Word: consensus
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...strongest impulse in German politics is to avoid big changes, to hold the country steady as she goes. The electoral system supports such an impulse by producing consensus-driven coalition governments. It's pretty safe to assume that whatever coalition emerges from the election, it will not include Die Linke, a hard-left party formed by Western socialists and remnants of the G.D.R. communists. But Die Linke's likely decent performance in the eastern states also speaks to promise unfulfilled. Ossis - Easterners - vote differently from Wessis - Westerners - because they still perceive their interests as being different. Ossis earn less, produce...
Getting E.U. endorsement presents a herculean challenge because the Union makes decisions on a consensus basis that effectively gives any one of its 27 member states a veto. And one senior European diplomat points out that some E.U. member states are domestically constrained from imposing sanctions except those that have been authorized by U.N. resolutions. That means that a Russian or Chinese veto of new sanctions measures at the Security Council could actually prevent Germany from signing on. And Russia is hardly looking flexible. Foreign Minister Lavrov reiterated Russia's opposition to new sanctions Sept. 17, even after...
...Even though there is now a wide public consensus that a universal health-insurance bill should pass, there seems to be little faith in the ability of Washington to be the vehicle of change. We can attribute much of this to two phenomena: classic, philosophical mistrust in the government and the financial firepower of special-interest lobbies...
...modus vivendi as they establish themselves in the Indian Ocean." But few can divine what that may look like. Part of the problem is that despite booming trade between India and China, there is little political understanding between their governments. "They engage very superficially," says Pant. "There's rarely consensus on any of the fundamental issues." Comparisons have even been made linking India and China's current rapport to the ill-fated understandings between the U.S. and Japan in the early 20th century. Though in a vastly different context, the two countries, says Pant, are clandestinely probing and feeling...
...nation in decline, marooned in costly adventures abroad and led by an Obama Administration that is less willing to confront the aggressive posturing of a rising giant like China. It would be better, says Bhaskar, for India and China to slowly forge a constructive pan-Asian consensus and do away with the "post-colonial baggage" that animates the current Sino-Indian border dispute. But as talk of a new Asian "Great Game" gains favor, history and geography may not be so easy to overcome...