Accountability After Economic Crises: Institutional Flaws and Political Learning

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

The panel Accountability after Economic Crises:Institutional Flaws and Political Learning will aim to shed light on the nexus between policies of accountability and learning from past policy failures in countries that have recently emerged from the post-2008 financial crisis. This comparative and interdisciplinary panel will apply the concepts of transitional justice, namely, ‘dealing with the past’, to investigate how four European societies (Iceland, Greece, Cyprus, Ireland) have come to terms with the origins and consequences of the crisis. The Great Recession provides an excellent backdrop against which to examine processes of accountability and learning, as a number of post-crisis countries set up investigative (or judicial) mechanisms to deal with the political and institutional flaws that led to the meltdowns, ranging from commissions of inquiry to prosecutions of financial and political actors. The panel will draw on this year’s call to address questions as to how democracies are coping with the emergence of new economic, social and cultural cleavages as well as how political elites and others challenge the legitimacy of existing institutions and remake new ones. The individual papers will provide novel theoretical insights informed by various disciplines (law, political science and public administration) as well as draw on new databases funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) on the political, legal, criminal and regulatory policies formulated in each country as well as incidents of political polarization and governmental instability.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• Accountability in Comparative Governance: A Flawed Paradigm? - Neophytos Loizides; Iosif Kovras, City University of London; Nadia Hilliard, City, University of London

• Who’s Sorry Now? Explaining (Non)Apologies in Post-Crisis Europe - Iosif Kovras, City University of London; Kieran McEvoy, Queens University Belfast

• Transitional Justice After Economic Collapse: The Case of Iceland - Ragnar Hjalmarsson, Hertie School of Governance

• International Economic Institutions and Individual Accountability - Stefano Pagliari, City University of London; Nadia Hilliard, City, University of London

Chair

• Kieran McEvoy Queens University Belfast

Discussant

• Edward Morgan-Jones University of Kent