Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T01:06:50.275Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - Bailouts, Austerity, and Protest

Representative Democracy and Policy-Making in Times of Austerity

from Part III - Sources of Protest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 August 2020

Hanspeter Kriesi
Affiliation:
European University Institute, Florence
Jasmine Lorenzini
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Bruno Wüest
Affiliation:
Universität Zürich
Silja Hausermann
Affiliation:
Université de Genève
Get access

Summary

In the Great Recession, sovereign bailouts were deemed necessary to alleviate the stress of indebted countries. These bailouts contained some of the most contentious policies, including austerity, structural reforms, and privatizations that triggered sharp bursts of protest during the Great Recession. In this chapter, we examine the impact of those particular political events on protest within this period, aiming to assess their impact and explore the mechanisms through which they operate on protest behavior. We observe that bailouts had a strong effect on protest, but in a mostly regional pattern, as they were accompanied by massive and frequent demonstrations only in southern Europe but not in eastern Europe. We also try to see whether the effect of bailouts can be explained by a deterioration of economic sentiment, but we find that their effect on protest remains even when accounting for such a decline in prospects. The chapter then shows that bailouts, ceteris paribus, were also much more contested than non-supranational austerity packages. Overall, bailouts have a strong effect on protest, but the regional pattern suggests that this is stronger where possibilities of alternative institutional political representation were available, as in the case of Greece which is examined more closely.

Type
Chapter
Information
Contention in Times of Crisis
Recession and Political Protest in Thirty European Countries
, pp. 184 - 205
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×