Abstract

The Eurozone crisis had a profound effect on the countries of the periphery—Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece—considered in this book as the chapters have articulated. Drawing together the insights from those chapters, this short conclusion suggests that while there were common causes and structural constraints on these countries, there were also important domestic differences in their political economies, which meant that their trajectories through the crisis were different. It offers a comparative analysis of the cases, pointing to both those differences and important similarities.