The fall-out from the economic and financial crisis of 2008 had profound implications for countries across the world, leading different states to determine the best approach to mitigating its effects. In The Austerity State, a group of established and emerging scholars tackles the question of why states continue to rely on policies that, on many levels, have failed.

After 2008, austerity policies were implemented in various countries, a fact the contributors link to the persistence of neoliberalism and its accepted wisdoms about crisis management. In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 collapse, governments and central banks appeared to adopt a Keynesian approach to salvaging the global economy. This perception is mistaken, the authors argue. The “austerian” analysis of the crisis is ahistorical and shifts the blame from the under-regulated private sector to public, or sovereign, debt for which public authorities are responsible.

The Austerity State provides a critical examination of the accepted discourse around austerity measures and explores the reasons behind its continued prevalence in the world.

Stephen McBride, Professor and Director of the Centre for Global Political Economy, specializes in political economy, and comparative public policy, and Canadian politics. He is the author of Not Working: State, Unemployment and Neo-conservatism in Canada (1992) which won the 1994 Smiley prize, and Paradigm Shift: Globalization and The Canadian State (2001; 2nd edition 2005). He is the co-author of Dismantling a Nation: Canada and the New World Order (1993; 2nd edition 1997) and several co-edited volumes: Global Turbulence: Social Activists’ and State Responses to Globalization (2003), Global Instability: Uncertainty and New Visions in Political Economy (2002), Globalization and its Discontents (2000), and Power in a Global Era (2000).

Stephen McBride is a professor in the Department of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in public policy and globalization at McMaster University.

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Bryan M. Evans is professor in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at Ryerson University and co-editor, with Carlo Fanelli, of The Public Sector in an Age of Austerity: Perspectives from Canada's Provinces and Territories.

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"The Austerity State’s analyses of the causes and thinking behind the austerity policies of North American and European governments in our time make a very useful contribution to scholarship. The accounts here of the actual practices and social impacts of austerity policies are also so timely and up to date − and so much of the previous literature is broadly and deeply canvassed − that this book can be expected to immediately find its way onto the reading lists of a broad range of university courses."

Leo Panitch, Senior Scholar, Emeritus Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science and Canada Chair in Comparative Political Economy, York University

"The Austerity State addresses major themes that are crucial for political economy in our century."

Paul Kellogg, Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, Athabasca University