Many scholars have looked for similarities between the recent crisis in the Eurozone and the crises that have occurred in the past in developing countries and particularly in Latin America. Problems of balance of payments, public debt, overvaluation of the exchange rate and unregulated capital inflows are frequently mentioned to compare common features of different crisis events. Additionally, Continental European countries are following similar processes of welfare state retrenchment and labour market segmentation to Latin American cases in the past, but (...) in different institutional contexts and with different levels of economic development. This article will discuss common features of past Latin American crises and the current crisis in the Eurozone in order to show how such a comparison could help to manage (and avoid) crises in an integrated financial world as well as to teach how a faulty institutional design can arise from a defective understanding of how financial capitalism works in a complex internationally integrated economic system. (shrink)

The Eurozone’s reaction to the crisis beginning in late 2008 involved not only efforts to mitigate the arbitrarily destructive effects of markets but also vigorous pursuit of policies aimed at austerity and deflation. To explain this paradoxical outcome, I build on Karl Polanyi’s account of a similar deadlock in the 1930s. Polanyi argued that a society-protecting response to malfunctioning markets was limited under the gold standard by the prospect of currency panic, which bankers used to push for austerity, deflationary policies, (...) and labor’s political marginalization. I reconstruct Polanyi’s “governing by panic” theory to explain Eurozone policy during three key episodes of sovereign bond market panic in 2010–12. By threatening to allow financial panics to continue, the European Central Bank promoted policies and institutional changes aimed at austerity and deflation, limiting the protective response. Germany’s Ordoliberalism, and its weight in European affairs, contributed to the credibility of this threat. (shrink)

The economic and debt crisis threaten many eurozone countries and the very existence of the common currency, the euro. The crisis has meant that some special mechanisms have had to be created (EFSF, ESM) and the introduction of special procedures in heavily indebted countries. The deepening of the crisis and the economic recession in the euro area have resulted in the growth of nationalism and anti-European sentiments in EU member states. Resolving the crisis, however, requires further convergence of the eurozone (...) countries, the formation of a fiscal union and a banking union. At the same time, the crisis has shown that the grand theories of European integration, neo-functionalism and liberal intergovernmentalism, have failed to provide answers to the questions raised by the crisis, and this has led to the growing importance of social constructivism. (shrink)

This article asks how the costs and benefits of operating a monetary union should be distributed amongst its more and less competitive members, taking as an example the operation of the European Monetary Union (EMU or Eurozone). Drawing on existing domestic and transnational justice debates, I resist both a purely procedural and a purely distributive view. The former assumes treaties against a fair background can make any distribution fair and disregards how individual citizens are likely to fare depending on how (...) a monetary union is organized. The latter requires justice amongst Eurozone co-citizens, and it neglects the value of member state’s choices and attitudes towards risk. Instead, I defend a view of the EMU as an association of free self-determining states. I also argue that a variety of factors are relevant to this problem, including the need to protect less competitive states from ‘domination’, or inappropriate forms of control by their co-members, and to protect citizens from various forms of deprivation even if their own governments are willing to expose them to the relevant risks. This article asks how the costs and benefits of operating a monetary union should be distributed amongst its more and less competitive members, taking as an example the operation of the European Monetary Union (EMU or Eurozone). Drawing on existing domestic and transnational justice debates, I resist both a purely procedural and a purely distributive view. The former assumes treaties against a fair background can make any distribution fair and disregards how individual citizens are likely to fare depending on how a monetary union is organized. The latter requires justice amongst Eurozone co-citizens, and it neglects the value of member state’s choices and attitudes towards risk. Instead, I defend a view of the EMU as an association of free self-determining states. I also argue that a variety of factors are relevant to this problem, including the need to protect less competitive states from ‘domination’, or inappropriate forms of control by their co-members, and to protect citizens from various forms of deprivation even if their own governments are willing to expose them to the relevant risks. (shrink)

