European radical left parties (RLPs) are gradually receiving greater attention. Yet, to date, what has received insufficient focus is why such parties have maintained residues of electoral support after the collapse of the USSR and why this support varies so widely. This article is the first to subject RLPs to large-n quantitative analysis, focusing on 39 parties in 34 European countries from 1990 to 2008. It uses the 'supply and demand' conceptual framework developed for radical right parties to identify a number of socio-economic, political-cultural and party-system variables in the external environment that might potentially affect RLP support. The article finds the most persuasive variables to include political culture (past party success), the level of unemployment, Euroscepticism and antiglobalization sentiment, the electoral threshold and competition from Green and radical right parties. The findings suggest several avenues for future research and provide a framework that can be adapted to explain the electoral success of other party families.

The German Stability Culture is frequently pointed to in the literature as the source of the country's low inflationary policies and, at the European Union (EU) level, the design of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). In Germany, the term was regularly wielded by central bankers and Christian Democrat (CDU-CSU) politicians to legitimise the move to EMU in the face of a large majority of public opinion opposed, and subsequent EU-level policy developments, particularly in the context of the eurozone debt crisis that erupted in 2009. An ordered probit analysis is used to demonstrate the depth of the German Stability Culture, showing that support for low inflation cuts across all party and ideological lines. Despite this ubiquity, the term has been wielded with regularity only by the centre-right Christian Democrats and is strongly associated with this party. A strategic constructivist analysis is employed to explain this uneven but persistent usage in German domestic politics.

This article challenges the conventional wisdom of weak market discipline in Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). In so doing, we empirically analyse the dynamics of market discipline for all 27 EU member states between 1992 and 2007. The existing literature tends to assert that markets discipline governments, without measuring whether the interest punishment markets impose actually have the purported effect on government policy. To better grasp the dynamics of market discipline it is essential to consider both sides. Market discipline is thus understood as a two-sided phenomenon. On the one hand, financial investors react to policy developments. On the other hand, policy-makers react to market signals. We find strong evidence that although the impact of fiscal policy developments on market punishment slightly decreases with monetary integration, government responsiveness to market punishment increases. This runs counter to the conventional narrative of policy-makers banking on bail-out from fellow EMU members.Acknowledgement: Special thanks are due to Iain Hardie. I wish to thank the German National Merit Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes) for generous financial support. The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research

Our study seeks to prove that German Stability Culture is a myth. The concept is a core legitimizing element of economic policy discourse in Germany and used regularly to juxtapose Germany and northern Europe and the euro area periphery. Using Eurobarometer surveys we construct a measurement for Stability Culture which is based on the priority assigned to the fight against inflation. Our empirical analysis covers the 2002 to 2010 timespan and includes 27 European Union Member States. Our results show that the distinction between northern states with an allegedly strong and southern states with an allegedly weak Stability Culture is a myth. Controlling for actual inflation, we find that the northern Member States with an allegedly high Stability Culture are less concerned with price stability than the rest of the EU.

This article scrutinizes the impact of foreign bond ownership on market discipline, that is the mutual responsiveness of financial markets and sovereign borrowers. The empirical investigation covers 12 advanced economies during the Great Moderation (1981–2008). This article finds no evidence that foreign bond investors affect the sensitivity of bond spreads to fiscal policy. Reversely, results show that government responsiveness to market pressure is contingent on the make-up of its investor base. Bond spreads spur on fiscal consolidation. The larger the share of foreign bond investors, the bigger this effect.