Although economic explanations for the Great Recession have proliferated, the political causes and consequences of the crisis have received less systematic attention. This is the first book to focus on it as a political rather than an economic crisis.

Introduction: Anatomy of Crisis: The Great Recession and Political Change by 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 World by Miles Kahler2. Politics in Hard Times Revisited: The 2008–9 Financial Crisis in Emerging Markets by Stephan Haggard3. Partisan Financial Cycles by J. Lawrence Broz4. The Politics of Hard Times: Fiscal Policy and the Endogeneity of Economic Recessions by Pablo M. PintoPart II. Interests, Coalitions, and Consequences5. The Political Origins of Our Economic Discontents: Contemporary Adjustment Problems in Historical Perspective by Peter A. Hall6. Puzzles from the First Globalization by Suzanne Berger7. Portfolio Politics in the New Hard Times: Crises, Coalitions, and Shareholders in the United States and Germany by James Shinn8. Coalition of Losers: Why Agricultural Protectionism Survives during the Great Recession by Megumi Naoi and Ikuo Kume9. Crafting Trade Strategy in the Great Recession: The Obama Administration and the Changing Political Economy of the United States by Peter Cowhey10. Worlds in Collision: Uncertainty and Risk in Hard Times by Peter J. Katzenstein and Stephen C. NelsonAfterword: Yet More Hard Times? Reflections on the Great Recession in the Frame of Earlier Hard Times by Peter A. GourevitchReferences About the Contributors Index

Kahler and Lake bring together a wide range of scholars in the areas of political science, international relations, and risk management to systematically analyze the political causes and consequences of the great recession from a different perspective. By disregarding an economic explanatory framework of the great recession in favor of a political genesis perspective of the crisis, the contributors offer sound analyses of past and contemporary endogenous events that contributed to the crisis, shaped choices by political actors, and produced varying consequences.

Politics in the New Hard Times demonstrates—most remarkably in Peter Gourevitch's Afterword—that the Great Recession of the last few years cannot be understood without appreciating financial deregulation, the rise in the privileges of finance, and the political power that generated these malign results. To understand the politics of the Great Recession, read this book.