Over the past 25 years, Jürgen Habermas has presented what is arguably the most coherent and wide-ranging defence of the project of European unification and of parallel developments towards a politically integrated world society. In developing his key concepts of the transnationalisation of democracy and the constitutionalisation of international law, Habermas offers the main players in the struggles over the fate of the European Union a way out of the current economic and political crisis, should they choose to follow it. (...) In the title essay Habermas addresses the challenges and threats posed by the current banking and public debt crisis in the Eurozone for European unification. He is harshly critical of the incrementalist, technocratic policies advocated by the German government in particular, which are being imposed at the expense of the populations of the economically weaker, crisis-stricken countries and are undermining solidarity between the member states. He argues that only if the technocratic approach is replaced by a deeper democratization of the European institutions can the European Union fulfil its promise as a model for how rampant market capitalism can once again be brought under political control at the supranational level. This volume reflects the impressive scope of Habermas?s recent writings on European themes, including theoretical treatments of the complex legal and political issues at stake, interventions on current affairs, and reflections on the lives and works of major European philosophers and intellectuals. Together the essays provide eloquent testimony to the enduring relevance of the work of one of the most influential and far-sighted public intellectuals in the world today, and are essential reading for all philosophers, legal scholars and social scientists interested in European and global issues. (shrink)

This paper analyses the National Populist Challenges to Europe’s Center Right. It assesses the cases of the UK, Germany and France. It poses three questions for Europe: How will political integration be achieved and maintained? What policies will foster economic inclusion in the Eurozone? And, third, what are the best means to achieve economic solvency and growth. The paper make a case that neoliberal economic policies over the past decades have undermined some nations' public sector and have also contributed to (...) tensions between the geographical east and west of Europe. (shrink)

This paper analyses the National Populist Challenges to Europe’s Center Right. It assesses the cases of the UK, Germany and France. It poses three questions for Europe: How will political integration be achieved and maintained? What policies will foster economic inclusion in the Eurozone? And, third, what are the best means to achieve economic solvency and growth. The paper make a case that neoliberal economic policies over the past decades have undermined some nations' public sector and have also contributed to (...) tensions between the geographical east and west of Europe. (shrink)

The Eurozone crisis has brought the imperative of democratic autonomy within the EU to the forefront, a concern at the core of demoicratic theory. The article seeks to move the scholarship on demoicratic theory a step further by exploring what we call the social construction of demoicratic reality. While the EU’s legal-institutional infrastructure may imperfectly approximate a demoicratic structure, we need ask to what extent the ‘bare bones’ demoicratic character of a polity can actually be grounded in a full-flesh social (...) construct that is or could be acted out in the democratic experience and the self-awareness of its peoples. Ultimately, such an enquiry should help us understand whether a polity like the EU is actually and potentially a stable or unstable political form. We develop a consistent theory of popular sovereignty drawing on John Searle and HLA Hart to conceive the constitutionalised people as a social fact and the sovereignty of the people as a status ascribed to the people. We use this construction of demoicratic reality as a conceptual framework to understand the possibility of popular sovereignty being exercised concurrently by several rather than just one dêmos. (shrink)

The Eurozone turmoil is a structural crisis of European capitalism associated with the euro as world money. More broadly, the crisis reflects the culmination of tensions which have accumulated over three decades of neoliberalism in Europe. To create a global means of payment and reserve, the European Monetary Union (EMU) brought together countries of uneven and diverging competitiveness. The result was a situation of embedded current account surpluses for the core and deficits for the periphery, contributing to the accumulation of (...) private and public debt. The response to the crisis was dictated by the interests of banks and large bondholders, entailing austerity and attempting to shift the social balance in favour of capital. For an effective response, the Left must break with Europeanist ideology. It must propose an alternative programme, rejecting the EMU and advocating social and economic transformation which would reverse neoliberalism in the interests of labour. (shrink)

