Attributing and Managing the Crisis: Lay Representations in Three European Countries

Stamos Papastamou,Gerasimos Prodromitis,Pierre Ratinaud,Joaquim Pires Valentim,Gabrielle Poeschl,Vassilis Pavlopoulos,Silvia Mari,Xenia Chryssochoou,Pascal Marchand,Chiara Volpato

doi:10.5334/irsp.148

Stamos Papastamou, Gerasimos Prodromitis + Show 8 more

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https://doi.org/10.5334/irsp.148

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Abstract

As part of a larger research project, we asked 1,806 adults from France, Greece, and Italy (in the larger project, Portuguese students were included) to discuss the causes of the current economic crisis and the strategies that should be adopted by the countries to overcome it. The six factors extracted by the factor analysis revealed that the economic crisis was attributed to the depletion of resources, the weakness of the financial system, planned conspiracy, system inequality, overconsumption, or the weakness of the political system. These causes had cross-national structural equivalence and overconsumption – a people-blaming cause – as opposed to conspiracy attributions to a global power or to structural inequalities inherent to the system. Further analyses found three types of strategies to exit the crisis – conforming to EU requests, rationalizing the public sector, and leaving the European Union – but failed to establish cross-national structural equivalence. Results thus suggest that there is some similarity in the discourses of the media that is reflected on people’s perceptions about the causes of the economic crisis, but that the strategies to exit the crisis are more linked to the socioeconomic conditions of the countries.

Highlights

As part of a larger research project, we asked 1,806 adults from France, Greece, and Italy to discuss the causes of the current economic crisis and the strategies that should be adopted by the countries to overcome it
The analysis revealed dimensions that cover a wide range of explanations of the economic crisis at different levels of abstraction that make reference to different ideological and value foundations
We observe causes that attribute the crisis to the political system and the bad administration of governments, or that attribute the responsibility to the citizens and their reckless consumerist behaviour

Summary

Introduction

As part of a larger research project, we asked 1,806 adults from France, Greece, and Italy (in the larger project, Portuguese students were included) to discuss the causes of the current economic crisis and the strategies that should be adopted by the countries to overcome it. It is extremely relevant that policymakers consider and support moderating mechanisms – of financial nature – in order to lessen such harmful effects In this vein, the public understanding of the economic crisis is a first step to detect possible psychological coping strategies. In Italy and France, it remained around 10%, whereas in the two countries under the supervision of the Troika (formed by the International Monetary Fund, the European Bank, and the European Commission), the employment rate increased considerably by doubling in Portugal and triplicating in Greece. This rate continued to increase in 2015

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