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2014
The paper describes the politico-economic context in which the crisis took place, presenting a theoretical framework able to capture the complex dynamics of the politico-economic bargains occurring between OCA countries in general and among Eurozone members in particular. We then proceed to review the rules EU policymakers adopted in their quest for an orderly conclusion to the crisis, taking stock of progress done towards deeper political and economic integration. We conclude by advancing a potential solution to make the Eurozone recovery more sustainable, all the while decreasing the likelihood and impact of future crises.
The aim of this work is to explain the Euro crisis either from an economic or from a political approach. The will is to underline what emerged during the several crises that affected the European Union and in particular the Eurozone. From the financial crisis, started in the United States in 2007, Europe has also been affected by a sovereign debt crisis and from a deep lack of legitimacy. All these events have shown how big and how limited is this complex system, which still now does not have any similar examples around the world. The various European issues brought to the surface, during the last seven years, forced "Economics professionals" and "Politics professionals", always separately in the respective fields, to deal with the problem of a precise moment and to adopt a temporary solution. This paper would contribute to create and to develop the idea that now, mainly "thanks" to the Euro crisis lato sensu, both economics and politics must act to find and to introduce measures which are part of a complete system, already thought and clear ex ante, immediately. It is time to rebuild the European Union and this essay suggests a clear political compact. However, every possible proposal has only one way to achieve it: Economics and Politics working together.
Annual Review of Political Science, 2016
This review sets out a recently developed comparative political economy literature on the Eurozone, which has a basis in both varieties of capitalism and modern macroeconomics. It contrasts the export-oriented, northern European, skill-intensive, coordinated market economies with coordinated wage-bargaining, on the one hand, with the southern European, demand-driven economies with strong public sector unions, on the other. It analyzes the Eurozone as an ongoing grouping of sovereign democratic states, each with strong concerns to remain within the Eurozone but in principle with an exit option. It argues that the origins of the Eurozone and its trajectory primarily reflected national economic concerns and not a political drive toward European integration; and its deflationary preference has been the rational choice of the export-oriented members and their bargaining power in the Eurozone, not an irrational rejection of Keynesianism. The Eurozone functioned well (comparably to the adv...
2014
After containing a populist backlash in May’s European Parliament elections, and with the fractious designation of Jean-Claude Juncker as Commission president all but complete, there are hopes that the EU can finally turn the page on some of its most difficult years. Yet, while sovereign bond yields in countries such as Ireland and Spain have come down sharply from the heights reached during the eurozone crisis, there is little sign of a sustained recovery. Many remain unconvinced that the EU, and the currency union in particular, have done enough to fix the institutional flaws exposed by the crisis. The new Commission president faces the task of trying to restructure a still imperfect union in spite of the reform fatigue that has permeated Brussels and national capitals.
The Cyprus Review, 26/1, Spring 2014 There are two levels to the Eurozone crisis. At a more fundamental level, it is a crisis of capitalism spawned by a secular decline in profitability that has given rise to growing indebtedness in the advanced capitalist countries. But the shape that this crisis takes is determined by the European Union’s political configuration, more precisely by the institutional imbalance between a centralised monetary policy and decentralised fiscal policies. This article traces the cause of this imbalance, through a brief examination of the political history of Europe’s monetary union, to the strategic ambivalence of France’s European policy. It concludes by arguing that the current crisis has created political conditions that should push French elites to reconsider their hostility to a more centralised fiscal policy framework for the Eurozone.
This book discusses how the global financial crisis induced the ‘Great Recession’ and triggered problems within the eurozone regarding sovereign debt. The authors argue that the failure of the eurozone to meet any convergence criteria, together with unjustified emphasis placed upon unproven rules and institutions derived from contemporary neoliberal macroeconomic thinking, was an accident waiting to happen. Additionally, a series of potential remedies is proposed, ranging from a critical evaluation of solutions that the EU has already instigated (moral suasion and financial relief measures) together with a series of alternative propositions (fiscal federalism and a ‘European Clearing Union’). Moreover, the analysis is extended to the collapse of the eurozone and to options for national economic self-governance.
PSL Quarterly Review (Forthcoming)
Paper under revision for PSL Quarterly Review , after the encouraging comments of two referees. Abstract: The analyses of the euro area crisis are often centered around the diverging behavior of fundamental variables, usually identified only with public debt and current account. The observation that divergences in those variables cannot explain the crisis leads other authors to interpret it as being determined instead by negative self-fulfilling expectations, made possible by the political and institutional fragility of the euro area. In this paper I review and integrate those different approaches, and I make some novel points: First, I underline that explanations of the euro area crisis based on fundamental divergences refer only to a subset of the economic variables. Second, while explanations based on divergent fundamentals in the euro area crisis literature refer only to (a limited number of) economic variables, explanations based on self-fulfilling expectations refer to political and institutional variables (political aspects have also been determining a long series of events in the life of the European Union (EU) and European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU)). The third point is that there is no reason for not including political and institutional factors among the components of the fundamental variables of an economy, together with the economic ones. Fourth: by considering political and institutional variables as components of the state of fundamentals, the euro area crisis can be defined as determined by diverging fundamentals rather than by negative self-fulfilling expectations. Fifth, a simple and intuitive model of the role played by economic, political and institutional variables (respectively federal and monetary solidarity) is presented.
