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How party linkages shape austerity politics: clientelism and fiscal adjustment in Greece and Portugal during the eurozone crisis
journal contribution
posted on 2014-11-14, 11:28 authored by Alexandre Afonso, Sotirios Zartaloudis, Yannis PapadopoulosDrawing on an analysis of austerity reforms in Greece and Portugal during the sovereign debt crisis from 2009 onwards, we show how the nature of the linkages between parties and citizens shapes party strategies of fiscal retrenchment. We argue that parties which rely to a greater extent on the selective distribution of state resources to mobilize electoral support (clientelistic linkages) are more reluctant to agree to fiscal retrenchment because their own electoral survival depends on their ability to control state budgets to reward clients. In Greece, where parties relied extensively on these clientelistic linkages, austerity reforms have been characterized by recurring conflicts and disagreements between the main parties, as well as a fundamental transformation of the party system. By contrast, in Portugal, where parties relied less on clientelistic strategies, austerity reforms have been more consensual because fiscal retrenchment challenged to a lesser extent the electoral base of the mainstream parties.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Politics and International Studies
Published in
Journal of European Public PolicyCitation
AFONSO, A., ZARTALOUDIS, S. and PAPADOPOULOS, Y., 2015. How party linkages shape austerity politics: clientelism and fiscal adjustment in Greece and Portugal during the eurozone crisis. Journal of European Public Policy, 22(3), pp. 315-334.Publisher
© Taylor and FrancisVersion
- VoR (Version of Record)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2015Notes
This article is closed access.ISSN
1350-1763eISSN
1466-4429Publisher version
Language
- en