ABSTRACT
The financial crisis of the United States and the Eurozone, whose fully blown materialization can conventionally be dated to 15 September 2008 (the date Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection), and yet to come to an end at the time of writing this introduction, it is the most recent of a series of financial and sovereign debt crises that have affected different regions of the world over the past quarter century. Financial crises have political repercussions that vary considerably across regions and countries. Financial and sovereign debt crises cut across international and domestic politics and involve intense interactions between international and regional actors, governments, and citizens. While the economic factors behind financial crises are often similar, political responses tend to differ considerably. How a country responds to and manages a financial crisis is shaped by a number of political actors—domestic and international—whose objectives may be not only in conflict but also, as they try to understand the causes and consequences of the crisis, in flux. Their interactions shape both the immediate policy responses and the medium- to long-term policy and political consequences of the crisis. This book seeks to contribute to our understanding of the politics of financial crises by looking at their political repercussions in a comparative perspective. It includes single and comparative case studies across different regions, covering financial and sovereign debt crises in Asia (South Korea 1997), Latin America (Mexico 1982 and 1994–1995; Venezuela 1994; Argentina and Uruguay 2001–2002), and Russia (1998), as well as the contemporary crises in the US and some key European countries (UK, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain, and Denmark).
