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Political Studies Review 14 (3)
during Brezhnev’s long reign. This disillusion
produced the radical economic reform wave of
the early 1990s as a reaction against the Soviet
system but also the cynicism and pragmatism
that later triumphed once the initial post-
communist reform wave faltered. This cynicism
and pragmatism were behind the combina-
tion of autocracy and market economy that
Vladimir Putin installed after 2000.
The question that this analysis naturally
raises is how will Russia change in the future
as the 1970s generation dies away and new
generations rise to political leadership?
Vladimir Gel’man and his co-authors offer
some hope that further generational–ideational
shifts are likely to occur. They note, however,
that this will take some time – another decade
or two – and that there are considerable struc-
tural obstacles to democratisation to overcome.
It is comforting to think that we can wait out
the Putin generation, but it is hard to be certain
which way any generation’s ideas might
develop. The general idea in this book is that
each generation reacts against the dominant
ideas of their time and this might lead to a reac-
tion against autocracy, and that this will be
helped along by globalisation and modernisa-
tion. We shall see, but in the meantime, this
useful volume is the best brief history of the
recent Russian past and the ideas that have
driven change that we have and is recom-
mended for specialists and students alike.
Neil Robinson
(University of Limerick)
The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929916649828
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The Politics of Extreme Austerity: Greece
in the Eurozone Crisis by Georgios Karyotis
and Roman Gerodimos (eds). Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 323pp., £68.00 (h/b),
ISBN 9781137369222
The financial crisis brought on by the collapse of
the American subprime markets in 2008 shook
the global economy, and Europe, after more than
5 years of being in a recession, has not been able
to deal with the consequences, resulting in a seri-
ous debt crisis. Greece, in particular, after a
steady and increasing growth rate for a decade,
has found itself at the epicentre of the crisis and it
was the first country that was hit hard by it; only
recently, the newly elected government of Syriza,
after a long and unfortunately fruitless round of
negotiations, had to succumb to the creditors’
demands for further austerity measures.
The Politics of Extreme Austerity is a col-
lection of articles edited by Georgios Karyotis
and Roman Gerodimos that tries to interpret
and seek solutions to the Greek crisis. It is
structured along four distinct research ques-
tions, eloquently summarised by the editors in
the introduction to the book, each one of them
corresponding to a separate section. The
research questions the contributors are called
to answer are as follows: ‘How is the crisis
framed and represented in public debates and
by whom?’, ‘What policies are introduced in
response and how effective are these in arrest-
ing the crisis?’, ‘What are the implications of
these frames and policies for society and poli-
tics?’, and finally, ‘What are the broader
global phenomena driving or affecting both
crises and crisis management?’. As the editors
of the book rightly emphasise, ‘To understand
austerity politics, […] each of these [ques-
tions] has to be analysed separately and in
relation to each other’ (p. 5), a relation that all
authors have in mind and the reader of the
book does not fail to grasp after reading it.
Each article is structured in a masterly and
well-documented manner by some of the most
experienced researchers in the field. Of great
value are the interviews conducted by the edi-
tors between 2009 and 2011 with former Greek
Prime Minister George Papandreou, presenting
his own assessment and insights of the Greek
and European crises. This is one of the most
important contributions of the book, irrespec-
tive of any disagreement with the findings of
some of the essays which one might have. This
study is one of the first to take Greece as a dis-
tinct case study and, more importantly, it opens
up the debate on the Greek and European cri-
ses, which is a topic that will be at the centre of
European development for years to come,
especially as the crisis is bound only to deepen.
Nikos Christofis
(Leiden University)
The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1478929916649829
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