Editors’ Introduction
基于制度约束导致主流政党应对冲击不力，解释欧洲国家民粹主义支持差异，实证发现欧元区国家在全球化与金融危机后民粹主义更成功，暗示政治联盟建设速度需谨慎。
Populist parties are likely to gain consensus when mainstream parties and status quo institutions fail to manage the shocks faced by their economies. Institutional constraints, which limit the possible actions in the face of shocks, result in poorer performance and frustration among voters who turn to populist movements. We rely on this logic to explain the different support of populist parties among European countries in response to the globalization shock and to the 2008–11 financial and sovereign debt crisis. We predict a greater success of populist parties in response to these shocks in Eurozone (EZ) countries, and our empirical analysis confirms this prediction. This is consistent with voters' frustration for the greater inability of the EZ governments to react to difficult-to-manage globalization shocks and financial crises. Our evidence has implications for the speed of construction of political unions. A slow, staged process of political unification can expose the European Union to a risk of political backlash if hard to manage shocks hit the economies during the integration process.