How the Eurozone shapes populism: a comparative political economy approach
In: Journal of European public policy, S. 1-24
ISSN: 1466-4429
In: Journal of European public policy, S. 1-24
ISSN: 1466-4429
In: LSE public policy review, Band 2, Heft 4
ISSN: 2633-4046
Existing studies of the political determinants of top incomes and inequality tend to focus on developments within individual countries, neglecting the role of interdependencies that transcend national borders. This article argues that the sharp rises in top incomes observed in recent years are in part a product of specific features originating in the US political economy, which were subsequently exported to other economies through the global expansion of US-based financial investors. To test the argument, we collect fine-grained micro-level data on executive pay and firm ownership structures for a comprehensive sample of publicly listed firms in the United Kingdom (UK). Our analyses uncover robust evidence that the Americanization of UK firm ownership leads to the financialization of remuneration practices and sizeable pay increases for high-level managers at those firms. Scrutinizing the causal mechanisms underlying this effect, we find them to be more consistent with changes in bargaining power inside firms rather than coercion from outside or exogenous shifts in labor markets for executives. The findings show the disruptive potential of Wall Street investments abroad to empower local managerial elites to capture greater rents and, more generally, demonstrate the need to take the transnational seriously in order to understand patterns of inequality in the global political economy.
BASE
In: Review of international political economy, Band 30, Heft 1, S. 332-358
ISSN: 1466-4526
In: Oxford scholarship online
This work examines the electoral successes of anti-system forces in the rich democracies. It explains the rise of anti-system politicians and parties in terms of two separate but closely related developments: the rise of economic inequality and insecurity over the last four decades, and the failure of technocratic elites to address them.
Introduction : a quick history of the present -- Parties against markets : the rise and fall of democratic capitalism -- Explaining the rise of anti-system parties : inequality, debt and the crisis -- American nightmare : how neoliberalism broke US democracy -- Taking back control : Britain turns against the market -- The new North-South divide : bailout politics and the return of the left in Southern Europe -- Spain : boom, bust and break-up -- Basta! : anti-system politics in Italy -- Conclusions.
In: Oxford scholarship online
In: Political Science
This work examines the electoral successes of anti-system forces in the rich democracies. It explains the rise of anti-system politicians and parties in terms of two separate but closely related developments: the rise of economic inequality and insecurity over the last four decades, and the failure of technocratic elites to address them.
In: Journal of European public policy, Band 27, Heft 8, S. 1157-1177
ISSN: 1466-4429
In: Current history: a journal of contemporary world affairs, Band 117, Heft 802, S. 315-320
ISSN: 0011-3530
The recent rise of populism is a culmination of long-term trends. As the established parties converged on economic orthodoxies, they lost their hold on changing electorate.
World Affairs Online
In: Government & opposition: an international journal of comparative politics, Band 54, Heft 2, S. 193-225
ISSN: 1477-7053
The expanding literature on growth regimes has recently been applied to explain the growth of populist movements across the OECD. Such applications posit a stand-off between debtors and creditors as the core conflict that generates populism. While insightful, the theory has problems explaining why, in some European countries, such movements pre-date both the global financial crisis and the austerity measures that followed, factors that are commonly seen as causing the rise of populism. This article takes a different tack. It derives shifts in both political parties and party systems from the growth regime framework. In doing so it seeks to explain the evolution of the cartel form of party that dominated the political systems of Europe from the late 1990s through to the current period and why that form proved unable to respond meaningfully to both the financial crisis and the political crisis that followed it.
In: Current history: a journal of contemporary world affairs, Band 117, Heft 802, S. 315-320
ISSN: 1944-785X
[T]he financial crisis can be best understood as the final catastrophic stage of a process of dismantling the protective institutions that made Western European capitalism politically sustainable …
In: The British journal of politics & international relations: BJPIR, Band 19, Heft 3, S. 465-478
ISSN: 1467-856X
The vote for Brexit is not an isolated event, but part of a wave of populist, anti-elite revolts: a new 'anti-system' politics Western democracies are experiencing, shaking the existing consensus around economic integration, free markets and liberal values. This wave takes a variety of forms, but has in common a robust, even violent, rejection of the mainstream political elites and their values, and a demand for governments to act on the sources of social and economic distress and inequality. This article views Brexit as a part of this new anti-system politics, a reaction to the decline in ideological competition in democracies and the increasing impotence of politicians to address the upheavals wrought by global free market capitalism. This reaction has become particularly acute after the financial crisis of the late 2000s, which affected Britain disproportionately, and the failure of austerity policies to revive growth, crystallising the ineffectiveness of existing policies to deal with economic stagnation and cultural change. This policy failure is compounded by a perceived refusal of politicians to engage with the broader public and a lack of real choice between the mainstream political parties. The article will present evidence that a failed policy consensus, a rise in inequality and a decline in the representativeness of political elites, rather than a resurgence of intolerance or xenophobia, are the principal causes of the Brexit vote.
In: New political economy, Band 23, Heft 6, S. 641-655
ISSN: 1469-9923
In: Politics & society, Band 44, Heft 3, S. 335-343
ISSN: 1552-7514
In this introduction to the special issue "The New Politics of Inequality in Europe," recent literature on income inequality in the advanced democracies is summarized. It is argued that dominant accounts are too heavily focused on the United States, whereas the experience of Western European countries has been neglected. Although income inequality has risen nearly everywhere in the rich industrial democracies since the end of the 1970s, it has done so from different starting points, at different rates, and for reasons connected to different mechanisms and different parts of the distribution. Extending the analysis to Western Europe enables us to understand these variations more fully.
In: Politics & society, Band 44, Heft 3, S. 345-371
ISSN: 1552-7514
Since 1970 the United Kingdom, like the United States, has developed a "winner-take-all" political economy characterized by widening inequality and spectacular income growth at the top of the distribution. However, Britain's centralized executive branch and relatively insulated policymaking process are less amenable to the kind of "organized combat" that Hacker and Pierson describe for the United States. Britain's winner-take-all politics is better explained by the rise of political ideas favoring unfettered markets that, over time, produce a self-perpetuating structural advantage for the richest. That advantage is, in turn, justified and sustained by reference to the same ideas. Inequality growth in the United Kingdom has been primarily driven by the financialization of the economy that began under the Thatcher government and continued under New Labour. The survival of pro-finance policies through the financial crisis provides further evidence that lobbying by a weakened City of London was less decisive in shaping policy than the financial sector's continuing structural advantage and the tenacity of its supporting political consensus.