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2023, Political Studies Association
The election of Liz Truss to the leadership of the Conservative party and to UK Prime Minister in conjunction with the appointment of Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor of the Exchequer on the 5th of September 2022 signalled an ideological break with Boris Johnson’s short-lived government. However, financial markets reacted unfavourably if not violently to a framework of fiscal policy that lacked foundations and long-term planning. The sharp fall of the pound and rise of interest rates not only derailed the government’s plan and led to the resignations of the Prime Minister and the Chancellor but more importantly forced a swift change to something oddly familiar – austerity and the explicit acknowledgment that financial markets constitute an extra-parliamentary force that determines the viability of a government and its subsequent policy direction. By focusing on the ‘growth plan’ presented to the House of Commons on the 9th of September 2022, the Chancellor’s statement presented to the House of Commons on the 17th of October 2022 and on Britannia Unchained, the multi-authored book by Kwasi Kwarteng, Liz Truss et al. (2012) as the ideological and intellectual foundation of the short lived and rejected ‘growth plan and by deploying Wolfgang Streeck’s concept of the ‘consolidation state’ the paper raises the following questions: First, to what extent can a neoliberal economy serve the interests of the markets and the citizens? Second, is it possible for a government to be sovereign while operating withing the network of rating agencies, financial markets and international financial institutions?
Sociologisk Forskning
The institutionalization of a new social cleavage : Ideological influences, main reforms and social inequalityoutcomes of “the new work strategy”2018 •
The objective of this article is to analyse the ideological influences, main reforms and social inequality outcomes of “the new work strategy”, i.e. the former Swedish centre-right Alliance governm ...
Agridopoulos, Aristotelis 2020: Causes, critique, and blame: A political discourse analysis of the crisis and blame discourse of German and Greek intellectuals, in: Stefan Nygård (Hg.): The Politics of Debt and Europe’s Relations with the ‘South’, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 80–117.
Agridopoulos, Aristotelis 2020: Causes, Critique and Blame [uncorrected proofs]2020 •
Agridopoulos, Aristotelis 2020: Causes, critique, and blame: A political discourse analysis of the crisis and blame discourse of German and Greek intellectuals, in: Stefan Nygård (Hg.): The Politics of Debt and Europe’s Relations with the ‘South’, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 80–117.
Sociologisk Forskning
The institutionalization of a new social cleavageThe objective of this article is to analyse the ideological influences, main reforms and social inequality outcomes of “the new work strategy”, i.e. the former Swedish centre-right Alliance government’s work-first approach. By studying government bills and reports, official statistics, and research on welfare and labour market policies, discourses, policy measures and their outcomes have been analysed. The main conclusion is that Sweden, the former prototypical “social democratic” welfare state, has adopted a new institutional framework for social protection that we call a “work-first, consolidation state”. The reforms aimed at shrinking the welfare state were implemented by strengthening activation principles in social protection systems as well as a politics of lowering taxes, which has institutionalized a new social cleavage in Swedish society and resulted in a massive redistribution from the public sector to the private sector. We also discuss how the transformation of labour in...
This study investigates the question why mainstream political parties are on a declining trajectory, and why right-wing populist parties have the ability to make inroads into the political process, having the capacity to displace or at least challenge the current center-left and center-right parties. Rather than looking merely at the level of the voters, or the public-relations strategy of charismatic right-wing party leaders, the analysis has focused on the historical evolution of government policies in the UK, Germany and Austria in migration, labor relations, the welfare state and the economy. This account largely sets aside post-materialist or de-democratization explanations for electoral volatility and change. The finding is that the collective decisions of current and past government officials had a great impact on their current and future viability in elections. Growing economic insecurity in the form of more unemployed and underemployed people, a smaller welfare state, and growing ethnic diversity via more immigration have created dissatisfaction and fear among the voting population, which the mainstream parties have never been able to resolve or mitigate, offering avenues for right-wing parties to fill the void.
On the role of the Troika in constructing the European Consolidation State The 2008 financial crisis has been seen as providing an opportunity for core eurozone members to push neoliberal policies onto the periphery in order to construct a European Consolidation State. We adapt a policy transfer model to examine the extent to which the Troika transferred neoliberal policy onto Greece and Ireland. The size of the ideological gap between Troika policies and those embedded in the peripheral country was crucial when explaining why the Troika's policies were more brutal, intrusive and long-lasting in Greece than in Ireland, and why Greece proved more resilient to attempts to transfer policy than Ireland.
