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This article examines the role of the European parliament (EP) in providing ideational alternatives to austerity in the context of the Eurozone crisis and the COVID-19 crisis. Despite the EP's limited formal role in EU economic governance, it is a key site for democratic debate and contestation. Analyzing EP debates about austerity allows us to understand the possibilities and limitations for ideational change at the EU level from the perspective of supranational party politics. Through a longitudinal analysis (2012–2021) of EP resolutions on the European Commission's Annual Growth Surveys, the article asks how ideational battles around austerity have unfolded between the EP's political groups and what factors have shaped the EP's positions. Theoretically, the article draws on the literature on ideational political economy and discoursive institutionalism. The article argues that instead of providing alternatives, the EP and its Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs have contributed to the ideational hold of austerity due to the weakness of the alternatives of the center-left and their compatibility with austerity. Party-political and institutional factors, such as broad left/right compromises and a strict division of labor between the EP's committees, further constrain ideational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the pandemic, the EU has responded to the threat of a euro crisis flare-up by deactivating its fiscal framework and establishing the Recovery and Resilience Facility, drawing on joint European bonds to finance national investments. This paper seeks to explain these modifications to fiscal governance and asks whether they are an indication of European austerity making way for an alternative fiscal paradigm. Based on a neo-Gramscian approach, it discusses the policies as parts of competing political projects that are promoted or hindered by certain framework conditions. The paper undertakes a structured comparison of these framework conditions during the euro crisis and the current crisis. It finds that geoeconomic competition increases the demand for a more active fiscal policy, while political preferences and structural relations remained remarkably stable. As the current crisis is marked by high inflation, economic conditions are adverse to a fiscally expansive agenda. The findings do not suggest a lasting reorientation of European fiscal governance. Instead, the measures taken during the pandemic are interpreted as expressions of 'passive revolution' in which the EMU adapts elements of a fiscal integrative agenda to provide necessary fixes to its economic order while keeping its underlying fiscally restrictive features intact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IMF's 2010 Troika lending programme with Greece was unprecedented due to the IMF's controversial internal rule changes, the programme's pivotal effects on eurozone crisis policies and the effect of austerity concepts on Greece. We aim to explain conclusively why the IMF lent to Greece without restructuring, as previous explanations have crucial gaps. We operationalise Ben Clift's theory of IMF behaviour in process-tracing, analysing programme-related text sources. Our exercise is novel as Clift does not aim to explain individual programmes, while the theory warrants further testing. According to our causal mechanism, the IMF used two key analytical lenses formed via bricolage, fiscal space and nonlinear multiple equilibria processes (NLMEP), to analyse the programme context and formulate the programme design. While we find our mechanism too narrow to explain the programme design, our results regarding the role of NLMEP and fiscal space within IMF programme-time economic analysis support the importance of financial contagion as a motivator for monetarily significant IMF participation and why the IMF adhered to austerity despite risking debt stabilisation. However, it seems limitedly useful to assume coherent ideational drivers behind the precise programme design: instead, accepting the key role of ad hoc judgement depicts IMF behaviour accurately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic recessions have often led to stronger citizen activism. This article assesses the relationship between the economy and protest in 2014, 6 years after the global financial crisis took place, a long-enough period for countries to have improved their economic situation and for people's interpretations of the economy to be more optimistic. Does the economy still matter to explain protest if it is not as salient any longer? This research employs data for available European Union member states from the 2006, 2008, and 2014 European Social Survey to test the importance of national-level objective economic indicators as well as individual-level evaluations of financial well-being. Findings from the research suggest that objective economic predictors are more relevant to understand protest in 2014 than before the crisis. Economic resources remain more important for the prediction of protest than deprivation views, with the exception of unemployment. Even at times of partial economic recovery, the state of the economy helps explain increased levels of political protest across Europe well after 2008. The link between the economy and confrontational activism before and after the economic recession looks in the end very similar and a full economic recovery in the future can lead to even more protest activism in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article shows how the main regionalist parties in Scotland and Wales—the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru—have engaged with a populist discourse in the wake of the Great Recession. Based on a qualitative analysis of party manifestos and party-elite interviews, the article shows that the two parties have adopted a left-wing populist discourse, based on a critique of austerity policies. In this way, albeit from distinctively regionalist perspective, they performed roles very similar to that of other contemporary left-wing populist parties, particularly in Southern Europe. The Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru were able to frame their anti-austerity stances within a populist discourse because all three traditional British parties shared a preference for pro-austerity economic policies. Therefore, in Laclau’s terms, the two ‘Celtic’ parties’ attack on austerity constituted an open challenge to the hegemonic discourse of the British ‘power bloc’. Analogous to the expansion of a right-wing anti-establishment protest in British politics (monopolized by the UKIP), the two parties (particularly the Scottish one) capitalized on the expansion of a left-wing populist area. This strategy has lately become less viable because Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party broke with the pro-austerity consensus among British elites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the role of gender in the generation of coherence and legitimacy of austerity, as applied in the European Union. It examines the rhetorical defences of austerity and unpacks the gendered nature of the reforms that austerity