The Great Eurozone Disaster: From Crisis to Global New Deal
... Chronologically though your next monograph was The Great Eurozone Disaster: from crisis to global new deal (Patomäki 2013a). As readers are no doubt aware, the GFC led initially to widespread calls for major reform of finance (along the lines of 'this can never happen again'), but this weirdly eventually mutated into acceptance of finance as a vital part of economic recovery (an issue exacerbated in many places by austerity politics and fiscal restrictions, which led to greater presumption of a need for bank-led growth). ...
... I checked and updated the English translation in the summer of 2012 when I was a Visiting Professor at the Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan (Patomäki 2013a). Zed Books negotiated a contract with a Greek publisher and the Greek translation came out in 2013. ...
In Part 1 of this interview, Professor Patomäki discussed his work and career up to the Global Financial Crisis. In Part 2 he turns to his later work. Questions and issues range over the use of retroduction and retrodiction, the degree of openness and closure of systems, and the role of iconic models, and scenario-building and counterfactuals in social scientific explanation and the exploration of possible and likely futures (distinguished from desirable futures). Patomäki suggests that a variant of his ‘scenario A’ captures significant features of an increasingly competitive and conflictual world. Among other matters, Patomäki also discusses his recent work on the war in Ukraine, his ‘field theory’ of global political economy, and the possibility of world statehood. The interview concludes with Patomäki’s views on the imperative of hope.
... However, the effectiveness of the referendum was reducedby the emitted messages mainly from Germany. In this case Schäuble-whose statements are usually reliable compass orientation for European institutions -had unequivocally expressed that the negotiations after the referendum, independently from its result, will start from the beginning and will include tougher conditions (Mavrozacharakis and Tzagkarakis, 2015).Similarly, after Brexit, the UK is threatened with tough (Beck, 2013;Patomäki, 2013)while failed to cover its institutional deficit. ...
... To a certain extent, this example is indicative of the governmental framework related with Eurozone's future that Germany intends to create. Beyond the informal directorate which is actually in operation, measures such as the creation of an independent fiscal authority within the Eurozone that will collect taxes independently from national governments, is being discussed (Patomäki, 2013). The abovementioned political framework lead to an unsuccessful and socio-politically weak policy for the European future, designed by Germany.It should not be underestimated that SYRIZA has won the elections in Greece as a consequence of increased social anger against economic reforms promoted by the insistence of Germany which were concentrated to austerity. ...
... The labour movements of Europe were considered as the decisive force behind greater state involvement in economy and greater social welfare measures. The construction of the European Union and the development of a currency union put further gloss on it whence it was considered regressive to even think of exiting the 14 See on this, Patomaki (2012), particularly Chap. 6, pp. ...
... essed on 17 October 2015). 24 1 The Post-colonial Bind of Greece Mudde, C. (2015). Populism in Europe: A primer, May 12, https://www.opendemocracy.net/caneurope-make-it/cas-mudde/populism-in-europe-primer. Accessed on 30 June 2015. Panitch, L. (2015). The denouement, July 15. The Bullet, http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/ 1143.php. Accessed on . Patomaki, H. (2012. The great eurozone disaster: From crisis to global new deal (J. O'Connor, Trans.). London: Zed Books. Patomaki, H. (2014). On the dialectics of global governance in the twenty first century: A Polanyian double movement? Globalizations, 11(5), 733-750. Phelps, E. S. (2015). Greece debt crisis: Greece never had austerity, profligacy was ...
The second chapter analyses the negotiations over debt restructuring between Athens and Brussels in the five months of February to July 2015 and shows how the Europeanist and democratic illusion of the Syriza leaders of Greece led them to ignoring the similarities between what we can call the rules of dialogue and rules of war—both characterised by specific dynamics of power. In this context, the chapter discusses the respective stands of the parties to the negotiations. It argues that a greater awareness of the complexities of the realities of the crisis was essential for Greece to engage with the financial and political might of the euro zone and corporate Europe as a whole. Part of the delusion and consequently ignorance of the rules of dialogue and war came from the belief of the Left that there was no alternative to Keynesian policies, and thus what Greece immediately needed was more money to tide over the crisis. We can thus speak of an elective affinity between rules of dialogue and rules of war. Its awareness will help us understand why in a span of only twenty days—24 June when the negotiations entered the dramatic phase to 14 July—history witnessed two unforgettable nights: the night of glory, 5 July and the night of ignominy, 14 July.
... The labour movements of Europe were considered as the decisive force behind greater state involvement in economy and greater social welfare measures. The construction of the European Union and the development of a currency union put further gloss on it whence it was considered regressive to even think of exiting the 14 See on this, Patomaki (2012), particularly Chap. 6, pp. ...
... essed on 17 October 2015). 24 1 The Post-colonial Bind of Greece Mudde, C. (2015). Populism in Europe: A primer, May 12, https://www.opendemocracy.net/caneurope-make-it/cas-mudde/populism-in-europe-primer. Accessed on 30 June 2015. Panitch, L. (2015). The denouement, July 15. The Bullet, http://www.socialistproject.ca/bullet/ 1143.php. Accessed on . Patomaki, H. (2012. The great eurozone disaster: From crisis to global new deal (J. O'Connor, Trans.). London: Zed Books. Patomaki, H. (2014). On the dialectics of global governance in the twenty first century: A Polanyian double movement? Globalizations, 11(5), 733-750. Phelps, E. S. (2015). Greece debt crisis: Greece never had austerity, profligacy was ...
