason why I do it is that I have become fascinated by the degree to which I systematically disagree with absolutely everything he says and advocates. Daniel Hannan is a champion of British free-market conservative chauvinism, which is… Read.

  • The far right vote in the European elections: It’s not the economy, stupid

    In the European elections yesterday, the far right has done extremely well in the UK, in France, Austria and Denmark (four fairly affluent Northern countries) while – Greece set aside – it has stayed non-existent in the countries most severely hit by the crisis, Portugal and Spain. Golden Dawn in Greece is the exception, but… Read.

  • A modest proposal to improve the efficiency of assessment in universities

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    Essay writing and assessment is a drag. For academics, it eats out an awful lot of time which could be devoted to research or other productive activities counting for tenure. For students, writing essays requires a great deal of investment and time which could be more productively spent on facebook or other things that the… Read.