The Eurozone crisis has triggered profound political and economic changes across the debtor member states. This article shows how the crisis and the imposition of austerity policies by the Troika have forced Spain to pursue internal devaluation as a means of economic adjustment through the reduction of real wages, increased pressure for liberalizing labor market institutions, and given Spain’s conservative government the opportunity and cover to pursue radical neoliberal labor law reforms. Spain’s 2012 labor law reforms went well beyond external (...) demands. The crisis and the Troika’s policy demands generated mass unemployment, devastated Spain’s Socialist Party, and created the enabling conditions for economic reforms. But domestic partisan considerations led the conservative People’s Party to commandeer the crisis to weaken unions as the electoral and organizational base of the center-left opposition. The PP channeled reform into an attack on labor that decisively shifted power to employers. As organized labor relations were reduced to concession bargaining, real wages have plummeted for the vast majority of Spaniards, even as mass unemployment and economic stagnation persist. Analysis suggests the emergence of a winner-take-all economy that will have lasting consequences for the Eurozone and the European Union. (shrink)

The Eurozone crisis has brought the imperative of democratic autonomy within the EU to the forefront, a concern at the core of demoicratic theory. The article seeks to move the scholarship on demoicratic theory a step further by exploring what we call the social construction of demoicratic reality. While the EU’s legal-institutional infrastructure may imperfectly approximate a demoicratic structure, we need ask to what extent the ‘bare bones’ demoicratic character of a polity can actually be grounded in a full-flesh social (...) construct that is or could be acted out in the democratic experience and the self-awareness of its peoples. Ultimately, such an enquiry should help us understand whether a polity like the EU is actually and potentially a stable or unstable political form. We develop a consistent theory of popular sovereignty drawing on John Searle and HLA Hart to conceive the constitutionalised people (dêmos) as a social fact and the sovereignty of the people as a status ascribed to the people. We use this construction of demoicratic reality as a conceptual framework to understand the possibility of popular sovereignty being exercised concurrently by several rather than just one dêmos. (shrink)

The Eurozone Crisis is not just a monetary and economic challenge. It is as well the first tremendous challenge of the European Community and as well the national institutions and constitutions of the member states not only within the Eurozone. On one side the European Commission, the European Parliament and the ECB with its endeavours to safeguard and stabilize the single currency EURO within the Eurozone, to support the suffering countries in the south with its struggle against speculative hedge funds, (...) to render financial relief measures to those countries and its financial industry. Irrespective the fact governments and citizens within that countries, less appear to appreciate or honor that measures as efficient help to stabilize but condemn as form of European paternalism and patronage. On the other hand the countries and its citizenship especially in the north of the Eurozone to set a stop sign to the EU and the ECB. Therefore they stress the Maastricht criteria and cite the Art 125 of the TEU, which prohibits one nation to stand for or to be liable for the Government debts of another nation. Especially in the German perspective the demarcation line appears to run along between the European Commission, European Central Bank and European Court on the European side and the Bundesverfassungsgericht, the Bundesbank on the national German side. Each of the institutions feels to be bound to its origin functions and principles and save the respective constitution and the task rendered by that constitution. For a better understanding it is essential to get aware of and to reinforce the constitutional role which the Grundgesetz awarded to the Bundesverfassungsgericht and the Bundesbank and the German citizenship placing their confidence in these institutions. Es soll konkret das Verhältnis zur Nichtbeistandsklausel No-Bail-out Klausel Art 125 AEUVertrag, den Europäischen Fiskalpakt / dem ESFS, ESM / dem OMT-Programm der EZB, möglichen Entwicklung des EU zur Haftungs- und Transferunion mit einem zukünftigen Haftungsautomatismus der Mitglieder, der Unterscheidung von gemeinsamer Währungspolitik und nationaler Wirtschaftspolitik, der drohenden Vergemeinschaftung von Staatsschulden einzelner EU-Länder, die Budgethoheit des nationalen Parlaments als freie Entscheidung über die Verwendung des nationalen Haushaltes untersucht werden. Mit allen diesen Fragen mussten sich das höchste Deutsche und Europäische Gericht in jüngster Vergangenheit intensiv beschäftigen. (shrink)