Social Science Research Network, 2014
The Lisbon Treaty is the outcome of several constitutional compromises. The compromise between different political (supranational and intergovernmental) views of the Union, the compromise between the member states engaged in building a European Monetary Union (EMU) and those allowed to opt-out from it and the compromise, within the EMU, between a centralized approach to monetary policy and decentralized economic, fiscal and budgetary policies, constrained however within the formalized rules of the Stability and Growth Pact. These compromises were considered the price to be paid for preserving the unitary character of the project of integration. The dominant paradigm was one Union for all. The euro crisis has dramatically called into question this multiple constitutional compromises. The balance between supranational and intergovernmental views has been upset in favour of the former. The approval of new intergovernmental treaties has made crystal clear the separation of interests between the EMU and the opt-out member states. The voluntary coordination between national governments in dealing with the euro crisis has brought to the formation of a (German-French and then only German) directoire within the intergovernmental institutions. The European Union has entered a constitutional conundrum. A paradigm shift is required for escaping from it, based on the recognition of the end of the unitary project of integration. The historical challenge facing Europeans is to promote the integration of the continent in the context of a plurality of institutional and legal arrangements.
Cyprus Center for European and International Affairs , 2012
During the 21 st century, Europe's environment has become more complex compared to past decades. The enlarged EU-27 is characterized by increased diversity. Enlargement has created a conflict between the complexity of the process and the disproportionately loose political framework at EU level to see this task through in an efficient manner. The insufficient level of integration amongst existing members places also emphasis on its political, social and cultural aspects and not simply the economic. The second related issue is the pre-existing democratic deficit in the decision making process in Brussels that has been the other major source of opposition to the EU's Constitutional Treaty. The way this issue relates to the enlargement process stems from the implication that the latter would impose additional difficulties for the creation of a European society of citizens and finally a common European political culture that all together might be taken to constitute operational pre-requisites for the convergence of the complex socio-economic and political processes that are in store.
The European Union (EU) project of combining a single market with a common currency was incomplete from its inception. This article shows that the incompleteness of the governance architecture of Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) was both a cause of the euro crisis and a characteristic pattern of the policy responses to the crisis. We develop a “failing forward” argument to explain the dynamics of European integration using recent experience in the eurozone as an illustration: Intergovernmental bargaining leads to incompleteness because it forces states with diverse preferences to settle on lowest common denominator solutions. Incompleteness then unleashes forces that lead to crisis. Member states respond by again agreeing to lowest common denominator solutions, which address the crisis and lead to deeper integration. To date, this sequential cycle of piecemeal reform, followed by policy failure, followed by further reform, has managed to sustain both the European project and the common currency. However, this approach entails clear risks. Economically, the policy failures engendered by this incremental approach to the construction of EMU have been catastrophic for the citizens of many crisis-plagued member states. Politically, the perception that the EU is constantly in crisis and in need of reforms to salvage the union is undermining popular support for European integration.
Journal of Macroeconomics, 2014
The papers and commentaries presented at the conference addressed many important issues related to the functioning of the euro area. Our hope is that these contributions will help improve understanding of the nature of Europe's monetary union, the underpinnings of its crisis, and the changes that are needed so that crises will be prevented in the future. The papers examined two main sets of issues. One group of papers, adopting a union-wide perspective, assessed the aspects of the euro area's institutional architecture that, with the benefit of hindsight, may have contributed to the crisis, and the policy responses to the crisis at the union level. A second group of papers focused on developments in three crisis countries-Greece, Ireland, and Portugal.
By analysing both the political and economic dimensions of the European Single Currency, this paper argues that the current Eurozone crisis was inevitable given the economic flaws of a politically inspired project. More fundamentally, however, it is the lack of political legitimacy that may finally prevent a sustainable resolution of the crisis.
Oxford Scholarship Online
This chapter presents an argument about the underlying reasons for the persistent economic troubles in the Eurozone based on the two different and divergent growth models in the Eurozone’s member states: the export-oriented, skill-intensive, coordinated model of the northern and continental welfare economies and the demand-driven model with strong public sector unions in southern Europe. The chapter then argues that the interactions between macroeconomic policies and national institutions render policies that are appropriate for southern Europe dysfunctional for northern Europe, and vice versa. Is goes on to discuss different reform scenarios for the Eurozone, emphasizing that all reforms come at a considerable political cost, as the same political-economic institutions that would have to be reformed have strong stakes in the status quo in both political economy models. As there are no political incentives for structural change in either model, crises will persist.
