Between 2008 and 2014, satisfaction with democracy and the trust people had for their political institutions collapsed across most of Europe, but most severely in Southern Europe. Was this decline about the loss of citizens’ democratic choice due to the economic interventions or just the economic turmoil that surrounded them? In a new paper, Daniel Devine provides evidence that the likely cause was the economy rather than concerns about democratic processes.
The mass protests following the economic crisis in 2008 particularly, but not only, in Southern Europe, were concerned not just with the dire economic situation facing the majority of Europe, but how and where decisions were made. This is captured in an interview with an activist for the Barcelona-based Real Democracy Now, who said: ’We believe that real democracy is no longer possible in one country, but on a European level […] The commission, the European Central Bank – they are imposing austerity on us, yet they are not democratic institutions’. In the same tone, a call-to-arms pamphlet, Indignez-Vous, which sold over a million copies and united the European protest movements, decried the power that financial capital had to undermine European democracies. The movements were, of course, about the economic and social impacts of austerity, but also how and from where the policy was implemented. Continue reading “Democracy without choice – or just ‘the economy, stupid’? Political support during the Eurozone crisis”