Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T19:28:02.572Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Draining the Swamp: Understanding the Crisis in Mainstream Politics as a Crisis of the State

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2017

Abstract

This paper examines Poland, Hungary, the UK and the US the most surprising cases of populist reaction. It argues that the social polarization caused by the failures of hyper-liberal reforms to the state, and the association of Social Democratic parties with those reforms, has provoked alienation from liberal democratic politics.

Type
Critical Forum: Global Populisms
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 2017 

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.)

References

1. Mény, Yves and Surel, Yves, eds., Democracies and the Populist Challenge (New York, 2002)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. See Streeck, Wolfgang, “The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism,” New Left Review, no. 71 (September–October 2011): 612 Google Scholar; Peter Mair, “Representative versus Responsible Government,” (working paper, Max-Planck-Institut für Gesellschaftsforschung , Cologne, Germany, 2009), at www.mpifg.de/pu/workpap/wp09-8.pdf (last accessed April 28, 2017); for an exception see Zysman, John and Breznitz, Daniel, The Third Globalization: Can Wealthy Nations Stay Rich the Twenty-First Century? (Oxford, 2013)Google Scholar.

3. Streeck, “The Crisis,” 6–12.

4. Crouch, Colin, “Privatized Keynesianism: An Unacknowledged Policy Regime,” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 11, no. 3 (August 2009): 382–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. Zysman and Breznitz, Third Globalization, 23.

6. Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Dataset, Modules 1 and 2, in McAllister, Ian and White, Stephen, “Political Parties and Democratic Consolidation in Post-Communist Societies,” Party Politics 13, no. 2, (March 2007): 197216 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, here 203.

7. Burns, Andrew and Yoo, Kwang-Yeol, “Public Expenditure Management in Poland,” OECD Economics Department Working Papers, no. 346 (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, Paris, 2002), doi: 10.1787/18151973 (last accessed May 1, 2017)Google Scholar.

8. Stanislawa Golinowska, Katarzyna Pietka, Christoph Sowada and Maciej Zukowski, “Study on the Social Protection Systems of the 13 Applicant Countries, Poland,” (working paper, European Commission/ Gesellschaft für Versicherungswissenschaft und -gestaltung, January 2003) at www.cor-retraites.fr/IMG/pdf/doc-321.pdf (last accessed May 2, 2017).

9. Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD Employment Outlook 2014, revised November, 2014, doi: 10.1787/empl_outlook-2014-en (last accessed May 3, 2017).

10. Ceteris paribus assumptions are that “holding other things (institutions) equal,” but the actual institutional environment was complex and simply assuming it away in theory meant that there were unanticipated and difficult consequences of policy changes in practice. For example: If you liberalise the labour market you optimise employment if other institutional environments are efficient – the working assumption of liberal economists – but if the rest of the institutional environment is held up/distorted by all kinds of market failures, developmental lags then you may end up with far higher unemployment and lower protections for the unemployed than were necessary or in any way productive.

11. Epstein, Rachel A., “Assets or Liabilities? The Politics of Bank Ownership,” Review of International Political Economy 21, no. 4 (2014): 765–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Appel, Hilary, Tax Politics in Eastern Europe: Globalization, Regional Integration, and the Democratic Compromise (Ann Arbor, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 66.

13. Innes, Abby, “Hungary’s Illiberal Democracy,” Current History 114, no. 770 (March 2015): 95100 Google Scholar.

14. Galbraith, James K., The Predator State: Why Conservatives Abandoned the Free Market and Liberals Should Too (New York, 2008)Google Scholar.

15. Hacker, Jacob S. and Pierson, Paul, Winner Takes All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class (New York, 2011)Google Scholar.

16. Carpenter, Daniel P. and Moss, David A., eds., Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special Interest Influence and How to Limit It (New York, 2014)Google Scholar.

17. Henry, James S., “Let’s Tax Anonymous Wealth!,” in Pogge, Thomas and Mehta, Krishen, eds., Global Tax Fairness (Oxford, 2016)Google Scholar, 77.

18. Ibid.

19. Hood, Christopher and Dixon, Ruth, A Government That Worked Better and Cost Less?: Evaluating Three Decades of Reform and Change in UK Central Government (Oxford, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 15.

20. Ibid., 266.

21. Press Release, Prague 26 January 2011, ZIndex, the public procurement monitoring project, ledby J. Chvalkovská, P. Jansky and G. Skuhrovec, Institute of Economics, Charles University, Prague. For the wider story see Innes, Abby, “Corporate State Capture in Open Societies: The Emergence of Corporate Brokerage Party Systems,” East European Politics and Societies 30, no. 3 (August 2016): 594620 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22. Flinders, Matthew V., Delegated Governance and the British State: Walking without Order(Oxford, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Le Grand, Julian, “Quasi-Markets and Social Policy,” The Economic Journal 101, no. 408 (September 1991): 1256–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24. Herman Schwartz, “Scope and Why the American Welfare Model Remains Exceptional,” in Anke Hassel and Bruno Palier eds., Growth Strategies and Welfare States (forthcoming, 2017).

25. Marshall, T. H., Citizenship and Social Class, and Other Essays (Cambridge, 1950)Google Scholar.