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The Politics of Public Debt: Neoliberalism, Capitalist Development and the Restructuring of the State

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  • Wolfgang Streeck

Abstract

type="main" xml:id="geer12032-abs-0001"> 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.

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  • Wolfgang Streeck, 2014. "The Politics of Public Debt: Neoliberalism, Capitalist Development and the Restructuring of the State," German Economic Review, Verein für Socialpolitik, vol. 15(1), pages 143-165, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:germec:v:15:y:2014:i:1:p:143-165
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    Cited by:

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    4. Massoc, Elsa Clara, 2022. "Fifty shades of hatred and discontent: Varieties of anti-finance discourses on the European Twitter (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK)," SAFE Working Paper Series 338, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
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    7. van der Heide, Arjen, 2024. "Dealing government bonds: Trading infrastructures and infrastructural power in European markets for public debt," MPIfG Discussion Paper 24/2, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    8. Carolina Alves, 2023. "Fictitious capital, the credit system, and the particular case of government bonds in Marx," New Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(3), pages 398-415, May.
    9. Félix Adisson & Francesca Artioli, 2020. "Four types of urban austerity: Public land privatisations in French and Italian cities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(1), pages 75-92, January.
    10. Daniele, Vittorio, 2015. "Una stagnazione secolare? Italia, Giappone, Stati Uniti, 1950-2015 [Towards a secular stagnation? Italy, Japan, United States, 1950-2015]," MPRA Paper 69997, University Library of Munich, Germany.
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