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Being the first casualty of the international financial crisis, Iceland was, in many ways, turned into a laboratory when it came to responding to one of the largest corporate failures on record.
This edited volume offers the most wide-ranging treatment of the Icelandic financial crisis and its political, economic, social, and constitutional consequences. Interdisciplinary, with contributions from historians, economists, sociologists, legal scholars, political scientists and philosophers, it also compares and contrasts the Icelandic experience with other national and global crises. It examines the economic magnitude of the crisis, the social and political responses, and the unique transitional justice mechanisms used to deal with it. It looks at backward-looking elements, including a societal and legal reckoning - which included the indictment of a Prime Minister and jailing of leading bankers for their part in the financial crisis - and forward-looking features, such as an attempt to rewrite the Icelandic constitution. Throughout, it underscores the contemporary relevance of the Icelandic case. While the Icelandic economic recovery has been much quicker than expected; it shows that public faith in political elites has not been restored.
This text will be of key interest to scholars, policy-makers and students of the financial crisis in such fields as European politics, international political economy, comparative politics, sociology, economics, contemporary history, and more broadly the social sciences and humanities.
Show moreBeing the first casualty of the international financial crisis, Iceland was, in many ways, turned into a laboratory when it came to responding to one of the largest corporate failures on record.
This edited volume offers the most wide-ranging treatment of the Icelandic financial crisis and its political, economic, social, and constitutional consequences. Interdisciplinary, with contributions from historians, economists, sociologists, legal scholars, political scientists and philosophers, it also compares and contrasts the Icelandic experience with other national and global crises. It examines the economic magnitude of the crisis, the social and political responses, and the unique transitional justice mechanisms used to deal with it. It looks at backward-looking elements, including a societal and legal reckoning - which included the indictment of a Prime Minister and jailing of leading bankers for their part in the financial crisis - and forward-looking features, such as an attempt to rewrite the Icelandic constitution. Throughout, it underscores the contemporary relevance of the Icelandic case. While the Icelandic economic recovery has been much quicker than expected; it shows that public faith in political elites has not been restored.
This text will be of key interest to scholars, policy-makers and students of the financial crisis in such fields as European politics, international political economy, comparative politics, sociology, economics, contemporary history, and more broadly the social sciences and humanities.
Show moreIntroduction
Valur Ingimundarson, Philippe Urfalino, and Irma Erlingsdóttir
Part I
The Road to Economic Disaster
1. Iceland’s Financial Crisis: An Economic Perspective
Gylfi Zoega
2. The Rise and Fall of a Financial Empire: Looking at the Banking Collapse from the Inside Out
Gudrun Johnsen
3. The Political Economy of Iceland’s Boom and Bust
Stefán Ólafsson
Part II
The Political and Societal Responses to the Crisis
4. Political Opportunity, Framing, and Mobilization in Iceland’s Post-Crash Protests
Jón Gunnar Bernburg and Anna Soffía Víkingsdóttir
5. Contentious Politics, Political Expediency, and the Real Costs of the Icesave Debt
Helga Kristín Hallgrímsdóttir and Emmanuel Brunet-Jailly
6. Democratic Practices, Governance, and the Financial Crash
Vilhjálmur Árnason
7. The Politics of Transition, Memory, and Justice: Assigning Blame for the Crisis
Valur Ingimundarson
8. The Strategy of Redistribution: Iceland’s Way Out of the Crisis
Stefán Ólafsson
Part III
The Politics of Iceland’s Constitutional Reform
9. Icelandic Constitution-Making in Comparative Perspective
Jon Elster
10. Constitution on Ice
Thorvaldur Gylfason
11. Constitutional Revision: A Weak Legislative Framework Compounded by Political Disputes
Salvör Nordal
12. Constituent Power and Authorization: Anatomy and Failure of a Constitution-Making Process
Pasquale Pasquino
13. The Constitutional Council: Objectives and Shortcomings of an Innovative Process
Björg Thorarensen
14. The Constituent Assembly: A Study in Failure
Jón Ólafsson
Valur Ingimundarson is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Iceland and the Chair of the Board of the EDDA – Center of Excellence.
Philippe Urfalino is Senior Researcher at the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), France.
Irma Erlingsdóttir is Associate Professor of French Contemporary Literature at the University of Iceland and Director of EDDA – Center of Excellence; the United Nations University Gender Equality Studies and Training Programme (UNU-GEST); and Institute for Gender, Equality and Difference (RIKK), University of Iceland.
This volume will be useful for anyone interested in delving further
into the case of the financial crisis in Iceland. Its range of
contributions provide interdisciplinary depth, inviting readers
from various disciplines to consider the crisis from angles that
might extend beyond familiar terrain.Reviewed by Alyssa Maraj
Grahame, Bowdoin College
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