This panel examines the role of ideas in policy responses to the eurozone crisis.  Much of the literature on this topic centers on a particular set of economic ideas held by German officials and propagated in Europe via the EU, namely ordo- or (more generally) neo-liberal ideas.  Yet this focus on German-style neoliberalism is often difficult to distinguish it from a purely materialist account where ideas are merely the expression of hegemonic material interests.  Perhaps even more problematically, the fixation on ordoliberalism downplays the persistence of competing ideas and glosses over the political contests that take place over neoliberal policies. The European turn to austerity tends to be interpreted primarily as an ideational phenomenon among elite actors, rather than an outcome of politics.  In order to remedy such problems, this panel proposes to investigate in a more fine-grained way which ideas inform various national and EU policy debates and how they contribute to explain policies. Its aim is to highlight the political processes through which austerity became dominant across a wide variety of contexts; whether alternative options were foreclosed or persisted under the radar; and to what extent ideas shaped policy and institutional responses to the crisis.