Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic CapitalismThe financial and economic crisis that began in 2008 still has the world on tenterhooks. The gravity of the situation is matched by a general paucity of understanding about what is happening and how it started. In this book, based on his 2012 Adorno Lectures given in Frankfurt, Wolfgang Streeck places the crisis in the context of the long neoliberal transformation of postwar capitalism that began in the 1970s. He analyses the subsequent tensions and conflicts involving states, governments, voters and capitalist interests, as expressed in inflation, public debt, and rising private indebtedness. Streeck traces the transformation of the tax state into a debt state, and from there into the consolidation state of today. At the centre of the analysis is the changing relationship between capitalism and democracy, in Europe and elsewhere, and the advancing immunization of the former against the latter. In this new edition, Streeck has added a substantial postface on the reception of the book and the unfolding of the crisis in the Eurozone since 2014. |
Contents
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION | |
Crisis Theory Then and | |
A new type of crisis | |
The other legitimation crisis and the end of the postwar peace | |
FROM TAX STATE TO DEBT STATE | |
Starving the beast | |
The politics of the debt state | |
NEOLIBERALISM IN EUROPE | |
The consolidation state as a European multilevel regime | |
back to the future | |
On the strategic capacity of the European consolidation state | |
LOOKING AHEAD | |
In praise of devaluation | |
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Common terms and phrases
austerity budget Buying capitalist capitalist economy cent central banks citizens common competition countries country’s creditors crises crisis theories currency union decades deficit demands democracy democratic capitalism deregulation devaluation distribution conflict economic elections employment euro Europe European Union Eurozone example expenditure federation financial and fiscal financial markets fiscal consolidation fiscal crisis Frankfurt Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung funds Germany global Goldman Sachs Greece growth Hayek Hayekian income increased industry inflation institutions integration interest rates investment Italy Keynesian labour markets legitimation crisis less liberalization loans Mario Monti market justice Marktvolk member-states Mezzogiorno modern nation-states neoliberal OECD organizations Oxford political economy possible postwar capitalism problem production profit programme public debt public finances reforms regime result rise sector social justice society sovereignty spending stagnation Streeck structural Sweden taxation today’s trade unions University Press wage welfare