Björn Bremer

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Assistant Professor at Central European University

How have social democratic parties responded to the recent economic crisis? For many observers, the Great Recession and the prevalence of austerity in response to it have contributed to a crisis of social democracy in Europe. This article examines the programmatic response of social democratic parties to this crisis in 11 Western European countries...

The ‘austerity settlement’ has come to define the post-crisis European political economy. Since 2010, parties from across Europe’s political mainstream have implemented austerity and despite the apparent conflict with the interests of their traditional constituents, even social democratic parties have acquiesced to this settlement. However, within...

This paper links the consequences of the Great Recession on protest and electoral politics. It innovates by combining the literature on economic voting with social movement research and by presenting the first integrated, large‐scale empirical analysis of protest mobilisation and electoral outcomes in Europe. The economic voting literature offers i...

During the Great Recession, governments across the continent implemented austerity policies. A large literature claims that such policies are surprisingly popular and have few electoral costs. This article revisits this question by studying the popularity of governments during the economic crisis. The authors assemble a pooled time-series data set...

Ever since the Great Recession, public debt has become politicized. Some research suggests that citizens are fiscally conservative, while other research shows that they punish governments for implementing fiscal consolidation. This begs the question of whether and how much citizens care about debt. We argue that debt is not a priority for citizens...

Wealth plays a crucial role in providing private insurance, investment opportunities, and social status, shaping citizens’ policy preferences. These preferences, in turn, influence government decisions to stabilize financial markets and protect private wealth during economic crises. However, such policies often reinforce wealth inequality, particul...

Embedded in a broader discourse on future-oriented social policy and the idea of a social investment welfare state, governments in many of the advanced economies expanded childcare in recent years. Yet, in many countries considerable regional variation exists in coverage rates and expansion efforts, and often the supply of childcare still does not...

Can political parties steer public preferences for highly contested issues? European integration has become increasingly politicized, forcing governments to heed constituents’ preferences during international negotiations. Existing research suggests that parties can cue their voters, but it remains unclear whether public opinion responds to partisa...

People value household wealth as a source of private insurance, investment, and social status, which is reflected in their policy preferences. These preferences encourage governments to stabilize financial markets and protect private wealth during major economic crises. However, such policies often exacerbate wealth inequality, including between do...

While research on the economic characteristics of growth models across countries is now extensive, research on their politics is in its infancy, even though governments routinely pursue different strategies to generate growth. In particular, we lack evidence on (1) whether citizens have coherent preferences towards growth strategies, (2) what growt...

Embedded in a broader discourse on future-oriented social policy and the idea of a social investment welfare state, governments in many of the advanced economies expanded childcare in recent years. Yet, in many countries considerable regional variation exists in coverage rates and expansion efforts, and often the supply of childcare still does not...

Austerity became the predominant fiscal policy response to the Great Recession in Europe. After a brief period of `emergency Keynesianism' from 2008 to 2010, even the centre-left abandoned plans for deficit spending and accepted austerity as the dogma of the day. The book explains how this came about and explores its political consequences. It comb...

It is commonly assumed that voters favor lower taxes, which undermines the ability of governments to raise revenues. How does the demand for lower taxes change when it involves fiscal trade-offs? Who supports tax cuts at all costs? We use a survey experiment conducted in four European countries (Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK) to answer these qu...

To what extent can political parties steer public preferences for international co- operation? International cooperation has become increasingly politicized, forcing governments to heed constituents’ preferences during international negotiations. While party cueing research suggests that parties have leverage over public pref- erences, it is unclea...

Can political parties steer public preferences for highly contested issues? European integration has become increasingly politicized, forcing governments to heed constituents’ preferences during international negotiations. Existing research suggests that parties can cue their voters, but it remains unclear whether public opinion responds to partisa...

Existing research argues that a ‘democratic constraint’ blocks the path towards fiscal integration in the eurozone: Voters in creditor countries are fundamentally opposed to debt sharing, while voters in debtor countries are unwilling to leave the euro, which constrains the ability of their politicians to negotiate a more equitable distribution of...

This chapter studies public preferences toward social investment in more than 40 countries across three continents. On the basis of public opinion data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the International Social Survey Programme, the analysis compares patterns of support toward different forms of social investment against support f...

Welfare states around the globe are changing, challenged by the development of knowledge economies. In many countries, policymakers’ main response has been to modernize welfare states by focusing on future-oriented “social investment” policies that focus on creating, mobilizing, and preserving human skills and capabilities. Yet, there is massive va...

