Table of Contents

Contributors vii 1 Introduction: Politics in the Age of Austerity 1 Armin Schafer and Wolfgang Streeck 2 Public Finance and the Decline of State Capacity in Democratic Capitalism 26 Wolfgang Streeck and Daniel Mertens 3 Tax Competition and Fiscal Democracy 59 Philipp Genschel and Peter Schwarz 4 Governing as an Engineering Problem: The Political Economy of Swedish Success 84 Sven Steinmo 5 Monetary Union, Fiscal Crisis and the Disabling of Democratic Accountability 108 Fritz W. Scharpf 6 Smaghi versus the Parties: Representative Government and Institutional Constraints 143 Peter Mair 7 Liberalization, Inequality and Democracy?s Discontent 169 Armin Schafer 8 Participatory Inequality in the Austerity State: A Supply-Side Approach 196 Claus Offe 9 From Markets versus States to Corporations versus Civil Society? 219 Colin Crouch 10 The Normalization of the Right in Post-Security Europe 239 Mabel Berezin 11 The Crisis in Context: Democratic Capitalism and its Contradictions 262 Wolfgang Streeck Notes 287 Index 303

About the Author

Armin Schafer is a researcher at the Max Planck Institute forthe Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany. Wolfgang Streeck is Managing Director at the Max Planck Institutefor the Study of Societies in Cologne, Germany.

Reviews

"Poses (very well) the questions that will shape our world for manyyears to come." European Voice "Nothing less than a novel, comprehensive and syncretic analysis ofwhat has changed in the relationship between capitalism anddemocracy over the past thirty years - and into the future." Philippe C. Schmitter, European University Institute "Insightful and engaging, the essays in this volume cover aremarkably wide range of topics related to the fundamental questionof our time: what happens to democracy when governments have solittle fiscal room to manoeuvre? A great read that will inspire newthinking and research." Jonus Pontusson, University of Geneva " Politics in the Age of Austerity is a hugely importantcontribution to the contemporary literature on the politicaleconomy of the advanced capitalist countries. Featuring a series ofpenetrating essays by some of the field s foremost theorists,the book offers a powerful and sobering picture ofthe dilemmas and constraints that governments face as they seek toreconcile the increasingly conflicting demands of twoconstituencies voters and 'the markets'. As such, it shedsnew light on the enduring question of the evolving relationshipbetween democracy and capitalism." Kathleen Thelen, MIT