EU Studies | Austerity from the Left: Social Democratic Parties in the shadow of the great recession with Bjorn Bremer
Austerity became the predominant fiscal policy response to the Great Recession in Europe. After a brief period of 'emergency Keynesianism' from 2008 to 2010, even the center-left abandoned plans for deficit spending and accepted austerity as the dogma of the day. In this book, Björn Bremer explains how this came about and explores its political consequences, combining qualitative and quantitative methods and drawing on a wide range of empirical evidence to study both the demand- and supply-side of politics. Based on this evidence, the book argues that a complex interaction of electoral and ideational pressures pushed social democratic parties towards orthodox fiscal policies. As government debt became a taboo following the Greek sovereign debt crisis, social democratic parties endorsed austerity to increase their perceived economic competence and fiscal credibility. This decision was legitimized by economic ideas inspired by supply-side economics, which had become popular among social democrats at the end of the twentieth century. Although the book shows that social democratic austerity was not inevitable, powerful feedback effects of the Third Way thus trapped and divided the center-left during the crisis. This undermined the ability of social democratic parties to oppose austerity and eventually contributed to their electoral crisis in the shadow of the Great Recession.
This event is sponsored by EU Studies as part of the European Studies Council.
This event is in-person.
Speakers
Björn Bremer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Central European University and currently a John F. Kennedy Memorial Fellow at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University. He obtained his PhD from the European University Institute and holds a BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) from the University of Oxford and an MA in International Relations and International Economics from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University. Previously, he was Senior Researcher in Comparative and International Political Economy at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne.
His research lies at the intersection of comparative politics, international political economy, and political behavior, and he is particularly interested in the politics of macroeconomic policies, welfare state politics, and the political consequences of economic crises. His first book, “Austerity from the Left: Social Democratic Parties in the Shadows of the Great Recession”, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. Some of his other work has appeared in leading international journals, including the British Journal of Political Science, the European Journal of Political Research, Political Science Research and Methods, the Review of International Political Economy, and the Socio-Economic Review.
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