This chapter discusses the post-colonial political, ideological, and discursive context in which migration appears as a “crisis” for Europe. Europe achieved continental unification through economic means, liberal constitutionalism, and currency union. It sets goals of peace and security that encouraged everyone to be a liberal with unfettered freedom to access the market and, on the other hand, allowed the European Union to follow interventionist policies near abroad. The consequences of the union are to be found in Europe’s restrictive and contradictory policies and programmes relating to immigration and refugee protection. European migration crisis originates from this. This chapter concludes by way of suggesting that neoliberalism’s victory in Europe may have come at a great cost. As the Paris and Brussels killings suggested, even though this victory may be pyrrhic, its impact on population flows (including labour flows) may be severe. Europe as a neoliberal union (or empire) has to forge today’s appropriate care and protection regime. Both force and monetary tools will operate as instruments of this transformation. In that sense, and as the suspension of the Schengen arrangement by France in the aftermath of Paris killings suggested, Europe has already arrived at a post-Schengen era.
... Specifi cally, the imbalance between export-driven economies, like Germany, and major importers, like Greece, creates a dangerous and unsustainable situation. The neoliberal turn with the adoption of the Maastricht Treaty has enshrined such market contradictions at the very heart of the EU (EuroMemo Group 2010;Streeck 2012: 63-71;Patomäki 2013). The dominance of the competition policy above all other values, especially the protections enshrined in the European Social Model, has indeed reduced the EU to a "soulless market." ...
... Although these arguments are relevant and plausible, the question is whether they can provide a basis for the possibility of a legitimate world political community. As indicated by the (geohistorically biased) example of European integration (Patomäki, 1997(Patomäki, , 2013, the standard security-military and technicalfunctionalist arguments for global unification may work to a point, but after that, they become irrelevant and in some contexts may even be counterproductive or self-defeating. Mere security or functionalist benefits, especially if perceived in terms of the rationally calculative orientation of action, are not enough. ...
Independently of how dominant the layer of world statehood becomes, that layer will require political support, authorisation, and validation in a complex and pluralistic world. By focusing on legitimacy, we can analyse the feasibility of paths towards global-scale integration and the potential for conflicts, divisions, and subsequent disintegration. The standard security-military and functionalist arguments for unification may work to a point, but they are insufficient and can become counterproductive. There must be a widespread belief in normative legitimacy, the basis of which I discuss in terms of civilising process and stages of ethical-political learning. Finally, I outline scenarios about processes that could lead towards a partial disintegration or collapse of a world community. Such scenarios are meant to be self-defeating prophecies.
... Besides work in Finnish (most notably Patomäki 2005aPatomäki , 2007e, 2012c, Professor Patomäki is the author of seven single-authored books in English (Patomäki 2001a(Patomäki , 2002a(Patomäki , 2008a(Patomäki , 2013a(Patomäki , 2018a(Patomäki , 2022(Patomäki , 2023) and a number of joint and edited texts (e.g. Minkkinen and Patomäki 1997;Patomäki and James 2007;Patomäki and Teivainen 2004a;Morgan and Patomäki 2018;Forsberg and Patomäki 2022). ...
In Part 1 of this wide-ranging interview Heikki Patomäki discusses his early work and career up to the Global Financial Crisis. He provides comment on his role as a public intellectual and activist, his diverse academic interests and influences, and the many and varied ways he has contributed to critical realism and critical realism has influenced his work. In Part 2 he discusses his later work, the predicament of humanity and the role of futures studies.
... The construction of the European Union was mainly based on the principles of economic liberalism, but accompanied by market "repair" tools in order to create a model of "embedded liberalism" (Crespy & Menz, 2015: 1), in which it is clear that the principles of ordoliberalism and optimal economic zones played a key role as long as they support the creation of stable rules in order to avoid the rise of inflation and the creation of an economic zone that its members have positive economic growth rates at the same time (Patomäki, 2013). The Social Europe pillar, although there is not a commonly accepted definition of the "Social Europe" concept, is still one of the key parameters that stabilizes the negative social effects of the free market and focuses on creating the conditions for a sustainable and prosperous society. ...
The last decade Greece has experienced a multidimensional crisis and its consequences are still evident. Several scholars have already analyzed the effects of the crisis and have provided useful outcomes, assessing its causes, policies and consequences. This study emphasizes on some factors that have not been thoroughly analyzed. Therefore, aspects of the impact of ordoliberal directions on the formulation of the debt crisis management policies in Greece as well as the social and economic implications are studied. The main objective is to examine the role of ordoliberalism at policy making and the economic and social implications through the brief analysis of quantitative (secondary) and qualitative (primary) data in order to produce empirically grounded policy proposals in order to effectively advance the goals set for Social Europe through the convergence of the European periphery.
... During the recent financial crisis that created enormous problems especially in the peripheral countries of the Eurozone, the importance of federal ideas came in the surface. Many insisted on the importance of the creation of Eurobonds in order to save the Eurozone for collapse [11]. Even if the Eurobonds have not been created, the crisis has further enforced integration via the creation of more mechanisms that did not exist earlier, such as the ESM and the enforcement of the banking union. ...
