The handling of the Eurozone crisis has undermined confidence in democracy across Europe

In a forthcoming paper Klaus Armingeon and Kai Guthmann study the recent decline in support for national democracy in many European countries. To some degree, they find that support decreased simply as a result of the depth of the recession. More worryingly, though, the external imposition of austerity and structural reform policies by the troika of EU, IMF and ECB, or brought about through financial market pressure, has made things worse for democracy in Europe.