Irresponsible Bystanders: Reflections on the Collective Origins of War

A lecture by Wolfgang Streeck discussing the recent conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine, through an analysis of fundamental global asymmetries of power within the international system. He argues that powerful nations have been "irresponsible bystanders": they have reneged on duties within the United Nations Charter by fostering conditions that generate war and failing to support actions to end violence.

Wolfgang Streeck studied sociology in Frankfurt am Main and at Columbia University. He received his Habilitation from the University of Bielefeld in 1986. From 1988 to 1995 he was Professor of Sociology and Industrial Relations at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and from 1995 to 2014 Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. His research areas are comparative political economy and institutional change in capitalist economies and societies. His books include Democracy at Work: Contract, Status and Post-Industrial Justice (with Ruth Dukes), Cambridge: Polity Press, 2022; How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System, London and New York: Verso Books, 2016; Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, London and New York: Verso Books, 2014; Re-Forming Capitalism: Institutional Change in the German Political Economy, Oxford University Press, 2009.