From the Sovereign Debt Crisis to Authoritarian Statism: Contradictions of the European State Project

Sandbeck, Sune; Schneider, Etienne

doi:10.1080/13563467.2013.861411

Cited by 27 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 27 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Moreover, structural asymmetries within the EU will only worsen, and with it the propensity to invest. In addition to constituting a major assault on labour, the article shows that the chosen institutional architecture for internal devaluation reveals highly authoritarian traits, epitomizing what Bruff (2014) termed authoritarian neoliberalism (see also Oberndorfer, 2014;Sandbeck & Schneider, 2014;Tansel, 2017;Cozzolino, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The new EU industrial policy: authoritarian neoliberal structural adjustment and the case for alternatives

Wigger

2018

Globalizations

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In 2017, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker declared the reindustrialization of the European Union (EU) a top priority. The new EU industrial policy seeks to boost industrial competitiveness and leverage investments into manufacturing, thereby increasing industry's share of EU Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to 20% by 2020. What may appear to be a Keynesian industrial policy and thus a move away from the EU's previous neoliberal agenda, however, seeks to calibrate a further neoliberal structural adjustment in a highly authoritarian fashion. Internal devaluation through devaluing labour, intensifying competition and reducing corporate taxes takes centre-stage. As an auxiliary to the European Semester, national productivity boards have been established to monitor wage developments alongside labour productivity and to suggest policy adjustments when cost competitiveness lags behind the Eurozone average and that of the main trading partners. Not only have formal democratic institutions and organized labour been circumvented in the decision-making process regarding such boards, they will have little voice in the future, and this an area that hitherto fell largely within the scope of member states: wage bargaining. Hence, the new EU industrial policy needs to be discredited, de-legitimized and thus, politicized. A political counter-project, rooted in an alternative industrial policy geared towards fostering horizontal and democratic solidarity economy initiatives which have proliferated since 2008, is discussed in the article's closing pages.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The new EU industrial policy: authoritarian neoliberal structural adjustment and the case for alternatives

Wigger

2018

Globalizations

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In 2005 Article 119 -stable prices, sound public finances and monetary conditions and a sustainable balance of payments, it can be said that the EMU project has been erected based upon neoliberal ideas to enforce and constitutionalize the agency of capital in the EU project (Sandbeck & Schneider, 2014). Thus, Articles 119 and 120 bind EU member states into the theories of monetarism by Milton Friedman (1962) and the resulting neoliberal austerity politics and policies that arise from adopting those theories (Blyth, 2013;Sandbeck & Schneider, 2014). Later, I will explore and discuss, in more depth, how the drive towards the EMU and the SGP rules relate to…”

Section: The Stability and Growth Pactmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In 2013, two major enhancements on budgetary policy and economic governance were Given this context, the analysis of the SGP that has been provided has shown how the mechanisms of macro-economic and fiscal surveillance were developed and implemented since the Treaty of Maastricht came into force in 1993 (Eur-Lex, 1992a, 1992bSandbeck & Schneider, 2014). The guidelines set under the Treaty and the arguments for the expansion of fiscal and monetary policies, under the justification for reaching and participating in the EMU with its common currency are closely associated with the neoliberal and ordoliberal principles of currency stability and budgetary discipline (Blyth, 2013;Sandbeck & Schneider, 2014). For example, McBride (2016, p. 6) argues that, the SGP rules were designed to protect specific neoliberal policies that aimed to constitutionalize balanced budget rules.…”

Section: The Stability and Growth Pactmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This set of ideas put money front and center instead of citizens and reinforced ordoliberal austerity approaches by prioritizing markets over state policies. Thus, the SGP and its "Six-Pack", Fiscal Compact and "Two-Pack" rules uphold the monetarist paradigm to reinforce the EMU integration through its fiscal surveillance and consolidation framework (Baerg & Hallerberg, 2016;Blyth, 2013;De La Porte & Heins, 2015;McBride, 2016;Sandbeck & Schneider, 2014). Moreover, the combination of the Treaty of Maastricht, the TFEU, the SGP rules and the TSCG ruled out currency devaluation and the use of budget deficits by national governments.…”

Section: The Stability and Growth Pactmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

The Politics of Austerity and Social Citizenship Rights: A Case Study of the Impact of the 2008 Financial Crisis on the Welfare State in Portugal

