The Longue Durée of a Tempestuous Marriage: The Multi-faceted Crisis of Democratic Capitalism

Abstract

Are democracy and capitalism incompatible? In the end, this is the crucial question of Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism1 by Wolfgang Streeck. According to the author, the present economic, financial, and public debt crisis is just the last chapter of the intricate relationship between democracy and capitalism. Starting from the end of World War II, the book reconstructs three consecutive phases of such relationship: the phase of “tax State”, spanning the so-called “Golden Age” (1945-75); the phase of “debtor State”, emerged over the seventies and eighties as the new institutional regime after the crisis of the tax State; and the present phase of budgetary “consolidation State”, a multilevel international regime based on fiscal austerity, de-politicization of economics and de-democratization of politics.

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