programmes required. The absence of gender-sensitive analysis in policy making is an absence that is essential to both the coherence and the legitimacy of austerity. The findings from this discourse analysis are a direct contribution to the project of understanding austerity as an ideological and political phenomenon. This project has, thus far, excluded such considerations. This analysis shows the, often contradictory, roles that gender plays in the discourse of austerity, highlighting the need for research that appreciates the need for such nuances. It also shows how gender plays a role in the key economic arguments for austerity, in particular that of the fiscal multiplier and those surrounding labour market reforms. As austerity in the European Union is normalised and adjusted in coming years, these findings will continue to be relevant until the debates over austerity take gender seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social movements in the wake of the financial crisis have shifted from the counter-summits and world social forums of the global justice movement to the camps of the anti-austerity mobilizations, and from a clear focus on building 'another Europe' to more domestically embedded issues. Among other reasons, this turn away from the EU can be linked to contracting political opportunities for social justice movements at the European level. This article addresses the closure of opportunities at the EU level for the work of social movement groups campaigning on specific EU policies. We reflect on the complexity of the EU's political opportunity structure prior to the financial crisis, before examining changes to the EU's architecture effected through responses to the crises and outlining arguments on how EU-level opportunities around socio-economic issues in particular have shrunk as a result. We then show how the perception of other political opportunities at the EU level is affected by the austerity response by drawing on campaigns that sought to exploit new opportunities included in the Lisbon Treaty and designed to increase citizens' input. Opportunities introduced by changes made in the Lisbon Treaty are perceived through the prism of contracted opportunities flowing from power shifts caused by the response to the financial crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Going beyond the local and national scopes of anti-austerity mobilizations, we contribute to this special issue by focusing on counter-hegemonic protest at the pan-European level. In the context of the current austerity regimes, this emerging and precarious social formation enacts resistance against neoliberal hegemony and invokes the re-construction of European institutional arrangements and policy from below in explicit opposition to the dominance of austerity. We employ a neo-Gramscian approach complemented by framing theory to scrutinize the development of a pan-European counter-hegemonic bloc, focusing empirically on two key current pan-European initiatives: the Alter Summit platform and the Blockupy alliance. Our analysis unravels the process by which different progressive social movement frames become increasingly aligned through reference to an anti-austerity master frame with three key elements: (a) the rejection of austerity measures, (b) coordinated transnational solidarity, and (c) the defense of democracy and popular sovereignty. This master frame has the potential of supporting stronger pan-European counter-hegemonic mobilization and thereby facilitating a counter-hegemonic bloc opposing neoliberal hegemony. However, our analysis also reveals three challenges for our counter-hegemonic initiatives. First, concrete institutional alternatives are still weakly elaborated and articulated, which gives the force of rejection of the austerity master frame little direction and testifies to deeper structural disagreement within anti-austerity movements. Second, insofar as concrete institutional counter-proposals are made, they still remain entrenched in national frameworks. And, third, counter-hegemonic movements aspiring to be truly pan-European need to reconcile conflicting tendencies between those who want to re-found and those who want to exit from the European integration project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship on the global financial crisis and its geographical underpinnings has highlighted its macro-economic causes and variegated effects in Europe and beyond. Drawing on the case of Greece, this paper contends that these discussions fall short in uncovering the social impact of the European crisis and austerity politics introduced since 2010. In adding to debates that call for nuanced approached to crises, through the very forms and means people and communities contest and subvert these 'from below', the paper discusses solidarity, its meaning and practices, in constructing resistance to austerity and grassroots creativity. In particular, it shows how solidarity initiatives and networks have acted as survival means in the face of a social reproduction crisis for vulnerable social groups and, at the same time, opened up spaces for political struggle against austerity to unfold. Furthermore, it interrogates the formation of a social/solidarity economy as an alternative platform for re-instituting socio-economic relations in an era of austerity. Finally, through reflecting upon the role of the solidarity movement, the paper critically assesses their potential in foregrounding a political project of social transformation, in- the- making and still at stake. The article draws on engaged ethnographic research, conducted in Athens, Greece, between 2012 and 2013. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the different forms of disruptive subjectivity that have developed in the context of the post-2008 global and European crises. The article traces developments both before and after 2008, with a specific focus on events in Spain and the UK. These country contexts are chosen due to their considerable differences in terms of the impact that the crisis had; yet we witness notable similarities with regard to the instances of refusal and resistance observed, especially in terms of the motives held and forms adopted, albeit with differences in scale. The paper presents the results of qualitative research, including 65 in-depth interviews, to highlight the way in which disaffection, the search for voice, and the threat of withdrawal from relations of exploitation have each become problematic as means of dissent following 2008. As a result, we have seen a merging of these more conventional forms of dissent with a number of more radical prefigurative practices that had been developing prior to 2008. As a result, the stagnation of neoliberal capitalism from 2008 onwards has witnessed the development of a new form of pragmatically prefigurative disruptive subjectivity, responsible for some of the more important and interesting political developments in contemporary advanced industrial democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes comparative politics and comparative political economy literature on consolidation of austerity and neoliberalism in Europe after the economic crises that started in 2007.

