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AbstractPolitical economists have long recognized the power of ideas to influence economic adjustment by shaping public policy and fostering inter-firm coordination. This article extends this argument, demonstrating how ideas can have a direct and unmediated impact on economic restructuring. More specifically, it identifies discursive cooperation, or collective storytelling, as a distinct logic of collective action, separate from policy concertation and inter-firm coordination. Examining twenty first century Iceland, this article illustrates how shared narratives accelerated the country’s movement into financial services and tourism by facilitating the diffusion of new business models and attracting external resources. Absent inter-firm coordination, policy concertation, or supportive public policies, however, stakeholders struggled to invest in public goods. Instead of incremental upmarket movement, Iceland was characterized by volatile boom-bust dynamics. In illustrating the transformative power of storytelling in small open economies, this article simultaneously highlights the perils of relying on discursive cooperation alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fourth industrial revolution has become a prominent concept and imminent technological change a major issue. Facets are everyone's concern but currently no one's ultimate responsibility (perhaps a little like financial stability before the global financial crisis). In this paper, we argue that the future is being shaped now by the way the fourth industrial revolution is being positioned. Whilst no one has set out to argue for or defend technological determinism, anxiety combined with passivity and complacency are being produced in the context of a quasi-determinism. The contingent quantification of the future with regard to the potential for job displacement provides an influential source of authority for this position. A background narrative of 'the future is coming, so you better get used to it' is being disseminated. This favours a capitalism that may 'deny work to the many' perspective rather than a more fundamental rethink that encompasses change that may liberate the many from work. This, in turn, positions workers and responsibility for future employment, reducing the urgency of calls for wider societal preparation. Public understanding and policy are thus affected and along with them the future of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we understand the European Union's responses to the euro area financial crisis? This contribution examines this question through a historical institutionalist (HI) lens. First it reviews the design of existing institutions. With the help of HI it examines what challenges the institutional design posed on the European Union (EU) when the crisis hit. Next, the responses to the crisis by member state leaders and by EU-level actors are reviewed. An analysis is made of selected new EU institutions created to address the crisis: the European Financial Stability Facility; the European Stability Mechanism; the Six-Pack and Two-Pack; the European Semester; and the Fiscal Compact. Four ideal types – ‘displacement’, ‘layering’, ‘drift’ and ‘conversion’ – are examined and found not to fit well. In some cases institutions were ‘layered’ on top of existing institutions. Perhaps an amendment could be made by offering the ideal type ‘copying’ in those cases where new institutions that borrow from earlier institutions. Although no complex problem can be truly understood by looking at it through one single theoretical lens, this contribution argues that a large of part of the problems that emerged, and the solutions adopted, can be understood by examining it through an HI lens. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Under which conditions does the open method of co-ordination match the standards for demoi-cracy? To answer this question, we need some explicit standards about demoi-cracy. In fact, open co-ordination serves three different but interrelated purposes in European Union policy: to facilitate convergence; to support learning processes; and to encourage exploration of policy innovation. By intersecting standards and purposes, we find open co-ordination is neither inherently ‘good’ nor ‘bad’ for demoi-cracy, as it depends on how it has been put into practice. Therefore, we qualify the answer considering the empirical evidence on how normative principles hit the road of implementation. In the final part of this paper, we look into the demoi-cratic effects of the Eurozone's economic and financial crisis on our findings. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since the 2008 economic crisis, there has been upheaval across Europe. In Ireland, the collapse of the banking, construction and property sectors, and the 2010 EU/International Monetary Fund loan and attached austerity conditions resulted in a dramatic election in 2011 that saw the removal of the dominant political party from power. Ireland provides an important case study to examine political legitimacy given the perceived culpability of political authorities in the recession and the effects of austerity on the population's welfare. In this article, we examine data from the European Social Survey over a ten-year period (2002–2012) to ascertain the impact of the crisis on political legitimacy. We measure change in trust in political institutions, satisfaction with government and the link between social trust and political legitimacy. The analysis is repeated separating ‘winners’ (those who voted for the parties in power) from ‘losers’ (those who did not vote for the parties in power). We find that trust in political institutions and satisfaction with government has declined since 2008. However, while satisfaction with government is increasing since the 2011 election, trust in government continues to decline. Social trust is only declining for those who did not vote for the parties in power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although several studies aim at analysing the causes and impacts of the current economic crisis, especially involving the case of Greece, the role that highly educated population holds has not received wider attention. Based on an examination of both secondary data on the Greek economy/labour market and primary data collected by a survey that included 1821 graduates, this paper shows that underutilization of highly educated population harmed the competitiveness of the Greek economy, a factor which has significantly contributed to the creation of the current debt crisis and fostered the migration of graduates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The current economic crisis has become a global phenomenon. However, the path to the economic crisis, its materialization and persistence are also country-specific and can only be studied by considering a country's past economic development, existing institutional environment, and the economic policies it has implemented. This paper explores the case of Slovenia as a European Union (EU) and Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) member that has no influence on monetary and exchange rate policies and can therefore only use incomes and prices and partly fiscal policy tools to shape its economic policy. The authors' objective is to demonstrate that for a small economy, which is part of the EU and the EMU, incomes and prices policies are crucial for overcoming its economic crisis. The authors highlight the need to rediscover the role and importance of both incomes and prices policy as advocated by post Keynesian economics. They believe the case of Slovenia can be useful for several other economies with characteristics similar to those of Slovenia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political risk—risk that investments are damaged by policy action of authorities—increased during the financial crisis due to controversies about the distribution of accumulated losses among stakeholders. Authorities interconnected by cross-border banks considered unilateral policies that minimised losses for domestic stakeholders at the expense of their foreign counterparts. This is at odds both with the assumption behind financial integration which presumes multilateral responses to cross-border shocks and with the typical definition of political risks that ignores the fact that not only host-country, but also home-country authorities can create such risks. This paper recasts the definition of political risk and reviews instances when political risk materialised within the EU banking market between 2007 and 2011. The analysis reveals that the EU regulatory framework needs to be enhanced to contain resurgent political risks systematically rather than through ad hoc interventions of the EU and international bodies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]