Contesting Austerity

Despite the historical and political similarities between Portugal and Spain, the contentious responses to austerity diverged in terms of number, rhythm and players. This book compares the contentious responses to austerity in Portugal and Spain during the Eurozone crisis and the Great Recession between 2008 and 2015. While in Spain a sustained wave of mobilisation lasted for three years, involving various players and leading to a transformation of the party system, in Portugal social movements were only able to mobilise in specific instances, trade unions dominated protest and, by the end of the cycle, institutional change was limited. Contesting Austerity shows that the different trajectories and outcomes in these two countries are connected to the nature and configurations of the players in the mobilisation process. While in Spain actors’ relative autonomy from one another led to deeper political transformation, in Portugal the dominance of the institutional actors limited the extent of that change.

Between the Eurozone crisis and the Brexit: the decade of British outward FDI into Europe

This paper investigates the determinants of outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) of British multinational firms in the European Union (EU) and the European Free Trade Association members across 2009–2019 using Bayesian model averaging. We find evidence that supports the existence and dynamic behavior of the East–West structure of FDI between three groups of countries: core-EU, Central and Eastern European economies (CEE), and the Nordics. Further, we document the importance of relative market size, urbanization, the rule of law in attaining horizontal FDI in the core-EU economies. In turn, infrastructure spending and enhanced political stability are the most important drivers for FDI in CEE (post-2000 accession). Finally, our results highlight the negative effects of the Eurozone crisis and Brexit anticipation on British OFDI activity in the region. The findings remain robust when accounting for potential MNE profit shifting to partners such as Ireland, Luxembourg, and alike.

Economic interventions, economic perceptions and political support during the Eurozone crisis

What is the effect of external economic intervention on political support and economic evaluations? We argue that economic interventions systematically worsen support for governing institutions and much of this is mediated through updating economic perceptions, at least during the Eurozone crisis. We evidence this with two analyses. First, we provide the first quasi-experimental evidence to show that intervention worsened both political support and economic evaluations. Second, we conduct a mediation analysis using Eurobarometer data to quantify how much of the effect of intervention is mediated by economic evaluations. This has broader implications for understanding how citizens react to international integration, international cues, and the process of forming judgements of political support.

‘SYRIZA and Podemos, we shall overcome’? Left transnational cooperation in times of crisis

The Eurozone crisis and its austerity-centred management opened up a fertile ground for the so-called ‘radical left parties’ (RLPs) and their anti-austerity agenda. Moreover, it provided a unique opportunity for this party family to enhance its rather underdeveloped transnational cooperation. Sharing several objective and subjective features, SYRIZA (Greece) and Podemos (Spain) – arguably the two most prominent European RLPs today – seemed particularly well-placed to develop a strong transnational cooperation. However, the current literature has hardly addressed whether such expectations have been borne out. Indeed, despite a recently increased interest in the radical left, there are still very few studies focusing on the transnational cooperation among RLPs. Building on documentary research and qualitative elite interviews covering the 2014–2017 period, the article has two main objectives: first, to map the cooperation between SYRIZA and Podemos by identifying the key channels and actors of this process; second, to assess their cooperation over said period, with a focus on the factors fuelling and obstructing it. The article argues that the relationship between the two parties reached its peak around SYRIZA’s electoral victory in January 2015 but declined following its deal with the ‘Troika’ 6 months later, which blatantly contradicted SYRIZA’s anti-austerity programme. It is shown that while the main incentives behind their cooperation have been their shared opposition to neoliberalism, the European Union’s (EU) reaction to the crisis, and the similarities in their countries’ economic situations, the main obstacles hindering that cooperation have been the primacy of national politics and the diverging views on the EU. The findings arguably provide useful insights for the wider left transnational cooperation today, in a time of renewed global capitalist crisis, when such cooperation is perhaps more relevant than ever.

Europe’s (Euro) Crisis of Legitimacy

Europe’s (euro) crisis of legitimacy stems from the European Union’s ‘governing by rules and ruling by numbers’ during the sovereign debt crisis. Rules-based governance focused on austerity and structural reform played havoc with the Eurozone economy while fuelling political discontent. Subsequent reinterpretation of the rules ‘by stealth’ may have improved performance, but it did nothing to change the suboptimal rules and only further contributed to EU and national politicization. Although general acknowledgement of increasing flexibility came as of 2015, along with quantitative easing and investment, the damage had been done. Legitimacy remained in question, understood not only with regard to economic performance (output) and political responsiveness (input), but also in terms of the quality of the governance procedures (throughput). The chapter begins by conceptualizing legitimacy, and then explores EU institutional actors’ different pathways to legitimacy, and the ways in which they responded to the Eurozone crisis over time. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how the EU appears to have learned the lessons of the Eurozone crisis during the Covid-19 crisis.

Greece

This chapter examines the politics of legislative debate in Greece. The Greek parliament, a relatively under-researched institution, is an interesting case in this volume’s context for at least two reasons. First, because of how the country’s institutional and party system intricacies do not allow for a straightforward classification along the Proksch and Slapin scheme, placing it somewhere between the two extremes. Second, because of the severe restructuring of the party system during the previous decade as a result of the Eurozone crisis and how it could have potentially strengthened the parliament. We make use of an original dataset on parliamentary speechmaking in the Greek parliament spanning twenty years of plenary debates to try to identify the determinants of floor access. Our analysis shows that women speak less than men. Cabinet members dominate the debate while we find some evidence that party leaders guard floor access and refrain from delegating speech time to backbenchers.