How Uniform Has Austerity Been? a Political-Economic Analysis of Troika Programmes

Member states that needed a bailout programme were very different as regards their vulnerabilities. Did the programmes negotiated by the Troika of Commission, IMF and ECB reflect this diversity or did they impose the same austerity measures irrespective of the stark differences between Greece and Ireland, Portugal and Cyprus? We answer this question by comparing the measures laid down in the Memoranda of Understanding with the policies subsequently implemented by national authorities and assessed in the Troika’s progress reports. Based on the literature, we would expect that the measures prescribed in MoUs are more uniform than the latter. The literature also leads us to expect that the measures as prescribed in MoUs increase poverty and inequality while national legislators try to modify the most adverse outcomes. Both would indicate resistance against the ‘one-size-fits-all’ thrust of Troika programmes, a social pushback that scholarship in the tradition of Karl Polanyi (1944) hypothesizes. But these hypotheses have rarely been put to empirical scrutiny. We take a comparative case study of the Greek and Portuguese Troika programmes and look for evidence on both hypotheses. We find that Troika programmes start out as if they would follow a template but then differentiate between countries. Our paper explains how the EU/ the Troika accommodates heterogeneity of recipient countries but also why the institutions do not rebuff the impression that bailout programmes come with relentless, socially costly austerity even if the practice of bailouts is much more nuanced.