Interest Group Preferences in Deficit Countries – Ireland, Spain and Greece

The project analyzes how societies’ vulnerabilities to different types of policy responses to the crisis affects their willingness to engage in policies that constribute to a sustainable solution of the euro crisis. The argument builds on the insight that the euro crisis is, at its root, a balance-of-payments crisis and argues that the resulting distributive struggles surrounding the politics of the euro crisis in surplus and deficit countries are distinct but related, and should therefore be analyzed in a unified framework. The vulnerability to internal reforms is inversely related to the willingness to support (in surplus countries) or demand (in deficit countries) transfer payments to crisis countries. Empirically, the project examined how vulnerability profiles affect domestic crisis politics and policies on two levels of analysis, the interest-group and the national level. It used a mixed-methods research design that combined a quantitative analysis of national vulnerability profiles and crisis politics in a wider set of deficit and surplus countries, interest-group surveys in selected Eurozone surplus and deficit countries and qualitative comparative case studies of the domestic politics of the euro crisis in these countries. The overarching goal of the project was to generate an encompassing picture of the distributional politics of the euro crisis and a better understanding of the constraints under which European policymakers operate in their attempts to solve the crisis.

本项目旨在探究社会对危机各类政策应对的脆弱性，如何影响其参与助力欧元危机可持续解决相关政策的意愿。本研究的立论基础在于：欧元危机本质上是一场国际收支危机；盈余国与赤字国围绕欧元危机政治所产生的分配斗争虽各具特征却彼此关联，因此应置于统一分析框架下开展研究。国内改革脆弱性与盈余国支持、赤字国要求向危机国提供转移支付的意愿呈负相关关系。在实证层面，本项目从利益集团与国家两个分析维度，考察脆弱性特征如何影响国内危机政治与政策。本研究采用混合研究设计，整合了多组盈余与赤字国家的国家层面脆弱性特征与危机政治的定量分析、选定欧元区盈余与赤字国家的利益集团调研，以及上述国家国内欧元危机政治的定性比较案例研究。本项目的核心目标是全面勾勒欧元危机的分配政治图景，并深化对欧洲政策制定者在解决危机过程中所面临约束条件的理解。