Collective memories on the 2010 European debt crisis
| Author | Kai A Konrad,Niklas Potrafke,Laura Arnemann |
| DOI | 10.1177/14651165211009972 |
| Published date | 01 December 2021 |
| Date | 01 December 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Collective memories
on the 2010 European
debt crisis
Laura Arnemann
Department of Business, University of Mannheim,
Mannheim, Germany
Kai A Konrad
Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, Munich,
Germany
Niklas Potrafke
Department of Economics, University of Munich, Munich,
Germany; ifo Institute, Munich, Germany
Abstract
We examine whether collective memories on the aid and reform programs chosen to
handle the 2010 European debt crisis differ between citizens from borrower and lender
countries. We use new international survey data for non-experts and experts in
member countries of the euro area. The results show that non-experts from borrower
and lender countries remember aspects of the programs in different manners; indicating
biases for assessments of how the crisis outcomes are perceived in borrower and
lender countries. Nation-serving biases may well explain that the 2010 European
debt crisis has reduced the sense of belonging rather than bringing European citizens
closer together.
Keywords
Aid and reform programs, collective memories, 2010 European debt crisis, experts,
nation-serving biases
Corresponding author:
Niklas Potrafke, ifo Institut – Leibniz-Institut fu¨r Wirtschaftsforschung an der Universit€
at Mu¨nchen e.V.,
Poschingerstraße 5, 81679 Munich, Germany.
Email: potrafke@ifo.de
European Union Politics
!The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/14651165211009972
journals.sagepub.com/home/eup
2021, Vol. 22(4) 762–784
Introduction
The 2010 European debt crisis partitioned the countries of the euro zone into two
groups: fiscal and financial market conditions dramatically deteriorated in some
Euro area countries (for an account of the crisis see, e.g. Frieden and Walter, 2017,
2019; Schimmelfennig, 2015). Five countries (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and
Cyprus) individually made formal applications for financial aid. These applica-
tions led to memoranda of understanding with the ‘Troika’, consisting of the
European Commission, the International Monetary Fund and the European
Central Bank. The memoranda contained two main aspects. The applicant country
received loans or loan guarantees and had to agree to pursue structural reforms in
its own economy under the supervision of the Troika. We refer to the countries
that made formal applications as the ‘borrower countries’. Other countries of the
eurozone collectively used their fiscal credibility to provide these loans or guaran-
tees and delegated the monitoring process on requested reforms in the borrower
countries to the Troika. These countries are referred to as ‘the lender countries’.
We examine how citizens from borrower and lender countries remember the
European debt crises, the aid and reform programs, their motivation and their
consequences. To this end, our study conducts two new international surveys. We
used an internet survey tool (Prolific) to interview citizens in the eurozone coun-
tries and CESifo’s World Economic Survey panel of experts (WES) to interview
international economic experts. To our knowledge, this is the first systematical
attempt to measure collective memories and differences in collective memories for
borrower countries and lender countries for the 2010 European debt crisis and for
its financial rescue missions. The study also compares the memories of eurozone
citizens and expert economists from the eurozone.
The memories of citizens (non-experts) and experts turn out to differ quite a bit.
The results show that non-experts from borrower countries had different memories
than non-experts from lender countries. In their memories their own country group
(borrower or lender country) appears in a favorable light. For example, non-
experts from borrower countries are 13.2 percentage points less likely to report
that the lender countries wanted to help the borrower countries than non-experts
from lender countries. In a similar vein, they are also 28 percentage points more
likely to report that the lender countries were the main beneficiaries of the pro-
gram. By contrast, the results do not suggest that experts from borrower countries
remember the 2010 European debt crisis in a different manner than experts from
lender countries.
To explain such differences, we refer to a finding in psychology according to
which people care about self-image and manage to remember events in a way that
makes them look more decent. A possible way in which this might happen is
gradual transformation of memories over time. This makes our work related to
studies in neuroscience and economic psychology approaches that deal with how
memories on private credit relationships that transform over time (Dezs}
o and
Loewenstein, 2012), and collective memories (Roediger and Abel, 2015;
763
Arnemann et al.
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