Research on unpopular policies such as welfare-state cutbacks has so far shied away from an in-depth study of the complex interrelations between the occurrence and timing of austerity measures and the evolution of popular support. This study aims to take a first step into this field by means of a systematic comparison between three governments that enacted a number of politically risky policies that touched on the welfare state during the financial and economic crisis: the cabinets of Spain led by Rajoy, of the United Kingdom with Prime Minister Cameron and of Ireland led by Kenny. We add to the existing literature by (i) examining the timing and the occurrence of austerity measures and by (ii) investigating the link between these policies and government popularity measured by opinion polls. Our analysis supports the idea of a strategic timing of harsh retrenchment policies in terms of front-loading policies. Moreover, we find clear evidence for a honeymoon period during which government popularity seems to be immune to even very tough cutbacks. Finally, we find that strategic timing is less important under conditions in which the clarity of responsibility is blurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article makes a comparative analysis of the trajectories of welfare change in Italy and Spain since the outbreak of the financial crisis. We look at the differences in the types of institutional design to study of welfare reform in these two countries and assess how recent changes have affected welfare state institutions. The article also assesses the level of EU involvement not only through formal instruments around the European Semester, but also by means of agreements with the Troika and the European Central Bank. For this part of the analysis three sets of documents have been used: Commission Recommendations and Council Decisions in relation to Excessive Deficit Procedures; Commission country-specific recommendations based on Stability or Convergence Programmes; and Policy Measures to boost growth and jobs (National Reform Programmes). These documents allow an analysis of the contents of formal adjustment pressures. Other documents and sources (including newspaper articles) have also been analysed in order to look at the role of conditionality and 'backroom' diplomacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Greece was the first European Monetary Union (EMU) country to sign a Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies (MEFP) with the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB) in order to secure financial assistance and prevent a total collapse of its economy following the severe international economic crisis. The MEFP (2010) and the more detailed Memorandum of Understanding on Specific Economic Policy Conditionality (SEPC) (2010) offered elaborate steps of structural reforms that have affected all public services in Greece. The lack of major results and the stickiness of the 'Greek problem' have made Greece a unique case study for evaluating both the recipe of the international lenders and the domestic capacity for reform. A historical institutionalist approach and the concept of 'policy paradigm' are combined here in order to evaluate what the conditions for a major administrative reform in time of crisis are. The article focuses on the specific attempt to reform public administration during the Papandreou government in order to analyse the importance of both time and type of change in the success of a major reform programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blyth shows convincingly that 'Austerity does not work'. But he seems to imply that financial repression, higher taxes and monetary expansion would. Are they really compatible, however? Financial repression requires growth, real or nominal. Real growth is widely believed to require lower, not higher taxes. Nominal growth, that is inflation, is difficult to contain as well as to bring about, given trade union weakness and widespread dependence on fixed transfer incomes. Monetary expansion, finally, may simply add to general indebtedness, as it has since the late 1970s when real growth embarked on a long-term decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea is a compelling analysis of the most pressing issues of the post-financial crisis world. Blyth shows with great lucidity just how a European banking crisis was turned into a eurozone sovereign debt crisis, and engages with a superb comparative breadth on the implications of this for understanding the political choices made by governments in the developed world over the past few years. Blyth's account of intellectual genealogy of present austerity policies is in places less persuasive. As Blyth argues, there has been much narrative fiction about the sovereign debt crisis, but there is also more to that crisis than ideological construction. If the generalisations about the 'need' for austerity are untenable as Blyth shows, so are some of his claims about the origins and political responses to the financial crisis [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this reply to Peck, Jabko, Thompson and Streek I seek to highlight the importance of the idea of austerity as driving policy rather than the more material factors that they stress. In particular, I question whether political opportunism, bond market demands for austerity or the greater crisis of growth of the Western economies are really driving events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On conversation with Mark Blyth's Austerity, the commentary explores the distinctive dynamics of austerity politics in the United States. The object of a tacit bipartisan consensus, 'austerity' has not been named in the same way as Europe, although its material effects (mostly devolved to the state and local levels) have nevertheless been far-reaching. More generically, austerity can be seen as a particular moment in the historical advance of neoliberalization: it perpetuates the leeching of the social state and redoubles the attack on labor unions, systemic goals for the neoliberal project, but it does so in the context of historically and geographically specific conjunctures. The politics of this process may be brutal, but they are still open. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mark Blyth's book makes a very compelling case that austerity is a 'dangerous idea'. Instead of focusing on the book's central argument, this article reflects on why austerity policies keep coming back. It argues that the power of austerity is ideological in a complementary yet somewhat broader sense than envisioned in the book. Austerity is not only a conservative way of thinking, or 'blueprint', it is also an excuse for decision makers to avoid thinking, and it typically aims at many goals, not all of them politically conservative. The eurozone crisis is offered as an illustration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]