The right and the recession considers
the ways in which conservative activists, groupings, parties and interests in
the US and Britain responded to the financial crisis and the ‘Great Recession’
that followed in its wake. The book looks at the tensions and stresses between
different ideas, interests and institutions and the ways in which they shaped
the character of political outcomes. In Britain, these processes opened the way
for leading Conservatives to redefine their commitment to fiscal retrenchment and
austerity. Whereas public expenditure reductions had been portrayed as a
necessary response to earlier overspending they were increasingly represented
as a way of securing a permanently ‘leaner’ state. The book assesses the
character of this shift in thinking as well as the viability of these efforts
to shrink the state and the parallel attempts in the US to cut federal
government spending through mechanisms such as the budget sequester.