The End of Capitalism
Editor’s Note ~ Volume 12 / Spring 2009
Dear Readers,
The process of putting together this year’s Journal was overtaken by events in the international financial markets. In the year which marks the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, our attention was directed away from an analysis of the events of the last two decades and to the carnage which unfolded on trading floors and quickly spread to high streets and homes around the world. We felt that this crisis raised powerful questions which we have sought to address in this twelfth issue of the Bologna Center Journal of International Affairs. With government intervention on the rise, we wondered whether events would herald a move away from laissez-faire capitalism. We wanted to see whether there was a consensus around the question of where the system which was assumed victorious twenty short years ago would turn. Would the system now move toward a more ethical variant? Or is Capitalism now finished and discredited?
This edition of the Journal brings together a series of articles that seek to examine these issues. Starting with a piece by SAIS professor and former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski on the opportunities offered by the election of Barack Obama, we follow with a European perspective on the systemic roots of the financial crisis in an interview with former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard. We then move to an examination of the question of the capitalist system itself, with a pair of articles which look at the potential for a re-fashioning of the Financial services sector and the concepts of laissez-faire and globalization. Looking to specific instances, we have three articles in which the impact of the crisis is examined in the regional contexts of the European Union, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The role of government intervention in halting the growth of democracy is next explored, before the Journal closes with a paper that looks at the way in which comparative cultural economics can be harnessed to explore the development of path dependencies and anti-capitalist behavior.
Given the speed with which events have unfolded, and the directions in which international policy seems to be moving , we are more convinced of the need for the exploration of the arguments contained within this Journal. I would like to thank the Journal staff, the Bologna Center faculty, and the authors for making this possible.
Ben Welch
Editor-in-Chief
April 2009