In 2010, the Eurozone became the epicentre of the world crisis. The vulnerability of Europe appears to be linked to the specific institutional arrangement which organises monetary, financial and budgetary policies within the Eurozone. This article tries to understand the evolution of theeuduring a short but decisive historical sequence in a theoretical framework that puts elements of Gramsci’s reflections on the theme of crisis, and especially his notion of ‘Caesarism’, at its centre. It addresses the current debate concerning the relationships (...) between democratic politics and neoliberalism, while focusing on how the radicalisation of the crisis put at stake the co-construction of capitalism and representative democracy in the Western world sincewwii. (shrink)

This contribution considers the potential of critical realism to illuminate the nature of crises, crisis management, and crisis lessons. After reviewing key aspects of critical realism in general, the analysis notes the challenge of developing critical realism in particular by identifying appropriate entry-points and standpoints for the analysis of specific explananda. It then provides a general critical realist account of the nature of crises in the social world and of learning in, about, and from crisis. A key concept here is (...) symptomatology — the exploration of the contingently necessary relation between actual symptoms and underlying causal mechanisms. This is related in turn to the crucial distinction between scientifically adequate explanations of crisis and conjuncturally ‘correct’ readings of the potential for transformative action in the face of crisis. This has important bearings on the emancipatory contribution of critical realism in the context of a continuing critique of ideology and domination. The article then provides particular critical realist accounts of the abstract possibility of crisis in the capitalist mode of production and its concrete actualization in the complex, overdetermined cases of the North Atlantic Financial Crisis and the Eurozone Crisis. It ends with some general remarks on the potential of crisis as an entry-point into the analysis of the contradictory nature of social structures. (shrink)

This intervention discusses Perry Anderson’s treatment of the European Union in The New Old World, tracing its origins in his intellectual and political history, and the ambivalences it reveals in his relationship to Marxism and to left politics. It identifies some of the key themes in a specifically Marxist analysis of the EU and explores the political possibilities implied by the present crisis.

Translated by Ciaran Cronin. In the midst of the current crisis that is threatening to derail the historical project of European unification, Jürgen Habermas has been one of the most perceptive critics of the ineffectual and evasive responses to the global financial crisis, especially by the German political class. This extended essay on the constitution for Europe represents Habermas’s constructive engagement with the European project at a time when the crisis of the eurozone is threatening the very existence of the (...) European Union. There is a growing realization that the European treaty needs to be revised in order to deal with the structural defects of monetary union, but a clear perspective for the future is missing. Drawing on his analysis of European unification as a process in which international treaties have progressively taken on features of a democratic constitution, Habermas explains why the current proposals to transform the system of European governance into one of executive federalism is a mistake. His central argument is that the European project must realize its democratic potential by evolving from an international into a cosmopolitan community. The opening essay on the role played by the concept of human dignity in the genealogy of human rights in the modern era throws further important light on the philosophical foundations of Habermas’s theory of how democratic political institutions can be extended beyond the level of nation-states. Now that the question of Europe and its future is once again at the centre of public debate, this important intervention by one of the greatest thinkers of our time will be of interest to a wide readership. (shrink)

