The international economic crisis: The end/last of political autonomy in Europe?

- The international economic and financial crisis has taken up residence in our time, how long it will last is unforeseeable and, above all, there is tremendous uncertainly regarding what the world will look like the day after, in what way a number of things will have changed, and I am not referring only to the economy.

- What is in play is a potential revision not only of one social service or another, or one revision or another of the economic costs based on the Social State. What is in play, in an unequal way--naturally this can vary from one country to another--is the relationship between society and politics as we have come to know it in the last five decades.

- A serious phenomenon has been developing concurrently: the growing disaffection of the citizenry toward politics, the diffuse culture of the abyss between "us" (citizens) and "them" (politicians), with the additives "they're all the same", based on well-founded arguments derived from the proliferation of cases of corruption, patronage, and revolving door policies among the elites, etc.

- How will the relationship between society and politics change, how will social interests be represented, and the cleavages that fragment all societies? The culture of fatalism is another outcome of the product known as the crisis. Is it here to stay? This would mean the end of the autonomy of politics as a form of collective action.

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