Financial Crisis Management and Democracy: Lessons from Europe and Latin America

This open access book discusses financial crisis management and policy in Europe and Latin America, with a special focus on equity and democracy. Based on a three-year research project by the Jean Monnet Network, this volume takes an interdisciplinary, comparative approach, analyzing both the role and impact of the EU and regional organizations in Latin America on crisis management as well as the consequences of crisis on the process of European integration and on Latin America’s regionalism.

The book begins with a theoretical introduction, exploring the effects of the paradigm change on economic policies in Europe and in Latin America and analyzing key systemic aspects of the unsustainability of the present economic system explaining the global crises and their interconnections. The following chapters are divided into sections. The second section explores aspects of regional governance and how the economic and financial crises were managed on a macro level in Europe and Latin America. The third and fourth sections use case studies to drill down to the impact of the crises at the national and regional levels, including the emergence of political polarization and rise in populism in both areas. The last section presents proposals for reform, including the transition from finance capitalism to a sustainable real capitalism in both regions and at the inter-regional level of EU-LAC relations.The volume concludes with an epilogue on financial crises, regionalism, and domestic adjustment by Loukas Tsoukalis, President of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP).

Written by an international network of academics, practitioners and policy advisors, this volume will be of interest to researchers and students interested in macroeconomics, comparative regionalism, democracy, and financial crisis management as well as politicians, policy advisors, and members of national and regional organizations in the EU and Latin America. 

Bettina De Souza Guilherme, is an official at the European Parliament (Brussels, Belgium), working for the Committee of Economic and Monetary Affairs, She studied political science and economics at the University of Vienna.  From 2014 to 2018 she worked as a Professora Colaboradora at the University of Sao Paulo.  In 2016, she and Christian Ghymers founded and co-coordinated the Jean Monnet Network for Crisis-Equity-Democracy for Europe and Latin America.

Christian Ghymers is Professor at ICHEC - Brussels Management School (Belgium). He holds the academic university accreditation and tenure in international economics from Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve UCL/ICHEC (Belgium). He is President of Institute for Relations between the EU and Latin American and the Caribbean (IRELAC) and Vice-President of the RTI (Triffin Foundation) at Catholic University of Louvain.

Stephany Griffith-Jones is Financial Markets Director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University (US), Emeritus Professorial Fellow at Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Sussex University and   Senior associate fellow at the Overseas Development Institute (ODI), London University (UK). She has published widely (including over 25 books) and holds a PhD from Cambridge University and a degree in Economics from the University of Chile.

Andrea Ribeiro Hoffmann is Professor of International Relations at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC), Brazil. She has a Ph.D. from the University of Tübingen, Germany, and has been a visiting scholar at the London School of Economics (UK), University of Erfurt and the Free University of Berlin (Germany).