Why Parties Matter....

Not in the political science sense, but rather in the policy sense: There has been much chatter in the press about the different priorities that are being brought to the G-20 meeting, with the most pronounced difference (or at least the one most often highlighted) being the division between Obama and the United States (who want additional stimulus at best and at the very least want to avoid taking the money out of the economy before the recovery is secured) and European leaders who want immediate and often harsh fiscal austerity.

The suggested reasons for this difference are to be found in the greater sensitivity of European counties to debt, either because of the closer involvement in the Greek drama or because of the greater debt-to-GDP ratios in some of these countries (the UK especially).

But what I have not heard mentioned is the fact that the major deficit-cutting hawks are all from their respective countries' conservative party: Sarkozy, Cameron, Merkel. And the new commitment to halve the debt by 2013? That little gem of foolhardy is brought to us by none other than Canada's Stephen Harper. There is nothing surprising about this. There is nothing particularly surprising in this. It is not that conservatives are more concerned with the problems of government debt; they aren't, and in Canada and the US at least it was under conservatives that a budget surplus painfully won by the respective liberal parties was wasted (in the US case, wasted on tax cuts that had very little stimulus value, on wars, and on the largest entitlement expansion in decades).

It's not that conservatives are more attuned to the responsibilities of accounting, nor are they less attuned to the positives of deficit spending (see above-mentioned tax cuts and wars). Rather, it is that they oppose the welfare state, either tout court or a more targeted dislike for programs that benefit groups outside of their base. And fiscal austerity, the consequences to long term recovery be damned, provides an excellent means to undermine and restructure the welfare state. The fact that the welfare state had very little to do with the explosion of debt is beside the point.

But let's cut the nonsense: the political class is not now worried about debt because it has become the central problem in these countries. Unemployment remains remarkably high, with tens of millions of people out of work. Rather, it has become the central problem amongst the political class because it serves the interests of conservative parties.

When the opportunity presents itself, conservatives will take it. I would only hope that liberals and social democrats would do the same were they presented with the opportunity to expand the welfare state.