Federalism is a theory which has largely affected the European integration process and it remains important today. From the financial crisis and the requests for the creation either of Eurobonds or of a unified banking sector, to the current health crisis and the request for a common health policy approach and a common recovery mechanism for the elimination of the negative economic and social consequences of the pandemic, the theoretical and empirical discussion about the direction that European integration should follow are yet active. In this essay we will firstly outline some basic aspects of the theory of federalism as well as a brief comparison with other theories and secondly, we conduct an analysis on the contemporary importance of federalism. Accordingly, an evaluation of the theory with real examples-challenges offers lucrative ground in order to reach some tentative conclusions on the current and future role of federalism to the European integration process.
... Even France had to accept this in the early 1980s (facing Germany), and it will be a challenge today for any anti-crisis policy inspired by Keynes or Roosevelt that seeks to counter dependencies. A social democratic or Euro-Keynesian project (Patomäki 2013) or a 'Green Deal' (Brand 2012;Lipietz 2013), which aims at an expansionary policy in the core countries and include an active industrial policy in the periphery supported by substantial transfer payments, has the potential to be cohesive (see also Flassbeck and Lapavitsas Chapter 8, Grahl Chapter 10 and Niechoj Chapter 9 in this volume). Such policies, however, need a certain level of cross-country solidarity which would go against the grain of the economic governance in recent years. ...
The European crisis is not yet over. Austerity policies introduced to counter crisis seem to have had contrary, in many respects devastating effects (Kentikelenis et al. 2014). These ‘anti-crisis’ policies have put the burden of the crisis above all on lower and middle classes of peripheral countries and deepened the core-periphery divide within the European Union. The analytical tools we apply in this chapter are taken from the Latin
American dependency approach and from regulation theory. During the 1970s and 1980s, critical development studies networks had applied findings from the Latin American dependency approach, polarization theory, and alternative regional development approaches to the European situation of uneven development and the process of integration. Theory building in this tradition seems to have been marginalized by the convergence euphoria during the integration process. In this chapter, we draw on research that attempts to follow up on aspects of this tradition and adapt and apply it to the age of financialization (Becker and Weissenbacher 2014). We combine the Latin American dependency approach with a framework in a political economy tradition based on an adapted version of the regulationist school (Becker and Jäger 2012) in order to analyse the current crisis in Europe. The critical Latin American approaches towards development share with the regulationist approach the focus on historical developments and variations in space. They deal, however, more specifically with uneven development than the regulationist approach. This turns out to be crucial for our conclusions regarding future European developments and political strategies.
... The Eurozone crisis was heralded by the 'Great Recession', which started with the 2008 financial crash and led to severe economic and social problems in many countries (Reinhart & Rogoff, 2009). Especially in Europe, the banking crisis was soon transformed into a sovereign debt crisis for most peripheral EU member states (Lapavitsas, 2012;Patomaki, 2013). Countries like Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and Spain (all Eurozone members), as well as Hungary, Romania, and Latvia, were unable to re-finance their sovereign budgets on the financial markets and a special bailout mechanism had to be crafted at the transnational level to rescue these states from bankruptcy. ...
... As the rise of Eurosceptic forces suggests, the crisis has given greater visibility to those demanding an overturn of the integration project and a return to national monetary and budgetary sovereignty in the form of a break-up of the euro. However, it has also given new impetus to calls for the democratisation of EU institutions, including the ECB, in order to make them better serve the EU-wide needs for employment and social security: overturning the neoliberal, market-led integration in favour of the more progressive and social democratic policies of Keynesian demand management, full employment programmes, balance of trade imbalances and greater regulation of financial markets (Patomäki, 2013). ...
This paper suggests that the euro has crisis signalled a significant political moment in the European public sphere. Analysing the crisis as a conflict between the European decision-making elite and European civil society, I propose that the concentration of decision-making in the euro crisis at the European level, and the growing public critique aimed at the supranational centres of power, may lead to the politicisation of European integration and contribute to strengthening the European public sphere.
... They are still working to attain complete integration and join the Eurozone. The economic crisis in 2008 has not only endangered the EU but also the Eurozone as it surfaced the cracks of the European Monetary Union (EMU) mechanism signalling a potential landmark in disintegration or a diversion in the direction a federal state (Patomaki, 2013). The last enlargement took place in 2013 when Croatia joined the Union. ...
As the European Union (EU) has been shaken by various challenges such as the economic and immigration crises, Euroscepticism, Brexit, the raise of extremist parties, we consider timely a short overview on the political, social, and economic contexts that lead to the creation of the EU, and on its predecessors. The present chapter provides insights into the enlargements of the EU and it lays the foundations that lead to the current situation in the EU by shading light on the multi-layered causes and consequences of UK leaving the EU. Reflections are made on the clash of national and supranational entities and on political regimes and parties that dominate the EU stage as of the 2014 elections. © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018.
... The Eurozone countries were particularly hit and the financial crisis soon escalated into a fully-fledged debt crisis. The countries of the Southern and Western periphery proved to be particularly vulnerable and a number of measures had to be taken to contain the crisis (for detailed discussions of the Eurozone crisis, see Pisani-Ferry, 2014;Patomäki, 2013). ...
The chapter focuses on two important developments in European governance that have been particularly pronounced in the last few years. These are a tendency toward more coercive Europeanization stemming from an increasingly assertive role taken by the European Union institutions, but also occurrences of increased divergence from the EU norms and prescribed models, which could be described as de-Europeanization. It is argued that the two phenomena are interrelated and they need to be explored and theorized further, in order to build a more precise picture of what Europeanization is and how it evolves in time.
