Capitalism and Its Legitimacy in Times of Crisis

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xv

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2. A Legitimation Crisis of the Capitalist Market Economy?

   • Steffen Schneider, Henning Schmidtke

   Pages 1-35

3. Justifying and Criticizing the Capitalist Market Economy: A Typology of Legitimation Criteria

   • Frank Nullmeier, Dominika Biegoń

   Pages 37-60

4. Legitimation Discourse before and after the Financial Crisis: Contours and Trajectories

   • Henning Schmidtke, Steffen Schneider

   Pages 61-94

5. Making Sense of the Great Recession: Responsibility Attributions in Tough Times

   • Falk Lenke, Henning Schmidtke

   Pages 95-121

6. Metaphorical Anticapitalism: Regulation, Not Transformation

   • Jennifer Gronau

   Pages 123-158

7. Narrative Legitimation: The Capitalist Market Economy as a Success Story

   • Dominika Biegoń

   Pages 159-189

8. (De-)Legitimating Discourse Networks: Smoke without Fire?

   • Sebastian Haunss

   Pages 191-220

9. Capitalism’s Resilience after the Financial Crisis: A Discursive Explanation

   • Jennifer Gronau, Sebastian Haunss

   Pages 221-238

10. Back Matter

    Pages 239-260

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This volume examines why the 2008 financial crisis with the subsequent Great Recession did not foster a major institutional transformation of the capitalist market economy. It highlights the role of ideas and public discourse in explaining institutional stability and change in the wake of economic crises and other critical junctures. Examining legitimation discourse in four OECD countries (Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States) between 1998 and 2011, the contributions to the volume use different text-analytical methods to bring out the ideas that underpin affirmative and critical media discourse on the capitalist regime. Individual chapters focus on the contours and trajectories of legitimation discourse before and after the financial crisis, on the attribution of responsibility for the crisis, on the use of metaphors and narratives, and on the formation of discourse coalitions challenging the regime. Together, they show that the post-2008 legitimation crisis of the capitalist market economy did not result in its sustained delegitimation or in powerful new ideas that might have mobilized support for radical institutional change. The book will appeal to students and scholars of economic sociology, media studies and political science.

• Capitalist market economy
• Financial crisis
• Discourse analysis
• OECD
• Valuation analysis
• Recession
• Narrative Legitimation
• discourse networks
• the Great Depression
• 2008 global financial crisis
• economic regime
• Keynesianism
• neoliberalism
• historical institutionalism
• text-analytical research
• legitimation crisis
• media discourse
• discursive structures

• SOCIUM Research Center on Inequality and Social Policy, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany

  Steffen Schneider, Sebastian Haunss

• Bavarian School of Public Policy, TUM School of Governance, Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany

  Henning Schmidtke

• Centre for Global Cooperation Research (Käte-Hamburger-Kolleg), Duisburg, Germany

  Jennifer Gronau

Steffen Schneider is Senior Research Fellow at the Research Centre on Inequality and Social Policy (SOCIUM), University of Bremen, Germany.


Henning Schmidtke is Senior Research Fellow at the Bavarian School of Public Policy, Technical University of Munich, Germany.


Sebastian Haunss is Senior Research Fellow at the Research Centre on Inequality and Social Policy (SOCIUM), University of Bremen, Germany.


Jennifer Gronau is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Global Cooperation Research, Käte-Hamburger-Kolleg, Duisburg, Germany.

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