Translated by Ciaran Cronin. In the midst of the current crisis that is threatening to derail the historical project of European unification, Jürgen Habermas has been one of the most perceptive critics of the ineffectual and evasive responses to the global financial crisis, especially by the German political class. This extended essay on the constitution for Europe represents Habermas’s constructive engagement with the European project at a time when the crisis of the eurozone is threatening the very existence of the (...) European Union. There is a growing realization that the European treaty needs to be revised in order to deal with the structural defects of monetary union, but a clear perspective for the future is missing. Drawing on his analysis of European unification as a process in which international treaties have progressively taken on features of a democratic constitution, Habermas explains why the current proposals to transform the system of European governance into one of executive federalism is a mistake. His central argument is that the European project must realize its democratic potential by evolving from an international into a cosmopolitan community. The opening essay on the role played by the concept of human dignity in the genealogy of human rights in the modern era throws further important light on the philosophical foundations of Habermas’s theory of how democratic political institutions can be extended beyond the level of nation-states. Now that the question of Europe and its future is once again at the centre of public debate, this important intervention by one of the greatest thinkers of our time will be of interest to a wide readership. (shrink)

This article claims that, despite its ambivalent relationship with the heterarchical paradigm,A Union of Peoplesis a truly innovative contribution to the complex debate on the European project, especially in the current troubled climate. Its ability to dismantle the prevailing positivist understanding of the interaction between legal orders and to stand out from the overwhelming and often repetitive literature on the philosophy of EU law should be praised. What is especially noteworthy is the idea of “corrective justice.” This notion explains very (...) well the adoption of financial assistance measures as expression of a new form of solidarity, based on the notion of fair redress for a committed wrong, namely the structural deficiencies detectable in the design of the eurozone. (shrink)

Starting from the observation of the seriousness and recurrence of the “European crises” for more than fifteen years, this article proposes to study one of their main causes: the “midstream” that characterizes the contemporary political and institutional situation of Europe, in particular of the European Union, the eurozone and the Schengen area, that is, the unsustainable tension between, on the one hand, the irreducibly contradictory diversity of the member states of these institutions at this intermediate stage of their integration, and, (...) on the other hand, the necessity, for the overcoming of the crises, of the accomplishment of their integration into a European political unity. The main thesis of the article is that only such a unification could overcome the current crises, provided that it is open to the rest of the world, on the internal mode of hospitality and external mode of contribution to the unification of the world itself. (shrink)

By discussing a selection of socially engaged street artworks from the Frankfurt-based project ‘Under Art Construction’, this essay sheds light on street art’s possibilities as a form of resistance against the power of globalizing finance. The author argues that through the use of carnivalesque strategies of irony and appropriation, street art can challenge the pretense of rationality of recent policies of austerity in the eurozone. Such a challenge exposes the contingency of spending cut programs. He finally suggests that, in debunking (...) the myth of economic rationality, street art can change people’s experience of finance, while opening up a space for imagining alternative economic scenarios. (shrink)

The world financial crisis of 2008 reached a head in the Eurozone in 2012, when major problems became apparent affecting several countries in Southern Europe. During this time, the British press focused particularly on Spain, watching the potentially volatile political situation with interest, and documenting the negotiations between Spanish and European leaders. This article considers how this situation was reported in two British newspapers, The Guardian and The Independent, applying corpus linguistics techniques to identify salient aspects of the crisis and (...) to detect patterns in language use that had an ideological dimension. The 2012 crisis emerges mainly as a political issue, and the reporting focuses on solutions rather than causes or effects. However, even though these two publications are not noted for Euroscepticism, they both show a strong tendency to group South European countries together within a negative frame, collectivizing them and establishing a dichotomy with Northern Europe. (shrink)

The paper analyzes the impact of massive capital flows and possible sudden stops on current account reversals. The aim of this paper is to consider the relationship between sudden stops and current account reversals in the eurozone and to explain the possibility of a balance-of-payment crisis within a monetary union. Peripheral eurozone countries experienced significant private-capital inflows from the core countries, followed by unambiguously massive outflows. Due to this, peripheral countries ran sustained current account deficits while core countries ran surpluses. (...) At the end we analyze the evolution of current-account balances in the non-euro area EU countries and the peripheral euro-area countries, and we find out that current account deficits could be maintained over a longer period of time in the peripheral euro-area countries. (shrink)

