Rating Politics

Zsófia Barta is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University at Albany, having previous held positions at Central European University, Harvard University, and the European University Institute. Her research focuses on the politics of public debt, covering diverse aspects of public finances from societal conflicts surrounding austerity to the influence of the markets for government debt on policy choice.Alison Johnston is Associate Professor in Public Policy and the current holder of the Ulysses G. Dubach Chair in Political Science at Oregon State University. Her research lies at the intersection of international and comparative political economy, with a focus on the political economy of comparative capitalism and European monetary integration, growth models, housing markets and household debt, sovereign credit ratings, and general strikes. She is currently the lead editor of the Review of International Political Economy.

• Acknowledgments List of figures Abbreviations 1: The puzzle: How do sovereign ratings react to politics and policy? 2: The business: Why do ratings incorporate politics and policy? 3: The score: How do rating correlate with politics and policy? 4: The frame: How do rating analysts rationalize their approach to politics and policy? 5: The narrative: How rating reports explain specific rating decisions in Denmark, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom 6: The upshot: Ratings as a neglected force in global governance Bibliography Index

Zsofia Barta and Alison Johnston have written the best book to date on the political economy of sovereign credit ratings. In Rating Politics, Barta and Johnston demonstrate that the often unintuitive logic of how rating agencies assess the credit worthiness of sovereigns creates constraints on policies, despite the fact that the agencies do not assess governments directly through lenses of either politics of policies. The role of rating agencies in sovereign credit markets is influential and at the same time poorly understood. Employing every possible methodological tool to make sense of the practices and effects of rating agencies, Barta and Johnston have made a significant, enduring contribution to our understanding of how the world economy functions.