Economic Recovery in the Euro Area: The Asymmetrical Recoveries of Greece, Ireland and Portugal Following the Late 2000s European Debt Crisis

The late 2000s financial crisis within the euro area had distinct effects on different member states of the polity despite a shared monetary policy and supranational organizational structure. Certain countries like Greece suffered a prolonged (and ongoing) economic crisis while others, Portugal and Ireland as discussed in this thesis, had periods of crisis but returned to normalcy after some time. Commitment to certain policies at the national level cannot fully explain the speed of these recoveries; Portugal and Ireland, for instance, had different levels of commitment to and popular willingness to endure austerity measures. All three countries will be discussed considering their parliamentary structures (i.e. whether governments held a parliamentary majority, were maintained by an ideologically consistent coalition, etc.) to show that the power and decisiveness of ruling parties played some role in economic recovery