Kai Guthmann

As often pointed out in the literature on the European debt crisis, the policy programme of austerity and internal devaluation imposed on countries in the Eurozone's periphery exhibits a lack of democratic legitimacy. This article analyses the consequences these developments have for democratic support at both the European and national levels. We s...

The Great Recession that started in 2007/2008 has been the worst economic downturn since the crisis of the 1930s in Europe. It led to a major sovereign debt crisis, which is arguably the biggest challenge for the European Union (EU) and its common currency. Not since the 1950s have advanced democracies experienced such a dramatic external impositio...

What are the conditions under which some austerity programmes rely on substantial cuts to social spending? More specifically, do the partisan complexion and the type of government condition the extent to which austerity policies imply welfare state retrenchment? This article demonstrates that large budget consolidations tend to be associated with w...

Um ihre verloren gegangene Wettbewerbsfähigkeit wiederherzustellen, bleibt den unter Zahlungsbilanzdefiziten leidenden Ländern des Euroraums nur die interne Abwertung: eine Politik zur Senkung des Lohn- und Preisniveaus. Wir argumentieren, dass diese Politik sowohl auf der Output- als auch auf der Input-Dimension einen Mangel an demokratischer Legi...

This book sheds new light on if and why, between 2009 and 2015, European governments succeeded or failed in initiating and actually realizing some of the farthest-reaching austerity plans in modern history. The author analyzes the economic and political context and the underlying causes of austerity and economic adjustment packages during the Euro...

In “Adjustment by Force”, Guthmann presents the second stage of his statistical analysis of austerity in the Euro crisis, by testing hypotheses on the determinants of the realization of fiscal consolidation plans. Plan realization is operationalized as the difference between planned and realized austerity, based on plans and outcomes of various fis...

In this first stage of the empirical analysis of austerity, Guthmann tests hypotheses on the determinants of intra-EMU macroeconomic imbalances, planned fiscal policy stances, the initiation and the size of austerity in a combination of descriptive statistics and more rigorous pooled TSCS (logistic) regression models. He convincingly shows that imb...

In the final chapter to his book, Guthmann summarizes his arguments and empirical findings on the institutional determinants of austerity in the Euro crisis; and discusses possible implications for academics and policy practitioners. He argues that context is key when it comes to understanding and analyzing fiscal and economic adjustment plans and...

In “Austerity’s Institutional Origins”, Guthmann develops a theoretical framework for understanding fiscal adjustment in the Euro crisis, which revolves around a politico-economic trilemma of the Eurozone defined by the three irreconcilable nods of national diversity, EMU, and democracy. Interdisciplinary in nature, this framework is embedded in li...

In “Fiscal adjustment in Europe”, Guthmann provides a much-needed discussion of the concept of austerity and its operationalization. He addresses the strengths and weaknesses of earlier approaches found in the literature on fiscal consolidations (both historical/action-based as well as traditional outcome approaches), emphasizing mainly the problem...

The relationship between states and markets has changed over the past 30 years. While markets have pressed forward in many traditional policy domains of governments, states became smaller, less centralized, and opened up their national economies. In other words, we have witnessed far-reaching liberalization procedures in Western democracies across...

For many Central and Eastern European (CEE) transition countries, the early years of the post-communist era were characterized by considerable financial instability, recurring currency depreciations, and chronic inflation. Then, over the last decade or so, the situation has calmed down considerably. Drawing upon the politico-economic literature on...