What is the relationship between electoral and economic performance? Previous literature posits that poor economic performance hurts the incumbent at the ballot box because overall economic performance serves as a competence signal, which voters can readily access at low costs. Building on an...

On 24 May 2011, in the middle of the parliamentary debate on the so-called mid-term adjustment plan, yet another round of austerity imposed by Greece’s international creditors, a call for a demonstration at Syntagma Square in Athens and at the White Tower in Thessaloniki appeared on Facebook....

As we laid out in the introductory chapter of our volume, we propose a rather ambitious and innovative empirical strategy to study contentious politics – what we label as Contentious Episode Analysis (CEA). Having situated our approach in the intermediate meso-level between the “narrative...

The determinants of public spending composition have been studied from three broad perspectives in the scholarly literature: functional economic pressures, institutional constraints and party-political determinants. This paper engages with the third perspective by placing intra-governmental...

The determinants of public spending composition have been studied from three broad perspectives in the scholarly literature: functional economic pressures, institutional constraints and party-political determinants. This paper engages with the third perspective by placing intra-governmental...

Despite widely held views on fiscal adjustment as a political minefield for incumbents, the empirical literature on the issue has been surprisingly inconclusive. A crucial variable that has been often overlooked in the debate is partisan politics. Building on the micro-logic of Albert...

Despite widely held views on fiscal adjustment as a political minefield for incumbents, the empirical literature on the issue has been surprisingly inconclusive. A crucial variable that has been often overlooked in the debate is partisan politics. Building on the micro-logic of Albert...

The New Politics of the welfare state suggests that periods of welfare retrenchment present policy-makers with a qualitatively different set of challenges and electoral incentives compared to periods of welfare expansion. An unresolved puzzle for this literature is the relative electoral success...

The New Politics of the welfare state suggests that periods of welfare retrenchment present policy-makers with a qualitatively different set of challenges and electoral incentives compared to periods of welfare expansion. An unresolved puzzle for this literature is the relative electoral success...