Introduction

Why did the Eurozone crisis prove so difficult to resolve? Why were adjustment burdens distributed so unevenly and why did no country leave the Eurozone? Who supported and opposed different policy options and how did the distributive struggles both within countries and between countries shape crisis politics? This introductory chapter lays out the main research questions and puzzles motivating this book. It provides an overview about the trajectory of the crisis and highlights the unusual characteristics of the crisis, most notably the unequal distribution of crisis resolution costs between deficit-debtor and surplus-creditor countries in the Eurozone. It then presents the policy options available to policymakers in both crisis countries mired by debt and balance of payments problems, as well as surplus-creditor countries characterized by large current account surpluses. The chapter then presents a brief overview of the book’s main argument that societies’ and political actors’ vulnerability profiles play an important role in shaping crisis policies and politics. The chapter concludes with an outlook and brief summary of the book’s individual chapters and a discussion of the book’s contributions to research on the Eurozone crisis, crisis politics, and the role of trade-offs in policymaking more generally.