1st Edition
Electoral Politics in Crisis After the Great Recession Change, Fluctuations and Stability in Iceland
This book examines to what extent politics in Iceland have been transformed in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.
The book focuses on whether the short-term sudden shock caused by the Great Recession has permanently transformed politics, political behaviour and the Icelandic party system or whether its effect was primarily transitory. These questions remain highly relevant to the wider field of political science, as the book examines under what circumstances sudden shocks lead to permanent changes in a political system. As such, the book situates the post-crisis Icelandic case both temporally and comparatively and evaluates to what extent the Iceland experience is reflective of broader patterns found in other Western democracies, particularly those other countries that were also hard hit by the Great Recession (e.g. Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy).
This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Nordic politics, Icelandic politics and society, electoral studies, political parties and party systems, representative democracy, political behaviour and more broadly to European and comparative politics.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
1. The consequences of the Great Recession on party politics and voters in Iceland: Theoretical framework
2: A precursor to a crisis: Politics in the era of the Icelandic economic miracle
3. The political consequences of the economic collapse
4. The issue preferences of the mass public and their social structural antecedents
5. Satisfaction with democracy, political trust and confidence in politics
6. Political participation and engagement
7. Politics in turmoil: A crumbling party system?
8. Politics in turmoil: The party system and new parties in post-crisis Iceland
9. Party–voter alignments before and after the Great Recession
10. The transformative impact of the Great Recession on the political system
Biography
Eva H. Önnudóttir is Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland, Iceland.
Agnar Freyr Helgason is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland, Iceland.
Ólafur Th. Hardarson is Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland, Iceland, where he served as Dean of the Social Sciences for 12 years.
Hulda Thórisdóttir is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Iceland, Iceland.
All authors are on the Steering committee of the Icelandic National Election Study.
"Descriptively informative and insightful, analytically ambitious and stimulating, this book is a must read for any student of comparative electoral behaviour."
Hermann Schmitt, University of Manchester, UK"The book is essential reading for anyone interested in Icelandic politics. It analyses the impact of the great recession against the backdrop of long-term changes among the electorate with a view to discerning short-term and long-term factors. It is easy to read yet analytically and methodologically advanced."
Gunnar Helgi Kristinsson, University of Iceland, Iceland
