The Troika in its own words: responding to the politicisation of the southern European crises

Abstract

The 'post-functionalist' view that growing politicisation constrains further integration ('constraining dissensus') occupies a prominent place in contemporary European studies. However, in the case of the euro crisis, we observe a rise in contentious politics concomitant with a deepening of EU integration, namely in the areas of economic governance. This paper argues that the intervention of the 'Troika' in the struggles over the framing of the southern European crises is a key to this puzzle. The analysis of over 1200 public declarations produced by the three institutions from 2009 to 2016 shows that the Troika actively 'responded' to processes of heightened politicisation, reproducing the dominant crisis narrative of the southern European periphery and making the case for the adequacy and inevitability of austerity. The Troika's success in framing the euro crisis as a result of domestic failure and moral hazard contributed to the legitimation of further integration of European economic governance.

Introduction: the politicisation of permanent crisis in Europe

“…It thus offers the possibility of cross-policy and cross-methods comparison across different policy domains. We seek to provide a balanced view of the different types of crises that the EU has been facing over the past decade, including articles on the migration crisis (Castelli and Zamponi 2020;Hadj-Abdou 2020), the Eurozone crisis (Kutter 2020;Moreira Ramalho 2020), identity and/or culture crises (Coutto 2020;Ganesh and Froio 2020;Voltolini 2020), and external crises (Natorski 2020;Voltolini 2020;Ikani 2020). This broad empirical and methodological reach, we hope, adds to the existing literature which to date has focused predominantly on the Eurozone and the refugee crises.…”