José Ignacio Torreblanca

If democracy consists in the recognition and organization of individual liberty, how can we justify the portrayal of democratic life as a "cultural war?"

If the Dutch declare the European social model defunct, what can we expect in politically hobbled, closed societies like ours?

All lives have the same value, but the political and legal consequences of the use of chemical weapons have to be different

Three numbers that help us understand our present and think about our future as Europeans

Old Europe remains stuck in the mud, entangled in its governance of the euro, with an unfavorable demography

Until Snowden we lived in the illusion that the social networks gave us unlimited capacity for action

Russian supremo feels betrayed by a middle class he sees as ungrateful for his prosperous reign

Jean Monnet, the founding father of European integration, was convinced that integration had to begin with the economy, not politics

If the 6.2 million unemployed Spaniards decided to set up their own state, there would be no less than 11 states dwarfed by this hypothetical Republic of the Dole

Hispano-German relations have plunged into an abyss of distrust, and a crossfire of negative perceptions

The crisis has relegated the Foreign Ministry to a back seat in favor of Economy and Finance, whose decisions are now the ones that count internationally

When the victims were foreigners, drones killing faraway terror suspects bothered no one in Washington

Even if he can rule, Bersani will be pincered by Grillo's movement on one side, and the markets and Brussels on the other

Institutions are not only a means or a solution, but can often become a problem of the first order

Insensibility, ignorance, disconnection - it's as if Cameron's Cabinet were made of up journalists from the tabloid newspaper The Sun

There are crises that no one sees coming, but Mali was not one of these

If the UK were to make an exit, the Union would be a poorer one

To just what extent Bo's fall will mean the abandonment of his Chongqing experiment in favor of other models, is hard to say

With cutbacks and austerity in every state, would it not make more sense to freeze or even reduce the EU budget, instead of raising it to 1.09 trillion?

The right’s aversion to the state coincided with the left’s discovery of the market as an instrument for opportunities and social progress

Monetary union would be a huge stride toward integration, but it cannot be carried out without voters’ consent

It is naïve to think that the economic benefits of globalization alone are enough to ensure peace between states

With the passage of time, class conflicts have been blurred, ideologies eroded, and political parties have emerged that political scientists call catch-all parties

A lack of public opinion in Arab countries may be hurting the Syrian cause

The Barclays affair shows how financial institutions prefer to make easy money by bending the rules

Much of the mess we are in is due to dealing with problems as we always have: too little, too late