This thesis seeks to analyze why austerity as an instrument and as an idea is still predominant within the European Union. It does so by combining economic and political perspectives of the...Show moreThis thesis seeks to analyze why austerity as an instrument and as an idea is still predominant within the European Union. It does so by combining economic and political perspectives of the Eurozone-crisis. The structural imbalances view of the Eurozone-crisis in particular plays an important role in this analysis. It can convincingly be argued that the Eurozone-crisis has, more or less successfully, been socially constructed as a sovereign debt-crisis of the European demand-led periphery. Instead, the view held in this thesis is that there is a triple complicity in the Eurozone-crisis: the demand-led periphery,the export-led core and the surrounding macroeconomic environment of the Eurozone.Show less