https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 20 Apr 2020 14:16:39 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/fiscal-politics-in-time-pathways-to-fiscal-consolidation-in-ireland-greece-britain-and-spain-1980-2012/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:32 +0000 http://arc.local/items/fiscal-politics-in-time-pathways-to-fiscal-consolidation-in-ireland-greece-britain-and-spain-1980-2012/ Continued]]> The comparative study of debt and fiscal consolidation has acquired a new focus in the wake of the global financial crisis. This paper re-evaluates the literature on fiscal consolidation that flourished during the 1980s and 1990s. The conventional approach to explanation is based on segmenting episodes of fiscal change into discrete observations. We argue that this misses the dynamic features of government strategy, especially in the choices made between expenditure-based and revenue-based fiscal consolidation strategies. We propose a focus on pathways rather than episodes of adjustment, to capture what Pierson terms ‘politics in time’. A case-study approach facilitates analysis of complex causality that includes the structures of interest intermediation, the role of ideas in shaping the set of feasible policy choices, and the situation of national economies in the international political economy. We support our argument with qualitative data based on two case studies, Ireland and Greece, and with additional paired comparisons of Ireland with Britain, and Greece with Spain. Our conclusions suggest that the conventional literature, by excluding key political variables from consideration, may distort our understanding and result in misleading policy prescription.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/civil-compliance-and-political-luddism-explaining-variance-in-social-unrest-during-crisis-in-ireland-and-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:29 +0000 http://arc.local/items/civil-compliance-and-political-luddism-explaining-variance-in-social-unrest-during-crisis-in-ireland-and-greece/ Continued]]> When badly hit by the same global financial and economic crisis in the early 2000s, the Irish and the Greek societies reacted in quite different ways. Whereas Ireland remained largely acquiescent and displayed a high degree of civil compliance, Greeks took massively to the streets using violence and attacking specifically the state and the state personnel, a phenomenon we refer to as “political Luddism.” It is shown that the two countries are quite similar in terms of their economic condition, cultural background, social composition, ideological profiling, and party system dynamics, among other factors. What, then, explains the two countries’ dissimilar reactions to crisis? Through a detailed analysis of the cases, the article offers evidence that the most compelling explanation relates to the varying ability of the Greek and Irish states to continue providing basic public goods and other state-related services to their respective societies.

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