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9781781685495

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In its best parts - when political passion connects with critical exposition of the facts and incisive argument - Streeck's sweeping and empirically founded inquiry reminds one of Karl Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. - Jurgen Habermas Is electoral democracy compatible with the type of economic policies the EU - backed at a distance by Washington and Wall Street - wants to impose? This is the question posed by the Cologne-based sociologist Wolfgang Streeck in Buying Time, a book that is provoking debate in Germany. Streeck argues that since Western economic growth rates began falling in the 1970s, it has been increasingly hard for politicians to square the requirements of profitability and electoral success; attempts to do so ('buying time') have resulted in public spending deficits and private debt. The crisis has brought the conflict of interests between the financial markets and the popular will to a head: investors drive up bond yields at the 'risk' of an election. The outcome in Europe will be either one or the other, capitalist or democratic, Streeck argues; given the balance of forces, the former appears most likely to prevail. Citizens will have nothing at their disposal but words - and cobblestones. - Susan Watkins, London Review of Books Streeck has here provided an excellent and challenging account of the current state of relations between capitalism and democracy. His concept of a state whose democratic responsibilities to voters are required systematically to be shared with and often trumped by those to creditors takes us a major step forward. - Colin Crouch, author of Coping With Post-Democracy

Is electoral democracy compatible with the type of economic policies the EU - backed at a distance by Washington and Wall Street - wants to impose? This is the question posed by the Cologne-based sociologist Wolfgang Streeck in Buying Time, a book that is provoking debate in Germany. Streeck argues that since Western economic growth rates began falling in the 1970s, it has been increasingly hard for politicians to square the requirements of profitability and electoral success; attempts to do so ('buying time') have resulted in public spending deficits and private debt. The crisis has brought the conflict of interests between the financial markets and the popular will to a head: investors drive up bond yields at the 'risk' of an election. The outcome in Europe will be either on2e8or the other, capitalist or democratic, Streeck argues; given the balance of forces, the former appears most likely to prevail. Citizens will have nothing at their disposal but words - and cobblestones. Susan Watkins, London Review of Books

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Wolfgang Streeck is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Research in Cologne and Professor of Sociology at the University of Cologne. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics and a member of the Berlin Brandenburg Academy of Sciences as well as the Academia Europaea.

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