Does Economic and Political Integration Undermine Representative Democracy?

2020 ◽  
pp. 636-654
Author(s):  
Jorge M. Fernandes ◽  
Pedro C. Magalhães
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Citizen Preferences ◽  
Actual Policy

The Great Recession and the Eurozone crisis are frequently treated as having led to a breakdown in democratic representation in Europe, as deeply constrained governments became unable to translate the preferences of citizenry into actual policy. However, after reviewing the available evidence, we find that the crisis seems to have contributed to increasing both the salience of economic policy issues and the ideological differentiation around them, amongst both parties and voters. Furthermore, the composition of governments remained relevant for the policy responses to the crisis, even among those countries that were most deeply affected. To be sure, the picture regarding the extent to which governments remained responsive to changing citizen preferences remains very incomplete. However, the existing evidence warns against underestimating the resilience of the mechanisms that contribute to keep re-election-minded officials in line with the preferences of citizens, even in what concerns supranational policymaking.

Economic Policy: The Basics You’ve Got to Get Right

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo M. Giugale
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
The Great Recession

Why do governments struggle to prop up the world’s economy? “Out of ammo,” “helicopter money,” “monetary impotence,” “infrastructure push,” “savings glut.” These are the kind of strange handles economists use when debating why the world’s economy has been stuck since the great recession of 2008–2009...

scholarly journals Deleveraging and Monetary Policy: Japan Since the 1990s and the United States Since 2007

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 177-202 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kazuo Ueda
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Monetary Policy ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
Federal Reserve ◽  
The United States ◽  
Federal Funds ◽  
Federal Funds Rate ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
The U.S

As the U.S. economy works through a sluggish recovery several years after the Great Recession technically came to an end in June 2009, it can only look with horror toward Japan's experience of two decades of stagnant growth since the early 1990s. In contrast to Japan, U.S. policy authorities responded to the financial crisis since 2007 more quickly. Surely, they learned from Japan's experience. I will begin by describing how Japan's economic situation unfolded in the early 1990s and offering some comparisons with how the Great Recession unfolded in the U.S. economy. I then turn to the Bank of Japan's policy responses to the crisis and again offer some comparisons to the Federal Reserve. I will discuss the use of both the conventional interest rate tool—the federal funds rate in the United States, and the “call rate” in Japan—and nonconventional measures of monetary policy and consider their effectiveness in the context of the rest of the financial system.

scholarly journals Moving Beyond the Great Recession: Innovative Programmatic and Policy Responses to Poverty

2015 ◽  
Vol 23 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 311-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Patterson ◽  
Robert Silverman ◽  
Anna Maria Santiago
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Policy Responses

The Impact of the Great Recession on Child Poverty in Greece

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manos Matsaganis
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Professional Associations ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
The Status ◽  
Effects On Children ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
The Impact

This chapter discusses the impact of the crisis (and of policy responses) on children in Greece. The Great Recession has been far more painful and protracted in that country than elsewhere. While some of its effects on children will take years to unfold, others are visible already. The very fact that the economic crisis was allowed to become a social emergency in the first place implies that policy responses failed to rise to the occasion. The reasons for that failure are to be found in the ‘politics of welfare retrenchment’. Defenders of the status quo, from trade unions to professional associations with good connections to the political establishment, have been relatively successful in resisting austerity cuts. As a result, the burden of fiscal consolidation has fallen on less powerful categories, leaving little space for policies aimed at protecting the real victims of the recession: the unemployed and the poor.

scholarly journals Legitimacy and the Paradox of Technocratic Government in Newer European Democracies: The Fischer Administration in the Czech Republic Revisited

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-100 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seán Hanley
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Great Recession ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
Weak Basis ◽  
Academic Interest ◽  
The Czech Republic ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Mass Publics

The creation of technocratic caretaker governments in several European countries in the wake of the Great Recession (2008–2009) and the Eurozone crisis led to renewed academic interest in such administrations. Although such governments are often assumed to be illegitimate and democratically dysfunctional, there has been little empirical consideration of if and how they legitimate themselves to mass publics. This question is particularly acute given that, empirically, caretaker technocrat-led administrations have been clustered in newer, more crisis-prone democracies in Southern and Eastern Europe where high levels of state exploitation by parties suggest a weak basis for any government claiming technocratic impartiality. This article uses Michael Saward’s “representative claims” framework to re-examine the case of one of Europe’s longer-lasting and most popular technocratic administrations, the 2009–2010 Fischer government in the Czech Republic. The article maps representative claims made for Fischer and his government, as well as counterclaims. Claims drew on the electoral mandate of sponsoring parties, the government’s claimed technocratic neutrality, and on Fischer’s “mirroring” of the values and lifestyle of ordinary Czechs (echoing some populist framings of politics). The article argues that the Fischer government benefited from multiple overlapping representative claims, but notes the need for robust methodology to assess the reception claims by their intended constituency. It concludes by considering the implications of actors’ ability to combine populist and technocratic claims, noting similarities in technocratic governments and some types of anti-establishment party.

scholarly journals Jingle bells and struggling GIPS: Comparing the Baltic and the southern euro zone’s crisis experience using the varieties of capitalism framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 65 (s1) ◽  
pp. 39-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vytautas Kuokštis
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Varieties Of Capitalism ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
Subsequent Recovery ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Baltic Countries ◽  
Macroeconomic Imbalances ◽  
Run Up ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
Crisis Responses

This article compares the experience of the Baltic countries and the eurozone’s southern members, the GIPS (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain), in terms of the run-up to the Great Recession and the eurozone crisis, responses during the downturn, and the subsequent recovery (or lack thereof). It discusses numerous apparent similarities in terms of the build-up of macroeconomic vulnerabilities and the content of anti-crisis strategies pursued as well as the substantially different results of these policies. This article applies the VoC (Varieties of Capitalism) approach. To this end, it presents theoretical expectations regarding different varieties’ vulnerability to macroeconomic imbalances, preferences regarding anti-crisis policy as well as the likely outcome of the internal devaluation strategy. The article finds the VoC approach largely useful, although it is more helpful in accounting for the nature of reaction to the crisis and the outcomes of anti-crisis policy, while less so in explaining the initial accumulation of vulnerabilities.

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