... These policies were opposed in the streets by the mounting of large protests or/and in the ballot box with the destabilization of political systems. Especially in Europe, the banking crisis was soon transformed into a sovereign debt crisis affecting most EU-peripheral member states (Lapavitsas, 2012;Patomäki, 2013). Countries like Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain (all Eurozone members), and Hungary, Romania and Latvia in fact went bankrupt, and a special bailout mechanism had to be crafted at the transnational level to 'rescue' them. ...
In recent years, Europe has experienced a rise in politics based on antagonism, often discussed from the perspectives of populism and the mainstreaming of the ideologies of the radical right. In this study, we argue that there is a need for an interdisciplinary, theoretically broader and more empirically focused approach that fosters understanding of these developments. To explore the causal factors, we focus on the enemy images that are constructed and diffused by politicians, and their specific historical and structural contexts. The paper thus has two main components: First, we review what political theory, research on populism and on the extreme right and social psychology say about the functions of the use and development of enemy images. Second, we highlight the contextual factors that we consider make the success of a politics based on enemy images more likely in Central and Eastern Europe.
... The Eurozone crisis was heralded by the 'Great Recession', which started with the 2008 financial crash and led to severe economic and social problems in many countries (Reinhart & Rogoff, 2009). Especially in Europe, the banking crisis was soon transformed into a sovereign debt crisis for most peripheral EU member states (Lapavitsas, 2012;Patomaki, 2013). Countries like Ireland, Greece, Portugal, and Spain (all Eurozone members), as well as Hungary, Romania, and Latvia, were unable to re-finance their sovereign budgets on the financial markets and a special bailout mechanism had to be crafted at the transnational level to rescue these states from bankruptcy. ...
Protest and social movements are drivers for the Europeanization of national public spheres. This is suggested by the literature on the emergence of Europeanized public spheres and the Europeanization of social movements as well as the discussion about the politicization of the European polity. The article tests this assumption in a standardized content analysis for newspaper reporting on the Eurozone crisis in Greece and Germany. Focusing on the public attribution of responsibility, the analysis looks for horizontal Europeanization (senders/addressees from other EU countries), vertical Europeanization (senders/addressees from the EU level), and discursive Europeanization (similar topics discussed at the same time). The findings do not identify protest as a strong driving force towards vertical or horizontal Europeanization of the public spheres in Greece and Germany. There is a weak tendency towards discussing similar topics at the same time in German and Greek media reports on protest. Consequences for European democracy and crisis politics are discussed.
... This has been manifested in a shift of public opinion away from favoring European integration (Vilpišauskas 2013). While it is too early to say what the long-term implications of the GRFC will be, it is clear that the crisis has revealed the inherent structural problems and limits regarding European fiscal rules, such as the dominance of financialization and impediments to political integration (Della Posta and Talani 2011;Patomäki 2013;Constantopoulou 2016). However, it remains plausible that the crisis might spearhead the advancement of integration rather than its impediment, at least as far as the integration of the Economic Monetary Union (EMU) is concerned (Tosun et al. 2014;Ioannou et al. 2015). ...
This chapter asserts that one of the most important aspects of the European Union has been the complex and often ambiguous power politics of conditionality. However, less attention has been paid to the ways in which the management of the Eurozone crisis, especially with regard to the case of Greece, has been embedded in practices that construct distinctions between insiders and outsiders within the Eurozone. Drawing on the concept of the ‘standard of civilization’ and postcolonial approaches to the study of the European Union, the aim of this chapter is to examine the transformation of Greece into a negative signifier and to illustrate the relevance of civilizational practices and narratives to the Greek Financial Crisis. In this respect, the chapter provides a reflective critique to exclusionary practices engrained in the management of the crisis. It also highlights the enduring importance of hierarchy and civilization within the Eurozone.
... Big History presupposes the possibility of collective learning. It encourages the anticipation of possibilities such as global security community and favors the development of better systems of governance of global processes and problems ( Patomäki 2002, ch 8;Patomäki 2008, chs 7 and 8;Patomäki 2013, ch 8). Christian (2005, like many other advocates of Big History, remains agnostic about the possibility of a world state. ...
... This is how and why, in some Southern European countries, general unemployment has risen above 20 per cent and youth (16-24 year olds) unemployment rates have exceeded 50 per cent. These are astonishing levels in modern societies in a post-Keynes age, and the austerity policies are set to continue for many more years (see Lapavitsas, 2011;Patomaki, 2012). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to assess whether European sport has been damaged or adapted during the austerity in public sector and consumer spending that has followed the financial crisis of 2008-2009.
Design/methodology/approach
Review of literature and data.
Findings
Sport has adapted successfully.
Research limitations/implications
The overall conclusions will not apply to every sport in every country.
Practical implications
Sport flourishes when it adapts to historical trends.
Originality/value
Updates all previous reviews.
This study examines the impact of crises on the use of populist communication and whether crises act as triggers for such communication. Whereas previous studies have focused on how populist challengers mobilise support during times of crisis, less attention has been paid to the overall usage of populist communication among political parties during periods of crisis. Therefore, this study takes a communication-oriented approach to analyse the overall usage of populist communication during two different crises, namely the euro crisis and the refugee crisis, to determine which one, if either, provides fertile ground for populist political communication. The findings reveal that crises do affect the usage of populist communication, although to different degrees depending on the crisis. Furthermore, niche and opposition parties utilise such communication more than mainstream and government parties. It is therefore suggested that crises influence the use of populist messaging, but factors such as government role and party status also significantly affect the usage of populist communication.