Duarte¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This dissertation focuses on the process and degree of welfare retrenchment under the paradigm of austerity following the 2008 financial crisis. It provides a detailed account of the austerity measures on cash benefits of social citizenship rights -minimum income, unemployment insurance and old-age pensions -adopted in Portugal between 2010 and 2014. This dissertation also offers a comprehensive framework for defining the rights of social citizenship in 21 st century capitalist market economies derived from two theoretical approaches: Marshall's social citizenship framework and Esping-Andersen's approach on welfare provision and redistribution. The author puts forward the thesis that the austerity measures adopted in Portugal between 2010 and 2014 have considerably eroded the degree of decommodification of the public welfare provision of cash benefits which are part of social citizenship rights in Portugal. It is argued that the reduction in public spending and the cumulative effect of multiple policy changes in exchange for a €78 billion financial bailout were very damaging to the entitlements of social protection. Furthermore, the dissertation also confirms that EU policies of balanced budgets that constitutionalize lower public deficits undermine the constitutional principles of social citizenship fulfillment between the state and its citizens. The austerity measures, either proposed or fully adopted by the Portuguese authorities between 2010 and 2014, were based on certain ideological assumptions and economic beliefs that do not serve the interests of the most vulnerable and working-class people. The recommendations explore both directions for policy, as well as for future research. A more egalitarian redistribution of cash benefits for citizens from European member states within the Eurozone, like Portugal, is being proposed because questions of public debt, sustainability of public expenditure, inflation, budgetary consolidation and unemployment, will continue to arise within the European Union.ii

show abstract

“…This "authoritarian neoliberalism" (Bruff 2014) highlights the thin veneer of neoliberal hegemony in the way it reinforces the explicit exclusion and marginalisation of social groups. With regard to European integration, of particular concern for current CPE discussions is the reconfiguration of the European state apparatus into a less democratic entity through constitutional and legal changes that seek to insulate it from social and political conflict (Bruff 2014;cf Gill 1998;Sandbeck/Schneider 2014;Oberndorfer 2015). This focus on the continuities and changes of the EU institutional state apparatus and its actors constitutes an area where CPE perspectives intersect empirically with e.g.…”

Section: Whose Europe Whose Crisis? Austerity and Contestation Of Nementioning

confidence: 99%

Critical Political Economy

Perspectives on Political Economy : Alternatives to the Economics of Depression

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Nutzungsbedingungen:Dieser Text wird unter einer Deposit-Lizenz (Keine Weiterverbreitung -keine Bearbeitung) The KFG Working Paper Series serves to disseminate the research results of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe by making them available to a broader public. It means to enhance academic exchange as well as to strengthen and broaden existing basic research on internal and external diffusion processes in Europe and the European Union.All KFG Working Papers are available on the KFG website at www.transformeurope.eu or can be ordered in print via email to transform-europe@fu-berlin.de. European integration theories', critical political economy perspectives highlight the imbalances and structural power asymmetries of the European project, and how they have become manifest in the multiple crises in Europe. How to account for both the origins and consequences of this crisis has become a key question for scholars and students of European integration. We argue that critical political economy (CPE) has an important and unique contribution to make here. Unlike other approaches, CPE seeks to uncover the deep connections between the (internal) dynamics of the European integration process and the dynamics of global capitalism, arguing that European integration, or disintegration for that matter, takes place in a global, structural context that shapes and conditions both form and content of the integration process.In this paper, we provide an overview of the key concepts, methodology and arguments of a critical political economy perspective on European integration. Following a discussion of the core conceptual framework, the paper then proceeds with an integrated analysis of EMU as a political project, with a particular focus on continuity and changes within the political economy of neoliberalism. The Euro crisis here serves as a contemporary reference point to illustrate the strengths and contributions of critical political economy perspectives to the overall mosaic of European integration theories.

show abstract

From the Sovereign Debt Crisis to Authoritarian Statism: Contradictions of the European State Project

Cited by 27 publications

References 27 publications

The new EU industrial policy: authoritarian neoliberal structural adjustment and the case for alternatives

The new EU industrial policy: authoritarian neoliberal structural adjustment and the case for alternatives

The Politics of Austerity and Social Citizenship Rights: A Case Study of the Impact of the 2008 Financial Crisis on the Welfare State in Portugal

Critical Political Economy

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About