The divisions emanating from the Eurozone crisis have led political realists to argue that European identity should be conceived of via “basic legitimation demand” that prioritizes the creation of order in backward-looking, non-utopian terms. In contrast, I suggest that Europe would do better by building an ethically-constitutive “story of peoplehood” that looks both backward and forward. I argue that the EU should build on the ideals drawn from the continent’s shared past as well as its desire to retake control from (...) the global economic forces that threaten democratic political sovereignty in the twenty-first century. (shrink)

El objetivo de este capítulo es analizar el presunto despliegue de la «democracia sin alternativas» en Europa y sus consecuencias para la calidad de las democracias nacionales, especialmente las de la periferia de la zona euro –giips: Grecia, Irlanda, Italia, Portugal y España. El argumento principal es que la falta de receptividad de los gobiernos nacionales de los países giips hacia los deseos de sus ciudadanos constituye el reverso de la moneda de un exceso de atención de los gobiernos de (...) los países núcleo del euro, en especial de Alemania, a las preferencias de su ciudadanía. En todas las democracias representativas los políticos se enfrentan a un dilema fundamental entre receptividad a las demandas ciudadanas y responsabilidad ante terceros. Enfrentados a este dilema, los países núcleo del euro han optado claramente por lo primero –la receptividad ante las demandas de los electorados nacionales–, mientras que los países de la periferia de la zona euro se han visto forzados a ser responsables –ante sus socios de la ue y ante la ue en su totalidad. Como resultado, la crisis financiera de 2008 ha conducido a una ruptura en tres frentes dentro de la Unión Europea entre el núcleo y la periferia: con relación al ritmo de la recuperación económica, a los grados de autonomía gubernamental y, lo más importante, a la legitimidad democrática. Los países de la periferia de la eurozona se encuentran en el bando perdedor en los tres frentes.The objective of this article is to analyze the alleged unfolding of ‘democracy without choices’ in Europe and its consequences for the quality of national democracies, particularly those of the Eurozone periphery –giips: Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain. The argument is, in a nutshell, that the lack of responsiveness of giips national Governments to their respective national constituencies is the reverse of the medal of an excess of responsiveness in core Euro countries, particularly Germany. Governments are trapped between the pressure to be responsive at home and the need to be responsible to their European partners and the European project. If the trade-off of all democratic politics is between responsiveness and responsibility, Euro core countries have clearly opted for responsiveness –to domestic constituencies– and Eurozone peripheral countries have been forced to be responsible –towards their eu partners and the eu as a whole. As a result, the 2008 financial crisis has led to a three-fold breach inside the eu between core and periphery concerning the pace of economic recovery, the degrees of governmental autonomy and, most important of all, democratic legitimacy. Eurozone peripheral countries are at the losing side of this three-fold breach. (shrink)

Through empirical investigation of the Eurozone and Greek debt crisis 2010–12, this article demonstrates how a peak organization of financial firms—the Institute of International Finance —was able to mobilize its members transnationally to secure several key political and economic objectives. At the height of the crisis, large European banking firms were threatened by the prospect of a disorderly Greek default, coercive intervention by governments, and, potentially, a regional banking collapse. In this context, representatives from the IIF entered the policymaking process (...) to facilitate concerted private sector action, assisting EU officials with the negotiation of a substantial and orderly creditor writedown, and cooperating with legal action by the Greek government to sideline a minority of financial firms hostile to the deal. The article shows that the IIF’s disproportionate influence over policymaking was a result of their technical expertise, their ability to recruit individuals with long-standing experience of sovereign debt restructuring from the public and private sector, and the operation of elite revolving-door processes. In contrast to recent studies showing that financial actors are able to exercise more power at the national level by remaining collectively inactive, these findings suggest that, at the transnational level, financial actors can be most effective at securing their preferences when they are well organized and when they coordinate politically on the basis of collective interests. (shrink)

