‘As I Drifted on a River I Could Not Control’: The Unintended Ordoliberal Consequences of the Eurozone Crisis

Existing EU study approaches have come under stress as comprehensive models of European politics. In this context, bilateral relations between EU members remain under‐researched yet important for understanding the inner workings of the EU. While EU membership puts strong limitations on certain kinds of state behaviour it also leaves room for the pursuit of national interests through economic and legal means. Against this background, the article presents and develops the EU Geoeconomics Framework. Focussed on situations where state and companies share control over vital sectors of the national economy, this framework theorizes the relations between EU member states (MSs). After presenting the main assumptions and focus of EU Geoeconomics, the article develops six testable propositions. It then discusses these propositions as well as the fruitfulness of the framework against the latest developments in EU studies theory. The article concludes by pointing towards a renewed discussion of bilateral relations.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

EU Geoeconomics: A Framework for Analyzing Bilateral Relations in the European Union

Sattich

Inderberg

2018

“…A constructivist explanation would explain the fiscal council variance using the role of ideas. Especially, ordoliberal ideas have constituted an important driver behind the new EMU fiscal architecture (Nedergaard and Snaith, ). However, this explanation would lead us to expect the German fiscal council to be particularly hawkish, which doesn't hold.…”

Section: The Diffusion Of Heterogeneous Models Of Fiscal Councilsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘The Troika is Dead, Long Live the Domestic Troikas?': The Diffusion of National Fiscal Councils in the European Union

Tesche

2019

This article shows that the troika institutions – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – formed a technocratic consensus about the desirability of establishing national fiscal councils in the European Union (EU). Considerable disagreement existed, however, with regard to their design features. Each institution promoted a distinct mode of indirect governance by ranking national fiscal councils depending on their adopted governance model (agent, trustee or orchestrator). This persuasion, through entrepreneurial benchmarking, constitutes an important mechanism by which member states were nudged to adopt a distinct fiscal council model. Preference heterogeneity among the troika members ultimately prevented the spread of a one‐size‐fits‐all fiscal council in the EU.

“…Hillebrand comments that ‘Germany's crisis policy [...] appears rational from an ordoliberal perspective’ (Hillebrand, , p. 6). Nedergard and Snaith argue that ‘one crucial consequence has been a strengthening of the ordoliberal governance in the European Union’ (Nedergaard and Snaith ) and Bulmer concludes that ‘ordo‐liberalism has trumped pro‐europeanism’ in Germany (Bulmer, , p. 1244). Not only the austerity measures implemented under German leadership, like the fiscal compact or the conditionality of the loan facilities, are attributed to ordoliberal ideas but the entire setup of the currency union.…”

Section: The Ordoliberalization Of Europementioning

confidence: 99%

The Religious Foundations of the European Crisis

Hien

2017

There has been much talk about ordoliberalism recently. Scholars and the press identify it as the dominant economic instruction sheet for Germany's European crisis politics. However, by analyzing ordoliberalism only as an economic theory, the debate downplays that ordoliberalism is also an ethical theory, with strong roots in Protestant social thought. It is this rooting in Protestant social thought that makes Ordoliberalism incompatible with the socioeconomic ethics of most of the European crisis countries, whose ethics originate in Catholic and Orthodox social thought. This divergence is the source of a crisis of understanding between European nations and hinders a collective response to the Euro crisis.