Politics in the New Hard Times: The Great Recession in Comparative Perspective

by Miles Kahler (Editor), David A. Lake (Editor)

Overview

The Great Recession and its aftershocks, including the Eurozone banking and debt crisis, add up to the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although economic explanations for the Great Recession have proliferated, the political causes and consequences of the crisis have received less systematic attention. Politics in the New Hard Times is the first book to focus on the Great Recession as a political crisis, one with both political sources and political consequences.

The authors examine variation in crises over time and across countries, rather than treating these events as undifferentiated shocks. Chapters also explore how crisis has forced the redefinition and reinforcement of interests at the level of individual attitudes and in national political coalitions. Throughout, the authors stress that the Great Recession is only the latest in a long history of international economic crises with significant political effects—and that it is unlikely to be the last.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801467622
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	04/15/2013
Series:	Cornell Studies in Political Economy
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	328
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Miles Kahler is Rohr Professor of Pacific International Relations and Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of several books, including Leadership Selection in the Major Multilaterals, and editor most recently of Networked Politics: Agency, Power, and Governance, also from Cornell. David A. Lake is Jerri-Ann and Gary E. Jacobs Professor of Social Sciences and Distinguished Professor of Political Science, University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Hierarchy in International Relations, also from Cornell, and coauthor of World Politics: Interests, Interactions, and Institutions.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Anatomy of Crisis: The Great Recession and Political Change
by Miles Kahler and David A. LakePart I. Crises and Politics: Is This Time Different?1. Economic Crisis and Global Governance: The Stability of a Globalized World
by Miles Kahler2. Politics in Hard Times Revisited: The 2008–9 Financial Crisis in Emerging Markets
by Stephan Haggard3. Partisan Financial Cycles
by J. Lawrence Broz4. The Politics of Hard Times: Fiscal Policy and the Endogeneity of Economic Recessions
by Pablo M. PintoPart II. Interests, Coalitions, and Consequences5. The Political Origins of Our Economic Discontents: Contemporary Adjustment Problems in Historical Perspective
by Peter A. Hall6. Puzzles from the First Globalization
by Suzanne Berger7. Portfolio Politics in the New Hard Times: Crises, Coalitions, and Shareholders in the United States and Germany
by James Shinn8. Coalition of Losers: Why Agricultural Protectionism Survives during the Great Recession
by Megumi Naoi and Ikuo Kume9. Crafting Trade Strategy in the Great Recession: The Obama Administration and the Changing Political Economy of the United States
by Peter Cowhey10. Worlds in Collision: Uncertainty and Risk in Hard Times
by Peter J. Katzenstein and Stephen C. NelsonAfterword: Yet More Hard Times? Reflections on the Great Recession in the Frame of Earlier Hard Times
by Peter A. GourevitchReferences
About the Contributors
Index

What People are Saying About This

Robert O. Keohane

Politics in the New Hard Times demonstrates—most remarkably in Peter Gourevitch's Afterword—that the Great Recession of the last few years cannot be understood without appreciating financial deregulation, the rise in the privileges of finance, and the political power that generated these malign results. To understand the politics of the Great Recession, read this book.

Editorial Reviews

Kahler and Lake bring together a wide range of scholars in the areas of political science, international relations, and risk management to systematically analyze the political causes and consequences of the great recession from a different perspective. By disregarding an economic explanatory framework of the great recession in favor of a political genesis perspective of the crisis, the contributors offer sound analyses of past and contemporary endogenous events that contributed to the crisis, shaped choices by political actors, and produced varying consequences.

Choice

Kahler and Lake bring together a wide range of scholars in the areas of political science, international relations, and risk management to systematically analyze the political causes and consequences of the great recession from a different perspective. By disregarding an economic explanatory framework of the great recession in favor of a political genesis perspective of the crisis, the contributors offer sound analyses of past and contemporary endogenous events that contributed to the crisis, shaped choices by political actors, and produced varying consequences.

-- "Choice"

From the Publisher

"Politics in the New Hard Times demonstrates—most remarkably in Peter Gourevitch's Afterword—that the Great Recession of the last few years cannot be understood without appreciating financial deregulation, the rise in the privileges of finance, and the political power that generated these malign results. To understand the politics of the Great Recession, read this book."

Robert O. Keohane