ECPR Section ID: 58
ECPR Section Title: Crisis Zone? State Quality and Democratic Quality in Southern Europe
This session was organised by the ECPR Standing Group in Southern European Politics.
Background: The recent economic crisis has exposed the high degree of vulnerability suffered by Southern EU (SEU) member states. Despite their 30-year long membership of the Union and their Eurozone participation, SEUs have been faced with speculative attacks in the financial markets, while Greece’s near-default has triggered pan-European debates (and subsequent political action) to avoid collapse. Moreover, the crisis has produced a wave of public policy reforms in SEUs, most notably Greece, reforms adopted in a faster pace than ever before and meeting with comparatively little societal and interest group resistance.
Aim & Key Questions: This panel aims to provide a platform for comparing the problems, solutions and challenges that Southern EU (SEU) member-states are facing. Its raison d’être is motivated by a set of interlinked questions that paper givers are encouraged to reflect on:
- Which aspects of public policy in Southern Europe contributed to the crisis and to the fact that South European member states are the Eurozone‘s “weakest link”?
- What has been the public policy response of the administrations in the region to the crisis, and what lessons can we learn from their response?
- What does their response tell us about European public policy in terms of the Eurozone’s ability to reform public administration structures?
- What does the crisis tell us about the effectiveness of EU’s soft law framework on public policy/administration in strengthening national policy-making capacity?
This panel is convened by the Greek Politics Specialist Group (GPSG) of the Political Studies Association, UK.
Panel chairs:
Dr Stella Ladi, Panteion University, Athens, Greece: [email protected]
Dr Dimitris Tsarouhas, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey: [email protected]
Panel Discussant: Professor Leonardo Morlino, Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, Italy
Papers:
- Paraskevopoulos (University of Macedonia), “Accounting for variation in the impact of and response to economic crisis in Greece & Portugal”
- Clements (University of Leicester) and K. Nanou (European University Institute), “Economic crisis and public attitudes towards domestic and EU institutions in Greece, Portugal and Spain”
- Matsaganis (Athens University of Economics & Business), “Economic crisis and welfare reform in Greece”
- Clua-Losada (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona), “Spain’s goose chase: the flexibilisation of the labour market and the reduction of its public deficit under Zapatero’s presidency”
