The Political Consequences of the Great Recession
I am a member of the ERC-funded research project POLCON, which analyses the political consequences of the Great Recession. The project combines a comparative-static analysis of 30 European countries with a dynamic analysis of political conflict in 12 cases. For this purpose, we study both elections and political protest in the shadow of the Great Recession and attempt to analyse the issue-specific public interaction between both political arenas. The key question that the project attempts to address is whether the Great Recession changed the long-term trends of political conflict in Europe. For this purpose, we utlise survey data as well as original content analyis of protest events, election campaigns, and issue-specific public contestations.
In co-authored papers, I work on different aspects of this research project. On the one hand, I work on comparative-static analyses of the electoral consequences of the Great Recession. On the other hand, I analyse the development of political conflict in comparative case studies. In particular, I have worked on chapters in edited volumes that analyse the development of political conflict in Germany, Greece, Spain and the UK.
Publications:
- Björn Bremer and Guillem Vidal 2018. “From boom to bust: A comparative analysis of Greece and Spain under austerity”. In Doxiadis, Evdoxios and Aimee Placas (eds.). Living Under Austerity: Greek Society in Crisis. New York: Berghahn Books.
- Björn Bremer and Julia Schulte-Cloos (forthcomig). “The restructuring of British and German party politics in times of crisis”. In Hutter, Swen and Hanspeter Kriesi (eds.), Transformative Elections? Restructuring the National Political space in Europe in Times of Multiple Crises. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Working papers:
- “Dynamics of protest and electoral politics in the Great Recession: A comparative study of 30 European countries” (with Swen Hutter and Hanspeter Kriesi, revise and resubmit)
- “From the public purse to the ballot box: The electoral prospects of incumbent parties after austerity packages” (with Abel Bojar, Hanspeter Kriesi and Chendi Wang, revise and resubmit)