Capitalism Versus Democracy? Rethinking Politics in the Age of Environmental Crisis
Capitalism Versus Democracy? Rethinking Politics in the Age of Environmental Crisis2020 •
For over 150 years, political strategies and policies have been formed according to whether parties and movements believed that capitalism is either compatible or incompatible with democracy. This book challenges both supporters and opponents of the ‘compatibility’ thesis and calls for a rethink of politics in the age of environmental crisis. It is divided into three parts. Part One critically questions the dominant narratives and assumptions held by many of the broad Left about the origins, causes and alternatives to our present condition. Part Two focuses on how prominent neo-Keynesians and Marxists have explained the crises of the past decade and why they are still operating with essentially pre-environmentalist conceptions of the conflict between ‘capitalism and democracy’. Part Three offers one of the first detailed discussions of what kind of organisational, political economic and cultural issues that advocates of alternative post-carbon or post-capitalist societies will need to confront. In a penetrating critique of how the tensions between ‘democracy and sustainability’ have impacted the old debates over capitalism versus democracy, the author examines proposals and images of the ‘good life’ put forward by social democrats, greens, radical technological utopians, green growth ecological modernisers and degrowthers. Are the broadly held goals of greater social justice, ending poverty and inequality within and between affluent countries and low and middle-income societies possible without transgressing the fragile and damaged biophysical life support boundaries of the earth? Why is it that many who dispute the compatibility or incompatibility of ‘capitalism and democracy’ are yet to fully consider what policies, organisational forms and social changes flow from populations that favour democracy but oppose policies committed to greater environmental sustainability? These and many other issues are discussed in this unsettling new book which aims to stimulate us to rethink how we see our existing societies and future social, economic and political change.
2015 •
In response to the Eurozone’s crisis of democratic legitimacy, EU institutional actors have sought to ameliorate the Eurozone’s deteriorating ‘output’ policy performance and to respond to citizens’ increasingly volatile political ‘input’ by reinterpreting the ‘throughput’ processes focused on ‘governing by the rules and ruling by the numbers’ without admitting it. Such reinterpretation ‘by stealth’ risks generating further problems for legitimacy. After defining the three criteria of legitimacy and how they play out differently for political and technical actors through fast and slow burning phases of the crisis, the paper focuses more closely on the legitimation problems of each of the major institutional actors in turn — ECB, Council, Commission, and EP — as they responded to the crisis in coordination with other policy actors and in communication to the public. The paper also offers proposals for short and medium term remedies to Eurozone problems, with a final note on the future...
Review of International Political Economy
All bark and no bite: the political economy of bank fines in Anglo-America2019 •
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Rising Authoritarianism(s) and the Globalization of Law: An Initial Exploration
Rising Authoritarianism(s) and the Globalization of Law: An Initial Exploration2019 •
2012 •
Capital and Class
The Habermas-Streeck debate revisited Syriza and the illusions of the left-Europeanism2018 •
European Political Science
(Review Essay with Haris Malamidis) Reconsidering the Crisis of Democratic Capitalism in the Age of Austerity. In: European Political Science, published online 22 January 2016.2016 •
Future Economies Research and Policy Paper No.2
Johnsonomics: British industrial policy from Brown to Boris2019 •
European Political Science Review
Making the rich pay? Social democracy and wealth taxation in Europe in the aftermath of the great financial crisis2022 •
2017 •
Book review in European Political Science
Reconsidering the Crisis of Democratic Capitalism in the Age of Austerity2016 •
Chapter in Isabelle Chambost (Editor), Marc Lenglet (Editor), Yamina Tadjeddine (Editor)-The Making of Finance_ Perspectives from the Social Sciences-Routledge (2018)
Democracy and the Political representation of Investors. On French sovereign debt transactions and elctions2018 •
2018 •
West European Politics
Reinterpreting the rules ‘by stealth’ in times of crisis: a discursive institutionalist analysis of the European Central Bank and the European Commission2016 •
French Politics
Joined at the hip, but pulling apart? Franco-German relations, the Eurozone crisis and the politics of austerity2014 •
SSRN Electronic Journal
Authoritarian Liberalism: The Conjuncture Behind the Crisis2022 •
Cambridge Review of International Affairs
The Paradox of Integration? European democracy and the debt crisis2013 •
New Political Economy
Crisis Management, New Constitutionalism, and Depoliticisation: Recasting the Politics of Austerity in the US and UK, 2010-20162022 •
2018 •
Current Sociology
Capitalized money, austerity and the math of capitalism2020 •
2015 •
Review of International Political Economy
Ideational power and pathways to legitimation in the euro crisis2021 •