T he financial crisis gripping the eurozone countries seems incredibly complex, and although the reasons why their finances have come to grief are quite simple, the solution will not be easy. For the eurozone to resolve its crisis requires the political will to undertake painful measures, with serious distributional effects. As long as certain groups seek to avoid those costs, resolution of the crisis will be elusive.
EU Policymaking at a Crossroads: Negotiating the 2021-2027 Budget (Edward Elgar), 2022
What are the historical roots of the battle of ideas that shape the euro area asymmetry and why was it conducive to the crisis? What does the response of political authorities to the crisis teach us about the battle of ideas that underlies the MFF negotiations? We answer these question by zooming on the ideational struggles about the EMU economic governance before, during and, to a lesser extent, after the euro crisis. First, we underline that the institutional design of the euro area is the outcome of ideational struggles, which are unfolding since the 1960s. Second, we analyse the battle of ideas between the different policy players who were fighting to frame the causes of the euro area crisis and the subsequent policy solutions. Finally, we draw links between the battle of ideas that took place during the euro area crisis and the negotiations on the RRF and the MFF.
Panoeconomicus
This article advocates a comprehensive approach to the current crisis in the Euro Area - and, namely, the joint consideration of the economic and political issues at stake. The European integration - whose greatest development is, to present time, the Monetary Union - is a political project: a matter of will and action. Surely, this political project has a strong and specific economic component. Still, it is political. Therefore, political variables are critical. They must be included in any analysis of the financial and economic circumstances, and they must be considered in any strategy to overcome the current roadblock. The Euro Area has to cope, not only with excessive indebtedness, fiscal unbalances and financial markets, but also with the democratic restrictions to austerity and economic recession, and with the democratic requirement to respect social rights, to look for public support and to engage in political dialogue and compromise. In liberal democracies, as ours, the empl...
This paper argues that the boom and bust in Europe since the 1990s make more sense when seen as part of a history of displacements and dislocations within the EU since at least the 1950s. That post-war tale is part of a larger European narrative reaching back to the mid nineteenth century, driven by bloody rivalry and tense cooperation between Germany and France. In fact, these historical dramas are ‘nested’ one inside the other like a Russian doll. Note that a later and expanded version of this draft paper, originally written in 2014, has now appeared in Hans-Jörg Trenz, Carlo Ruzza and Virginie Guiraudon (eds), Europe’s Prolonged Crisis. The making or the unmaking of a political union, London: Palgrave Macmillan (2015) with the title ‘Not just singing the blues.’
This book discusses how the global financial crisis induced the ‘Great Recession’ and triggered problems within the eurozone regarding sovereign debt. The authors argue that the failure of the eurozone to meet any convergence criteria, together with unjustified emphasis placed upon unproven rules and institutions derived from contemporary neoliberal macroeconomic thinking, was an accident waiting to happen. Additionally, a series of potential remedies is proposed, ranging from a critical evaluation of solutions that the EU has already instigated (moral suasion and financial relief measures) together with a series of alternative propositions (fiscal federalism and a ‘European Clearing Union’). Moreover, the analysis is extended to the collapse of the eurozone and to options for national economic self-governance.
Recent events in the Eurozone, the quantitative easing plan being the focus of this essay, have resulted in a renewed interest in the field of geopolitical integration. The election of the Left wing party Syriza to the Government in Greece signals a change in the support for the Eurozone. Basic realist, neo-realist and neo-liberalist political theories and understanding of various political actors involved, within the political economy of the European Union including states, political parties and movements, can be applied to these circumstances in order to form a theoretical basis for the Euro crisis and use that foundation to arrive at a solution to the question – Can convergence of political interests and political integration solve the Eurozone crisis? NOTE: Your thoughts are more than welcome and they may be incorporated in a future version of this essay.
2014
After its launching in 1999 and rather successful decade-long performance, the euro-zone entered in 2010 into its first and extremely profound crisis. The crisis has been dragging on for almost four years and there isstill a lot of work to be done in order to reach a comprehensive and sustainable solution. The main objective of the article is threefold. Firstly, to present the main design failures of the original institutional structure of the euro-zone and its economic governance, secondly, to analyze the process of the euro-zone crisis management from its ad-hoc approach in 2010 to a more systematic approach applied over the recent 3 years, and thirdly, to discuss the key elements for a sustainable resolution of the euro-zone crisis. Looking in a more medium-term perspective, the solution of the euro-zone crisis is associated with an appropriate switch of the policy mix it applies. On the long-run, the resolution of the euro-zone crisis depends on the stabilisation of the public f...
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