This study examines the impact of trust and a national culture of secretiveness on the number of bank relationships per firm. We hypothesize that the degree of openness of a firm and trust between economic agents may influence the willingness of the firm to release sensitive information to its lenders, as well as the decision between maintaining single or multiple bank relationships. Using a sample of over 8000 non-financial firms operating in 12 countries from the eurozone we provide evidence that (...) a national culture of secrecy enhances the number of bank relationships, while trust has the opposite effect. Results are robust to the use of various estimation techniques, alternative definitions of secrecy and trust, controls for firm-level and country-level characteristics, and instrumental variables. The main implication of this finding is that the financial decisions of firms cannot be effectively examined without considering deep-rooted national cultural elements. We also find that the results are mainly driven by small and medium enterprises, implying that the higher informational opaqueness of these firms enhances the role of secrecy and trust. (shrink)

This article offers an institutional explanation for the conflicting trends in income inequality both across the Eurozone and within its member states. It argues that the euro’s introduction created different economic policy incentives for peripheral and core members. First, the euro’s design was a political choice skewed toward deflationary adjustment policies in hard times, leading to falling incomes and employment in the periphery. Second, the institutional incentives of the Eurozone are the opposite for export-driven coordinated market economies and demand-led mixed (...) market economies during booms and downturns, respectively. During the euro crisis, the Eurozone’s Northern countries gained at the expense of the Southern ones, while at the same time seeing lower domestic inequality compared to increased inequality in the periphery. This diverging pattern of European inequality was exacerbated by EU economic policy drift, the lack of any real national democratic choice in the periphery, and the growing importance of organized financial interests in Brussels. (shrink)

The links between the crisis of subprime mortgages and the so-called crisis of European sovereign debt are sometimes concealed, so as to create a veritable sense of shared guilt meant to sanction the legitimacy of the austerity policies that have been imposed by virtuous Northern European countries on the undeserving countries of Southern Europe. We will analyse three main aspects of the current crisis: we will interpret the austerity policies that today characterize the eurozone as the result of financialization; we (...) will define the state of permanent crisis as an instrument of governance characterized by specific economic policies; we will show how all this unfolds at a stage of capitalist development wherein a new constituent process begins to take shape in a fragmented but nonetheless significant manner, and how this process is reclaimed by the very subjectivities upon which the accumulation of cognitive and relational skills depends in order to reproduce itself: the Welfare of the Common. (shrink)

The recent crisis of the Eurozone has led scholars and activists to critically consider the ordoliberal tradition of thought, in order to underline the ideological and effective primacy of the German interests within EU’s economic and monetary policies. Starting from this last widespread assertion, the author, after having recalled the differences which exist among the liberalism of the “Freiburg School” and that of the “Vienna School”, analyzes and discusses the principles of Walter Eucken’s economic policy, in particular, the “constitutive principles” (...) and the “regulative principles” of his Wettbewerbsordnung. Nevertheless, if it is true that the ordoliberal concept of competition is based on a Leistungsprinzip which requires a starker Staat, how does the Wettbewerbsordnung coexist with EU’s systems of governance? Actually, says the author, the multilevel European governance seems to be better understood if intended as a “hybrid”, with respect to which not always Ordoliberalism plays a role consistent with its tradition. (shrink)