Public investment spending declined steadily in advanced economies during the last three decades. Germany is a case in point where the aggregate decline coincided with growing inequality in investments across districts. What explains the variation in local investment spending? We assembled a novel data set to investigate the effects of structural c...

A common finding in the literature is that social investment policies are broadly popular among citizens but still politically difficult to implement. This article provides a partial answer to this puzzle by exploring the fiscal trade-offs associated with such a recalibration. Based on survey data from eight Western European countries, it first exp...

Social democratic parties have experienced a profound electoral crisis in recent years. We study who still supports the centre-left by analysing two different ties to social democracy: vote choice and party identification. We develop a simple typology, which categorises voters into ‘core supporters’, ‘distant supporters’, ‘demobilised supporters’ a...

Even though social investment is highly popular, welfare state recalibration remains an uphill battle. When resources are scarce in times of austerity, welfare recalibration involves multidimensional trade-offs. Existing research primarily studied preferences toward individual policies or trade-offs in specific policy fields, failing to capture cit...

Public investment spending declined steadily in advanced economies during the last three decades. Germany is a case in point where the aggregate decline coincided with growing inequality in investments across districts. What explains variation in local investment spending? We assembled a novel dataset to investigate the effects of structural constr...

Existing research suggests that a “democratic constraint” blocks progress towards debt mutualization in the eurozone: voters in creditor countries fiercely oppose debt sharing, while voters in debtor countries strongly support remaining in the euro, which limits their governments’ bargaining power. However, this literature neglects that preferences...

The COVID-19 pandemic worsened Italy’s fiscal outlook by increasing public debt. If interest rates were to rise, it would become more likely that Italy experiences a financial crisis and requires a European bailout. How does making EU funds conditional on austerity and structural reforms affect Italians’ support for the euro? Based on a novel surve...

Fiscal integration has long been regarded as a necessary condition to ensure the long-term stability of the euro. In the aftermath of the euro crisis, concerns about a populist backlash of Eurosceptic voters constrained national governments in their ability to pursue such integration. However, during the COVID-19 pandemic, national leaders were abl...

Social investment is highly popular, but the welfare state recalibration remains an uphill battle. In austere times, resources are scarce and welfare recalibration involves multidimensional trade-offs. Existing research primarily studied preferences towards individual policies or trade-offs in specific policy fields, failing to capture citizens’ ov...

In the wake of the European sovereign debt crisis, governments across the continentadopted austerity. Existing research claims that fiscally conservative citizens supportsuch fiscal policies. However, this literature largely ignores that fiscal consolidationcarries substantial trade-offs. In hard times, governments have to cut spending or raisetaxe...

Cambridge Core - European Studies - Contention in Times of Crisis - edited by Hanspeter Kriesi

Abstract We analyse the patterns and covariates of support for the European integration of core state powers based on a new original survey. We find considerable variation across integration instruments, member states, and policy issues: horizontal transfers are more supported than vertical capacity building; the EU's Southeast is more supportive t...

European Party Politics in Times of Crisis - edited by Swen Hutter June 2019

The transformation of Germany's political economy in the last few decades has strongly been influenced by the SPD. Still, the economic programme of the SPD remains contested since several authors characterise the party's economic platform differently. This paper reconsiders the political economy of the SPD in light of evidence from the Great Recess...

Global capital flows have strongly increased from the 1980s until the outbreak of the financial crisis. As a result of this development, Germany's foreign investment has risen to around 250 percent of gross domestic product while foreign investments in Germany have increased to about 200 percent of Germany’s gross domestic product. This positive di...

Available data suggest that, between 2006 and 2012, Germany may have suffered losses to the value of more than 20% of annual economic output on its net foreign assets. Were these presumed losses on German net foreign assets coincidental or can they be attributed to deeper causes? Over time, fluctuating asset valuations are nothing unusual, per se....

Shortly before the parliamentary election in 2013, Germany is riding on a wave of euphoria: hardly any other euro country has weathered the financial and debt crisis so well. Since 2009, GDP has grown by over eight percent and 1.2 million new jobs have been created. Public finances were consolidated and, in 2012, there was a fiscal surplus of 0.2 p...

Kurz vor der Bundestagswahl 2013 schwimmt Deutschland in den Augen der Ökonomen auf einer Welle der Euphorie: Kaum ein anderes Euroland hat die Finanz- und Schuldenkrise so gut gemeistert. Das deutsche Bruttoinlandsprodukt ist seit 2009 um mehr als acht Prozent gewachsen, es entstanden rund 1,2 Millionen neue Arbeitsplätze. Die öffentlichen Haushal...