Stephen Gillin käsite uusi perustuslaillisuus viittaa poliittiseen projektiin, jonka tavoitteena on juridisin keinoin ja säännöin rajoittaa talouspolitiikkaa, vahvistaa markkinakuria, lisätä pääoman valtaa, sekä mukauttaa nämä tavoitteet kansainvälisin sopimuksiin ja instituutioihin. Käsitettä on sovellettu erityisesti Euroopan talous- ja rahaliitoon (EMU) etenkin eurokriisin yhteydessä. Tämä artikkeli kysyy, missä määrin uusperustuslaillinen projekti EMU:ssa on onnistunut rajoittamaan jäsenmaiden finanssipolitiikkaa, epäpolitisoimaan taloudellista päätöksentekoa ja sitouttamaan keskeiset instituutiot budjetti- ja markkinakurin ylläpitämiseen vuosina 2015–2020. Artikkeli käy läpi dataa euromaiden velkatasoista ja alijäämistä, analysoi vuoden 2015 tapahtumia Kreikassa ja tutkii Euroopan komission ja Euroopan keskuspankin toimintaa tästä näkökulmasta. Artikkeli tuo myös esille uuden perustuslaillisuuden keskeisiä jännitteitä, rajoitteita ja ristiriitaisuuksia, jotka ovat tulleet yhä ilmeisemmäksi euroalueella.
The idea of double movement (Polanyi) suggests questions such as: given the socially and ecologically disruptive consequences of uneven growth and globalisation, should we anticipate a global “protective response”, paving the way for global Keynesian institutions? I criticise the pendulum metaphor and the simple dialectical thesis-antithesis-synthesis scheme. Yet, although processes can be subject to regression, entropy, and roll-back, it would be a mistake to conclude that there is no rational tendential direction to world history—perhaps enabling new syntheses concerning the market/social nexus and processes of de/commodification. Holoreflexivity involves comprehension of the mechanisms, structures, and processes of the planetary whole. Holoreflexivity is a condition for the rise of transformative agency promoting more functional and legitimate common institutions to overcome contradictions and resolve social conflicts.
Examining the gridlock and decline of global governance in the 2000s–2020s, I show its deeper political economy underpinnings. Apart from attempts to lock in particular institutional arrangements, the prevailing disintegrative tendencies co-explain the gridlock. However, I qualify some of the earlier claims concerning complexity, law, and institutions. For example, the achievement of some closure and thus regularity can be compatible with increased complexity. Nonetheless, closure can also reduce complexity, perhaps on purpose, as uncertainty may be undesirable and forms of complexity harmful. Moreover, the extent to which law and institutions are compatible with Deutschian security community co-depends on the constitution of agency. I analyse reflexive agency in terms of four overlapping and nested orders of purposes, three axes of self-other relations, and virtuous circle of non-violence.
Do the EU Recovery Plan and Green Deal (EGD) break with disciplinary neoliberalism? Eschewing binary ‘yes or no’ answers, this article draws on Gramsci's idea of passive revolution as ‘progressive restoration’ to analyse these important developments in the European political economy. It offers a balance sheet of ‘progressive’ and ‘restorative’ elements and argues that these cohere in an integral response to geopolitical pressure and legitimation problems by the ‘Piedmont of Europe’ – Germany's power bloc. A concluding section argues that the most significant changes engendered by these initiatives may not reside in the substance in policy but rather in how policy is carried out – in the form. It seems that it is becoming increasingly difficult to depoliticize disciplinary neoliberal governance in Europe. Future research is needed on the nature and implications of this for theory and (progressive) practice.
This book bridges the study of European constitutionalism with the study of 'fiscal federalism' – the subfield of public economics concerned with structuring public finances between different levels of government in federal states. On one axis, this book delves into European Union and Member State constitutional law from all EU Member States in order to investigate and identify the existence of permanent constitutional boundaries that will impinge upon the selection of proposed models for EU fiscal federalism. On the second axis, this book engages the study of fiscal federalism in order to determine which institutional configurations known to that field remain legally and economically implementable within those boundaries. It provides a far-reaching investigation of which models of fiscal federalism are compatible with the constitutional boundaries of the European legal order.
The rise of algorithmic capitalism is marked by the extraction of data enabled by the combination of algorithms and artificial intelligence (AI). This coupling constitutes a powerful force, altering the rules, regulations, and discourses that comprise global governance. In our fraught times, numerical representations—algorithms and AI—can serve as proxies for the power of capitalism. Efforts to check this structure may be bracketed under four rubrics: initiatives to effect greater transparency, regulation, audits by third-party inspectors, and accountability. Notwithstanding modest gains in some of these domains, algorithms are extending their scope and capacities more rapidly than humans have established means for controlling them. This article traces these developments and their implications for achieving an ethical future by projecting scenarios. They lead to the quandary of what the creation of moral machines may mean for world order.
The commodification of livestock welfare has risen rapidly on the agendas of several state, private, academic, and third sector actors during the 2000s. This article traces the historical emergence of livestock welfare commodification as governance, or “sellfare.” The article also discusses sellfare’s composition, contradictions, and relationship to previous modes of livestock welfare governance. By reading secondary research alongside recent sellfare documents, the article traces the histories of five aspects of sellfare: the animal connection, liberal fare governance, livestock factories, scientific welfare governance, and welfare as quality. The history of sellfare sheds light on why commodification now appears as such a self-evident tool for livestock welfare governance. The analysis also suggests, however, that sellfare is unlikely to dissolve the contradictions that gave rise to it. On the contrary: commodification risks reducing welfare to a commodity. Recent innovations such as the welfare gas chamber remind us that sellfare still functions within intensive livestock production.
