The Great Recession and its aftershocks, including the Eurozone banking and debt crisis, add up to the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although economic explanations for the Great Recession have proliferated, the political causes and consequences of the crisis have received less systematic attention. Politics in the New Hard Times is the first book to focus on the Great Recession as a political crisis, one with both political sources and political consequences.

Introduction: Anatomy of Crisis: The Great Recession and Political Changeby Miles Kahler and David A. LakePart I. Crises and Politics: Is This Time Different?1. Economic Crisis and Global Governance: The Stability of a Globalized Worldby Miles Kahler2. Politics in Hard Times Revisited: The 2008-9 Financial Crisis in Emerging Marketsby Stephan Haggard3. Partisan Financial Cyclesby J. Lawrence Broz4. The Politics of Hard Times: Fiscal Policy and the Endogeneity of Economic Recessionsby Pablo M. PintoPart II. Interests, Coalitions, and Consequences5. The Political Origins of Our Economic Discontents: Contemporary Adjustment Problems in Historical Perspectiveby Peter A. Hall6. Puzzles from the First Globalizationby Suzanne Berger7. Portfolio Politics in the New Hard Times: Crises, Coalitions, and Shareholders in the United States and Germanyby James Shinn8. Coalition of Losers: Why Agricultural Protectionism Survives during the Great Recessionby Megumi Naoi and Ikuo Kume9. Crafting Trade Strategy in the Great Recession: The Obama Administration and the Changing Political Economy of the United Statesby Peter Cowhey10. Worlds in Collision: Uncertainty and Risk in Hard Timesby Peter J. Katzenstein and Stephen C. NelsonAfterword: Yet More Hard Times? Reflections on the Great Recession in the Frame of Earlier Hard Timesby Peter A. GourevitchReferencesAbout the ContributorsIndex