Contesting Austerity: On the Limits of EU Knowledge Governance

Abstract

Lacking robust democratic foundations, EU authority is founded on output legitimacy — delivery of (economic) prosperity through rational governance. Yet current austerity policies are the epitome of irrational governance. While this volume highlights the EU's limited ability to deliver rational output through law and legal rationality, I argue that, without democracy, the EU cannot deliver the desired output through knowledge and technical rationality either. In fact, embedding expert institutions in democratic institutional settings plays a crucial epistemic role, contributing to the production of more reflective, socially inclusive knowledge. Lack of such democratic input in the EU's knowledge production is one of the root causes of its crumbling output legitimacy and the creation of many disenfranchised (internal) peripheries. Three recent challenges of Brexit, TTIP, and austerity may be seen as attempts to reclaim the democratic responsiveness of EU technocratic rule. However, the strategies of exit and voice have not been available in all these cases: in the Greek tragedy, contesting austerity ended in subjugation: a mirror image of ‘rational’ governance if unaided by inclusive democratic process.

Expertise in European Economic Governance: A Feminist Analysis

“…In particular, the Commission's main resources are knowledge and expertise, as opposed to a budget or enforcement powers such as a police force. It has used these resources in the on-going power contests between the EU institutions (Radaelli 1999;Bartl 2017). There is a complex and often opaque network of experts designing, monitoring and implementing the regime.…”

“…A decision-making space that is male-dominated is therefore likely to suffer from such homogeneity, through groupthink and lack of diverse opinions. This is not a result of male-dominance itself, but rather a result of the lack of diversity (Bartl 2017). As such, when other characteristics such as race and class or educational background are so widely shared amongst the group, other biases are also possible.…”

“…Both the Chicago and Bocconi boys are indeed overwhelmingly male, a trait that goes unremarked by the majority of scholarship on their authority and reach. This is part of the 'inevitable homogeneity' of such expert networks (Lord 2007;Bartl 2017). As Schuberth and Young (2011:137) note, in regard to global financial governance, 'the various networks of knowledge-based experts are basically exclusive men's clubs, equipped with an authoritative claim to policy-relevant knowledge'.…”

“…The process of depoliticising EU economic governance involves congruence with a wider norm of depoliticised economic governance. From central bank independence, to balanced budget laws, this trend of removing economic policy from arenas of democratic politics is a key background to the depoliticisation of EU economic governance (Ruser 2015;Bartl 2017).…”

Making sense of austerity: the gendered ideas of European economic policy

“…In this paper, I explore the role of gender in the discourses of austerity. This paper contributes to the intellectual project of understanding the ideological underpinnings of austerity (Bartl, 2017;Blyth, 2013;Dellepiane-Avellaneda, 2015). It brings a new perspective -that of gender -to a debate that has currently viewed austerity as gender-neutral.…”