The Paris Agreement and the subsequent IPCC Global Warming of 1.5 °C report signal a need for greater urgency in achieving carbon emissions reductions. In this paper we make a two stage argument for greater use of carbon taxes and for a global approach to this. First, we argue that current modelling tends to lead to a “facts in waiting” approach to technology, which takes insufficient account of uncertainty. Rather than look to the future, carbon taxes that facilitate social redesign are something we have control over now. Second, we argue that the “trade” in “cap and trade” has been ineffective and carbon trading has served mainly as a distraction. Carbon taxes provide a simpler more flexible and pervasive alternative. We conclude with brief discussion of global context.
The increasingly influential neochartalist Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) comes with a nation-state-centric framing of politics. The neochartalists argue that many alleged globalisation-related constraints on national economic policy are illusory or seriously overstated. In their view, monetarily sovereign states enjoy substantial autonomy over their fiscal and monetary policy decisions. The neochartalist diagnosis thus seems to undermine cosmopolitan calls for supranational forms of macroeconomic governance. However, this paper argues that if we pay serious attention to a range of subtler obstacles and strategic incentives that apply especially to small currency-issuing states, cosmopolitan aspirations remain well-motivated. Accordingly, the political implications of MMT are reexamined and a case for supranational exercise of monetary sovereignty is made. The paper goes on to demonstrate how the standard state-centric approach to currency privileges can prove counterproductive from the perspective of democratic governance. It is concluded that neochartalism and cosmopolitanism can fruitfully both correct and enrich each other.
Seit dem Ausbruch der Euro-Krise hat sich eine intensive Diskussion über die institutionelle Reform der Europäischen Wirtschafts- und Währungsunion (EWWU) entwickelt. Doch trotz weitreichender Reformvorschläge von Seiten Frankreichs und der Europäischen Kommission verläuft der Reformprozess schleppend und inkrementell, sodass die grundlegenden ‚Konstruktionsfehler‘ der EWWU bisher nicht beseitigt wurden. Der Beitrag argumentiert, dass der Reformprozess nicht bloß durch vorübergehende ‚Meinungsverschiedenheiten‘ zwischen den Mitgliedsstaaten, sondern durch eine zunehmende wirtschaftliche Asymmetrie in der deutsch-französischen Achse gelähmt ist. Dieser Asymmetrie liegt wiederum eine Re-Orientierung Deutschlands in der europäischen und internationalen Arbeitsteilung zugrunde. Um dieses Argument auszuführen, stellt der Beitrag zunächst die historische Entwicklung und Bedeutung des deutsch-französischen Bilateralismus in der europäischen Wirtschaftsintegration dar und beleuchtet den bisherigen Verlauf der EWWU-Reformdiskussion. Hieran anschließend diskutiert er die Widersprüche und Unzulänglichkeiten der aktuellen Reformvorhaben und erklärt diese im Rahmen einer Analyse der wachsenden wirtschaftlichen Asymmetrie zwischen Deutschland und Frankreich und der zunehmenden wirtschaftlichen Re-Orientierung Deutschlands nach Osten in Richtung der Visegrád-Länder und der asiatischen emerging markets.
Der Artikel untersucht gegenwärtige Legitimitätsprobleme der EU und verortet sie in akademischen Debatten über die Legitimität des europäischen Integrationsprozesses (z. B. eines „permissiven Konsensus“ bzw. „beschränkenden Dissens“). Seit der Krise im Jahr 2008, so die These, kam es zu einem Teufelskreis der desintegrierenden Polarisierung. Die durch die EU forcierten austeritätspolitischen Krisenmaßnahmen verschlechterten die alltäglichen Lebensbedingungen vieler Bevölkerungsschichten, die durch die ökonomische Krise ohnehin schon von Verarmung, gesellschaftlicher Polarisierung und Prekarität gekennzeichnet waren. In der Folge sank die Zustimmung zur EU vor allem in den am stärksten von der Krise betroffenen Staaten. Proteste sozialer Bewegungen sowie nationalistische Einstellungsmuster, die von völkisch-konservativen bis neonazistischen Parteien erfolgreich mobilisiert und (re-)aktiviert wurden, sind ein Ausdruck dieses Legitimitätsverlustes. Innerhalb der europäischen Apparate konnten sich keine Alternativen zur neoliberalen Krisenlösung durchsetzen. Die EU reagierte auf die sich verschärfende Legitimitätskrise mit einer weiteren Abschottung der Institutionen von den Bevölkerungen, um trotz des Vertrauensverlustes politisch handlungsfähig zu bleiben. Durch die Verhärtung der institutionellen Apparate der EU verstärkte sich wiederum das gesellschaftliche Unbehagen in der EU.
From a post-Deutschian perspective, common institutions may aggravate the problem of conflicts and violence, but they can also be part of its solution. Contradictions and conflicts arise from shared processes and especially those of global political economy. Contradictions can be overcome through learning and building common institutions. Social contexts differ in terms of their self-transformative capacity, which is closely related to the question of democracy. While a hardening will means trouble; actors, rules and institutions can be made more open to challenge and revision. In essence, what emerges from these considerations is a normative vision of, and an argument for, pluralism and democratic governance of the world system. This is not a panacea, however, and many contingencies must be taken into account.
