Bulletin n. 2/2016 | ||
December 2016 | ||
Simon Otjes |
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How the eurozone crisis reshaped the national economic policy space: The Netherlands 2006–2012 | ||
in Acta Politica , Volume 51, Issue 3 , 2016 , 273–297 | ||
This article shows that the eurozone crisis has reshaped the national economic policy space. The extent to which parties favour European integration, affects their positions on economic policies. These results stand in contrast to earlier studies that found limited effects of European integration on national party systems or found effects in other domains than the economic realm. The article focuses on economic decision-making in the Netherlands between 2006 and 2012. The economic left/right dimension no longer suffices to understand the economic policy positions of political parties: party positions on important welfare state reforms do not follow the left/right line of conflict, but rather a reform line of conflict that divides parties from the left and the right into pro-European reformers oriented at sustainability of the welfare state and Eurosceptic defenders of the existing welfare state. The measurement of party positions is based on the self-positioning of parties on hundreds of economic policies that they submit to the Netherlands Bureau of Economic Analysis. | ||