Politics in the New Hard Times: The Great Recession in Comparative Perspective

Description

The Great Recession and its aftershocks, including the Eurozone banking and debt crisis, add up to the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although economic explanations for the Great Recession have proliferated, the political causes and consequences of the crisis have received less systematic attention. Politics in the New Hard Times is the first book to focus on the Great Recession as a political crisis, one with both political sources and political consequences. The authors examine variation in crises over time and across countries, rather than treating these events as undifferentiated shocks. Chapters also explore how crisis has forced the redefinition and reinforcement of interests at the level of individual attitudes and in national political coalitions. Throughout, the authors stress that the Great Recession is only the latest in a long history of international economic crises with significant political effects—and that it is unlikely to be the last. Introduction: Anatomy of Crisis: The Great Recession and Political Change by Miles Kahler and David A. Lake Part I. Crises and Politics: Is This Time Different? 1. Economic Crisis and Global Governance: The Stability of a Globalized World by Miles Kahler 2. Politics in Hard Times Revisited: The 2008–9 Financial Crisis in Emerging Markets by Stephan Haggard 3. Partisan Financial Cycles by J. Lawrence Broz 4. The Politics of Hard Times: Fiscal Policy and the Endogeneity of Economic Recessions by Pablo M. Pinto Part II. Interests, Coalitions, and Consequences 5. The Political Origins of Our Economic Discontents: Contemporary Adjustment Problems in Historical Perspective by Peter A. Hall 6. Puzzles from the First Globalization by Suzanne Berger 7. Portfolio Politics in the New Hard Times: Crises, Coalitions, and Shareholders in the United States and Germany by James Shinn 8. Coalition of Losers: Why Agricultural Protectionism Survives during the Great Recession by Megumi Naoi and Ikuo Kume 9. Crafting Trade Strategy in the Great Recession: The Obama Administration and the Changing Political Economy of the United States by Peter Cowhey 10. Worlds in Collision: Uncertainty and Risk in Hard Times by Peter J. Katzenstein and Stephen C. Nelson Afterword: Yet More Hard Times? Reflections on the Great Recession in the Frame of Earlier Hard Times by Peter A. Gourevitch References About the Contributors Index