The Eurozone Crisis in the Shade of the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties
The financial crisis in the eurozone has created a kind of discursive window through which a renewed self‑reflection on the shape on the European integration can be traced. The crisis, its depth and course, has confirmed what previously could only be speculated on the edge of European discourse, namely the fact that the chosen model of deepening the economic and monetary union is not ideologically and class neutral. It therefore generates new decisive conditions about who becomes the beneficiary and the loser, where new centres and peripheries crystallize in this process. The purpose of this article is to use the crisis in the euro area to look at its structure, identify the most important intellectual and ideological assumptions underlying it, indicate how the legal framework contained in the Maastricht and Lisbon Treaties influenced its course and who and why suffered the most losses. Finally, the task of the article is to determine which aspects of the architecture of the eurozone proved to be unsustainable and what has therefore had to be changed in it.
Post‐Keynesians have delivered an important advance in providing explanations of the Eurozone crisis, not the least in demonstrating how the formation of the European integration project lacked the means to manage effectively the macroeconomic imbalances between core and peripheral spaces across the region. Through a critical engagement with such descriptions, this article argues that to account more adequately for the formation of the asymmetrical and crisis‐ridden forms of development across the Eurozone it is necessary to focus on the uneven and combined development of Europe's peripheral spaces and their integration into an expanded free trade regime since the 1980s. It is through a focus on the structuring condition of uneven and combined development shaped by capitalist social relations of production and attendant class struggles that we can locate the origins of the present crisis.
The chapter addresses the institutional answers to overcome the eurozone crisis. The emphasis is on an analysis that highlights institutional winners and losers. We discuss whether such changes are instructive evidence of a new institutional balance in the Economic and Monetary Union.
When the social reality is changing, we need to know also the following: What exactly is changing and why? To what extent is reflexivity involved in changes that take part in making the future uncertain and open? For instance, an announced policy change can become a self-altering prediction (or involve such a prediction), which is subject to
contradictory and complementary determination, resulting either in net self-fulfilling or self-denying tendency. I approach these questions also by analyzing two significant real-world historical examples, the Euro crisis and global financial crises. Both examples involve reflexive predictions, reflexive feedback loops, and performativity. What I find particularly striking is how the capitalist market economy – with all the historical shifts and changes in its institutions, regulations, and political structures – has managed to retain at least some of its recurrent economic patterns. Further, I examine the general methodological problem of the absence of decisive tests between theories. This has consequences: normative and ideological positions evolve easily and tend to fortify themselves rapidly; and actors can modify, perhaps inadvertently, their public anticipations in line with their interests or normative aims. In the final section, I argue that
the main aim of social sciences is not to predict accurately but to bring about desirable outcomes, explaining how to move from strategic actions and reflexive ideologies to emancipation.
This chapter revisits the debate between Chris Brown, Mark Hoffmann and the author on the state-centric view and cosmopolitanism that took place quarter of a century ago. It first explores whether similar deconstructions would anymore be possible. Second, it discusses Brown’s ideas about global civil society, democracy and justice, particularly in light of world-historical developments since the early 1990s. While Brown has tried to overcome the dichotomy between the state-centric view and cosmopolitanism, this chapter examines whether the idea of universal ethico-political learning and its cosmopolitan implications might explain the divergence in our practical judgements. The chapter concludes by arguing that any area of activities in international relations and world society can be subject to normative debates and potentially democratic politics.
This chapter deals with the repercussions of the neoliberal policies of tax havens, tax cuts and austerity of the past 35 years that have prevailed not only in the United States and the UK but also in Scandinavia and Finland. Data are presented on growing disparity in the distribution of income and wealth. The chapter focuses on the rise of the Republican right wing in the United States and its consequences, the dismantling of social services and benefits of ordinary Americans. Many people who felt that that they had been left to their own devices voted for populists. The surge of populism is related to various recent phenomena: Brexit, Trump’s victory in the US presidential election and the emergence of authoritarian regimes in Poland, Hungary, Russia and Turkey.
Recent literature on the eurozone crisis has begun to rethink those explanations of its origins that rely on narratives stressing the ‘immaturity’ of political and economic governance in the countries of the European periphery. These narratives are typically challenged by frameworks which understand the eurozone as a region characterised by a ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ hierarchy between the economic growth of Germany, which leads to precarious, ‘financialised’ growth in the periphery. Yet, this article shows that core–periphery scholarship is unable to adequately challenge the immaturity thesis due to its preoccupation with German ‘victimisation’ of the European periphery. By exploring country-specific direction of trade and capital lending statistics, I shows that there is little basis for the argument that Germany is to blame for the origins of the eurozone crisis in the individual countries of the European Periphery. This article shows that by bringing core–periphery analysis into dialogue with Comparative Political Economy, a critical approach to the Eurozone crisis can be developed which leaves behind the myth of the German ‘big bad wolf’. Instead, I show that imbalances between the core and periphery are a product of a flawed construction of the Single Market and Economic and Monetary Union.
Whether we talk about human learning and unlearning, securitization, or political economy, the forces and mechanisms generating both globalization and disintegration are causally efficacious across the world. Thus, the processes that led to the victory of the ‘Leave’ campaign in the June 2016 referendum on UK European Union membership are not simply confined to the United Kingdom, or even Europe. Similarly, conflict in Ukraine and the presidency of Donald Trump hold implications for a stage much wider than EU-Russia or the United States alone.
