The ‘austerity settlement’ has come to define the post-crisis European political economy. Since 2010, parties from across Europe’s political mainstream have implemented austerity and despite the apparent conflict with the interests of their traditional constituents, even social democratic parties have acquiesced to this settlement. However, within the existing literature ‘social democratic austerity’ is currently under-theorized as it is assumed to involve a rather straightforward adaptation of social democrats to neo- and/or ordoliberal ideas. Utilizing rich and original evidence from over 60 elite interviews with key social democratic stakeholders in France, Germany and the UK, this article contests this view. It demonstrates instead that a distinct set of ideas based on New Keynesianism, supply-side economics, and the social investment paradigm provide the ideational foundations for social democratic austerity post-crisis. Understanding this, it is argued, is critical in order to fully appreciate how and why austerity has become dominant in post-crisis Europe.

中文翻译：

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大萧条时期社会紧缩的思想基础

“紧缩解决方案”已经定义了危机后的欧洲政治经济。自2010年以来，来自欧洲政治主流国家的政党都实行了紧缩政策，尽管与传统选民的利益明显冲突，甚至社会民主党也默许了这一解决方案。但是，在现有文献中，“社会民主紧缩”目前尚处于理论不足状态，因为它被认为涉及社会民主主义者对新思想和/或道德思想的相当直接的适应。本文利用来自法国，德国和英国的关键社会民主利益相关者的60多次精英访谈的丰富原始证据，对这一观点提出了质疑。相反，它表明，基于新凯恩斯主义，供给方经济学，社会投资范式为危机后的社会民主紧缩提供了理论基础。有人认为，理解这一点至关重要，以便充分理解紧缩如何以及为何在危机后的欧洲占主导地位。