This review essay of Economics Rules situates Dani Rodrik’s contribution with respect to the 2007–2008 global economic crisis. This financial meltdown, which the eurozone did not fully recover from before the Covid-19 pandemic, led to soul- searching among economists as well as a call for heterodox economic approaches. Yet, over the past decade, instead the economics profession has maintained its orthodoxy. Rodrik’s Economics Rules offers a critique of the economics profession that is castigating but mild. It calls for economists to (...) use more and diverse models without becoming wedded to any single model or an overarching vision. Yet Rodrik ratifies many of the benchmark models standard to orthodox economics and provides little ground for a fundamental rethinking of the discipline. This essay analyses the conservatism underlying Rodrik’s approach, which upholds general equilibrium theory and rational expectations underlying the efficient market hypothesis. It argues that the economics discipline’s scope-creep to maintain its applicability to all human decision-making, and its acceptance of all-inclusive utility functions, crowds out moral sentiments and civic virtue. Thus. it argues that rather than urging economists simply to be more cautious in their application of models to address particular social concerns, instead economists must recognise their discipline’s inherent limitations. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone, Vivien Schmidt authoritatively charts how the European Union weathered the crisis of its single currency in the 2010s, gradually moving from fiscal austerity and structural reform to a more systemic solution and flexible interpretation of the euro’s governing rules. Using a discursive institutionalist approach in combination with a “systems theory” understanding of democratic decision making, Schmidt persuasively argues that we need to look at the (...) euro problem as a fundamentally political problem that lacked democratic legitimacy as long as technocrats were in charge of policy solutions. Schmidt argues that the euro crisis needs to be broached from the point of view of the E.U.’s split-level legitimacy as well as the growing politicization of E.U. governance in an era of increasing populism and rising Euroskepticism. Schmidt’s application of discursive institutionalism allows readers to judge for themselves whose and which ideas mattered, why and in what way they were implemented, and how they gradually evolved over time. (shrink)

The debate concerning solidarity and justice among states has missed the key contribution made to international affairs by corrective justice. Unlike distributive justice, which applies within states, corrective justice applies among states. It applies in particular to cooperative arrangements creating interdependence among them. Corrective justice does not require fairness in outcomes. It requires redress in cases of loss caused by unfairness. An illustration of corrective justice among states is the Eurozone’s response to the financial crisis. The assistance offered to the (...) most burdened states was not as an attempt to arrive at fair shares but an attempt to remedy the losses unfairly caused by the mistakes made by the Eurozone as a whole, when designing its basic architecture. (shrink)

Habermas’s interventions in German political affairs gave rise to the concept of constitutional Patriotism. His earlier theoretical work did not revisit the idea in any distinct manner. Moral Consciousness, I argue, has traces of a legal identity and universal morality. While interpreting Kohlberg’s work, Habermas did not seek to tie the concept of citizenship or political identity into his account of Moral Consciousness. The concepts of political identity and a legal orientation come up, more recently and in a clearly observable (...) manner, in Habermas’s writings on Europe. His writings and speeches delivered on the idea of Europe before the Eurozone crises as well as those published and delivered after the crises refer to a strong sense of Constitutional Patriotism understood in the European sense. It is this idea that I would like to dwell on in this paper. (shrink)

Politicians around the globe wrangle about how to deal with trade imbalances. In the Eurozone, members running a trade deficit accuse members running a surplus of forcing them into deficit. Yet pol...

This introduction analyzes some of the key questions concerning the political variations of the neoliberal economic discourse in today’s Europe. In particular, the relationship between the evanescence of nation-state sovereignty and the rebirth of the “economic nation” is taken into account. In the great transformation imposed by the ongoing economic crisis, the author stresses the importance of grasping not only the German roots of the European Ordoliberalism, but also those of a hybrid politics, based on governance policies, and implicitly imposed (...) by the unfinished character of the great transformation itself. (shrink)

Although researchers have paid much attention to the journey metaphor (e.g., Forceville, 2006a, 2011a, 2011b; Forceville & Jeulink, 2011), little seems known about its role for moral political cognition. Using data from the US and UK public discourses on the Euro crisis as an example, this paper draws on Lakoff’s (1996) Moral Politics Theory, demonstrating that the journey metaphor can play a crucial role for political cognition, and especially for moral political judgment.

I. Deutsche Juden, Deutsche und Juden -- II. Im Sog der Technokratie -- III. Europäische Zustände : fortgesetzte Interventionen -- IV. Momentaufnahmen.