School of Public Policy Professor Alison Johnston researches the intersection of comparative and international political economy
Alison Johnston
By Jessica Florescu, CLA Student Writer - August 13, 2025
Alison Johnston, professor of political science, is a prominent scholar in the fields of political economy, labor markets, and public finance. Her research agenda is characterized by a deep engagement with the institutional and political underpinnings of economic governance in advanced democracies, particularly within the European Union. Through a prolific body of work, Johnston explores how political institutions, market actors, and international economic structures interact to shape policy outcomes and economic performance.
Johnson has taught at OSU since 2011, after graduating from the London School of Economics with a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in European political economy. Her research journey is propelled by the question: How do countries' political and policy choices affect the credit ratings they receive? This lies at the heart of her 2023 book, Rating Politics: Sovereign Credit Ratings and Democratic Choice in Prosperous Developed Countries, co-authored with Zsófia Barta, assistant professor at Sciences Po in Paris, France, Johnston explores how sovereign credit ratings act as powerful constraints on democratic governments. She calls this the “golden straitjacket,” a metaphor that captures the tension between fiscal discipline and democratic choice. Her research shows that even in wealthy democracies, credit rating agencies can penalize governments for expansive welfare policies, subtly steering public policy away from redistribution and toward austerity.
But Johnston’s concern with structural constraints on democracy didn’t begin with credit ratings. Her earlier work focused on the European Monetary Union (EMU), where she uncovered another kind of monetary straitjacket. In her 2016 book, From Convergence to Crisis: Labor Markets and the Instability of the Euro, Johnston argued that the EMU’s one-size-fits-all monetary policy exacerbated economic divergence among member states. Countries with different labor market institutions were forced into the same monetary mold, leading to instability and crisis.
As Europe grappled with the fallout of the Eurozone crisis, Johnston turned her attention to political populism. In her 2024 article “So right it’s wrong? Right governments, far right populism, and investment risk”, she examined how far-right populist governments influence investment risk, revealing that markets are not ideologically neutral. Investors, she found, react strongly to political ideology, especially when it threatens institutional norms. Her 2025 co-authored article, “Bent into Submission? Domestic investors and populist governments”, took this further, showing how domestic investors can act as a check on populist governments, subtly disciplining them through capital flight or investment hesitation.
Yet Johnston’s research is not confined to the macro-level. She has also delved into housing and household debt, exploring how financial liberalization and labor market dynamics have fueled inequality. In collaboration with similar scholars, she published influential articles such as “It takes two to tango: mortgage markets, labor markets and rising household debt in Europe” and “Housing prices and wealth inequality in Western Europe.” These works reveal how rising mortgage debt and housing prices have reshaped class structures and widened the gap between asset-rich and asset-poor households.