The Politics of Public Debt: Neoliberalism, Capitalist Development and the Restructuring of the State
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Wolfgang Streeck
Abstract
Rising public debt has been widespread in democratic-capitalist political economies since the 1970s, generally accompanied among other things by weak economic growth, rising unemployment, increasing inequality, growing tax resistance, and declining political participation. Following an initial period of fiscal consolidation in the 1990s, public debt took an unprecedented leap in reponse to the Great Recession. Renewed consolidation efforts, under the pressure of ‘financial markets’, point to a general decline in state expenditure, particularly discretionary and investment expenditure, and of extensive retrenchment and privatization of state functions.
© 2019 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial
- Fiscal Stability of High-Debt Nations under Volatile Economic Conditions
- Sovereign Default Risk and Banks in a Monetary Union
- Public Debt and Price Stability
- Public Debt in Post-1850 German Economic Thought vis-à-vis the Pre-1850 British Classical School
- Budget Rules and Fiscal Policy: Ten Lessons from Theory and Evidence
- Balanced Budget Requirements and Debt Brakes Feasibility and Enforcement
- On the Political Economy of Public Deficits and Debt
- Democracy, Elections and Government Budget Deficits
- The Politics of Public Debt: Neoliberalism, Capitalist Development and the Restructuring of the State
- It Is Private, Not Public Finances that Are Out of Whack
- Public and Private Debt: The Historical Record (1870–2010)
- What Is the Value of Sovereign Ratings?
Articles in the same Issue
- Editorial
- Fiscal Stability of High-Debt Nations under Volatile Economic Conditions
- Sovereign Default Risk and Banks in a Monetary Union
- Public Debt and Price Stability
- Public Debt in Post-1850 German Economic Thought vis-à-vis the Pre-1850 British Classical School
- Budget Rules and Fiscal Policy: Ten Lessons from Theory and Evidence
- Balanced Budget Requirements and Debt Brakes Feasibility and Enforcement
- On the Political Economy of Public Deficits and Debt
- Democracy, Elections and Government Budget Deficits
- The Politics of Public Debt: Neoliberalism, Capitalist Development and the Restructuring of the State
- It Is Private, Not Public Finances that Are Out of Whack
- Public and Private Debt: The Historical Record (1870–2010)
- What Is the Value of Sovereign Ratings?