Maria Petmesidou
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- August 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198790266
- eISBN:
- 9780191831584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198790266.003.0008
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Economy
Greece developed a pension-heavy, clientelist, hybrid Mediterranean welfare state with many gaps in coverage. The global financial crisis of 2008 triggered a severe sovereign debt crisis, compelling ...
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Greece developed a pension-heavy, clientelist, hybrid Mediterranean welfare state with many gaps in coverage. The global financial crisis of 2008 triggered a severe sovereign debt crisis, compelling the country to accept three bailout packages with stringent conditions as to spending cuts, privatization, and openness to international competition. Severe austerity has caused a protracted recession: the economy lost more than a quarter of its GDP between 2008 and 2015. The Mediterranean refugee crisis impacted severely on the country. New parties of the extreme left (SYRIZA) and extreme right (Golden Dawn) have gained support. SYRIZA was elected on an anti-austerity platform but failed to deliver and a fourth rescue package is under negotiation. The more likely future direction consists in an ever-tighter austerity programme with the immizeration of large sections of the population. A move towards neo-Keynesian intervention and social investment seems unlikely, given the level of debt and the bailout conditions.Less
Greece developed a pension-heavy, clientelist, hybrid Mediterranean welfare state with many gaps in coverage. The global financial crisis of 2008 triggered a severe sovereign debt crisis, compelling the country to accept three bailout packages with stringent conditions as to spending cuts, privatization, and openness to international competition. Severe austerity has caused a protracted recession: the economy lost more than a quarter of its GDP between 2008 and 2015. The Mediterranean refugee crisis impacted severely on the country. New parties of the extreme left (SYRIZA) and extreme right (Golden Dawn) have gained support. SYRIZA was elected on an anti-austerity platform but failed to deliver and a fourth rescue package is under negotiation. The more likely future direction consists in an ever-tighter austerity programme with the immizeration of large sections of the population. A move towards neo-Keynesian intervention and social investment seems unlikely, given the level of debt and the bailout conditions.
Cornel Ban
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190600389
- eISBN:
- 9780190600419
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190600389.003.0009
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Economy, International Relations and Politics
The interplay between external structural constraints, domestic institutions, and domestic ideological debates explains the resilience of disembedded neoliberalism in Romania after 2008. IFIs and ...
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The interplay between external structural constraints, domestic institutions, and domestic ideological debates explains the resilience of disembedded neoliberalism in Romania after 2008. IFIs and transnational firms with political leverage knocked on an open door when they demanded deep austerity and neoliberal structural reforms. However, it was local intellectual innovations that explain why policy leaders at the highest levels outbid these demands with a blend of libertarian, conservative, and ordoliberal theories about the state and society. Benefiting from a period of institutional cohesion, many of these ideas jelled into policy. Although technocrats less committed to neoliberalism took up top posts in a new cabinet after 2012, their ideas had a limited reach in the policy process because of the constitutionalization of fiscal policy by the EU, the conditionalities of the Troika, the pressures of foreign capital, and the institutional fragmentation of the policy process.Less
The interplay between external structural constraints, domestic institutions, and domestic ideological debates explains the resilience of disembedded neoliberalism in Romania after 2008. IFIs and transnational firms with political leverage knocked on an open door when they demanded deep austerity and neoliberal structural reforms. However, it was local intellectual innovations that explain why policy leaders at the highest levels outbid these demands with a blend of libertarian, conservative, and ordoliberal theories about the state and society. Benefiting from a period of institutional cohesion, many of these ideas jelled into policy. Although technocrats less committed to neoliberalism took up top posts in a new cabinet after 2012, their ideas had a limited reach in the policy process because of the constitutionalization of fiscal policy by the EU, the conditionalities of the Troika, the pressures of foreign capital, and the institutional fragmentation of the policy process.
