Austerity from the Left

My first book, “Austerity from the Left: Social Democratic Parties in the Shadow of the Great Recession”, was published by Oxford University Press in 2023.

In the book, I explain how even the centre-left accepted austerity as the dogma of the day during the Great Recession and explore its political consequences. The book combines qualitative and quantitative methods and draws on a wide range of empirical evidence to study both the demand- and supply-side of politics. Based on this evidence, I argue that a complex interaction of electoral and ideational pressures pushed social democratic parties towards orthodox fiscal policies. As government debt became a taboo following the Greek sovereign debt crisis, social democratic parties endorsed austerity to increase their perceived economic competence and fiscal credibility. This decision was legitimized by economic ideas inspired by supply-side economics, which had become popular among social democrats at the end of the twentieth century. Although the book shows that social democratic austerity was not inevitable, powerful feedback effects of the Third Way thus trapped and divided the centre-left during the crisis. This undermined the ability of social democratic parties to oppose austerity and eventually contributed to their electoral crisis in the shadow of the Great Recession.

The book was reviewed in Social Policy and Administration, Renewal, and the German-speaking Portal for Politikwissenschaft. Some of its research was featured in media coverage by The Economist, The Guardian, Die Zeit, and the Deutschlandfunk. The book’s research was also the basis for a research brief that I wrote for the Progressive Politics Research Network.