Patomäki explores the world-historical mechanisms and processes that have created the conditions for the world’s current predicaments and, arguably, involve potential for better futures. Operationally, he relies on the philosophy of dialectical critical realism and on the methods of contemporary social sciences, exploring how crises, learning and politics are interwoven through uneven wealth-accumulation and problematical growth-dynamics. Seeking to illuminate the causes of the currently prevailing tendencies towards disintegration, antagonism and – ultimately – war, he also shows how these developments are in fact embedded in deeper processes of human learning. The book embraces a Wellsian warning about the increasingly likely possibility of a military disaster, but its central objective is to further enlightenment and holoreflexivity within the current world-historical conjuncture.
Table of Contents
1.Introduction: the world falling apart
2.Brexit and the causes of European disintegration
3.EU, Russia and the conflict in Ukraine
4.Trumponomics and the dynamics of global disintegration
5.Piketty’s fundamental inequality r > g: the key to understanding and overcoming the causes of disintegration
6.Conclusion: holoreflexivity and the shape of things to come
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23802014.2017.1381571
A founding myth of the euro was that profound economic convergence could be achieved across the core and periphery of Europe. Scholarship from within Comparative Political Economy (CPE) has compellingly pointed to this myth of convergence as the fundamental mistake of the euro project (Regan, “Imbalance of Capitalisms”). Economic and Monetary Union was applied across a range of incompatible varieties of capitalism with little appreciation for how difficult it would be for peripheral economies to overcome long-standing institutional stickiness. Yet, while institutional stickiness tells us much about the causes of declining competitiveness, it tells us much less about the origins of brand new patterns of debt-led growth. This article modifies this CPE account by drawing attention to the much overlooked case of Portugal. In contrast to CPE’s emphasis on institutional stickiness, this paper explores the ways in which negotiation of European integration has been generative of institutional transformation leading to debt-led growth in Portugal. By combining Europeanisation with CPE, this article shows that, far from an inability to do so, in the case of Portugal, it has been the attempt to ‘follow the rules’ of European Integration that explains its damaging patterns of debt-led growth.
ProtoSociology is an interdisciplinary journal which crosses the borders of philosophy, social sciences, and their corresponding disciplines for more than two decades. Each issue concentrates on a specific topic taken from the current discussion to which scientists from different fields contribute the results of their research.
ProtoSociology is further a project that examines the nature of mind, language and social systems. In this context theoretical work has been done by investigating such theoretical concepts like interpretation and (social) action, globalization, the global world-system, social evolution, and the sociology of membership. Our purpose is to initiate and enforce basic research on relevant topics from different perspectives and traditions.
After more than seven years of fiscal austerity and neoliberal structural reforms, the fundamental imbalances that led to the Eurozone crisis have remained unresolved and the project of European integration as such appears to be in the deepest crisis it has experienced so far. This has prompted the dominant forces in the EU to at least partially reconsider their present crisis management strategies, envisioning deeper integration towards a “Genuine Economic and Monetary Union” and outlining different future scenarios for the EU. While especially the Five President’s Report does acknowledge fundamental construction problems and crisis tendencies of the Economic and Monetary Union, the strategies to address them either fall tremendously short of this diagnosis or lack assertiveness. We argue that this inability to confront these crisis tendencies results from the growing economic and political asymmetry in the axis between France and Germany as the principal mechanism of compromise which undergirded previous cycles of European economic integration. At the bottom of this paralysis lies a gradual shift in the dominant internationalization patterns of the German political economy within the European division of labor: away from Southern Europe and France and towards Eastern Europe and the Emerging Markets.
Európa gazdasága – a 2009-es nagy visszaesést követően -- 2011 második felétől
egy második recesszióba süllyedt. Az első válságra, amely 2007-ben az Egyesült
Államokból indult, az EU koordinált anticiklikus beavatkozással és egy új pénzügyi regulációs folyamattal válaszolt. A „második válság” eredendő oka a rosszul
felépített valutaunió. Az EU-n belüli válságkezelés 2010-től kezdve a finanszírozási problémával küzdő országok belső reformjaira koncentrált. Az egyensúlyteremtés és a fenntarthatóság érdekében az EU gazdasági és pénzügyi architektúrája
újabb elemekkel bővült. Az EMU reformjának lassúsága és fokozatossága nemcsak a recesszió elhúzódását, hanem – a pénzügyi fragmentáción keresztül – az
eurózóna mélyülő polarizációját is okozta. A félkész valutaunióban korlátokba
ütközik a kereslet és a foglalkoztatás élénkítése; fontos szerepet játszanak ugyanakkor az ECB innovatív megoldásai. A fenntartható növekedéshez szükség van
gyorsabb, az eddiginél komplexebb megközelítésre, a költségvetési fegyelem megszilárdítása mellett a közösségi szolidaritás kiterjesztésére is.
Is it true that either the EU will be democratised or it will disintegrate? I concur that the current policies, principles, and institutions of the EU both generate counterproductive politico-economic effects and suffer from problems of legitimation. These effects and problems, which are not confined to Europe, give rise to tendencies towards disintegration. My second point concerns the timing of the required learning and reforms. Modest policy proposals and tentative steps within the existing EU Treaty framework may be too little too late. The question is whether there is enough time for deeper transformations in Europe—and also globally.
In this paper, I focus on the British future from Brexit. The institutional form this will take is not yet fixed. However, one can consider likely outcomes based on dominant economic frameworks. From this perspective, it seems unlikely that Brexit will address the actual grievances that resulted in Brexit. These transcend European Union membership.
The economic crisis in Europe is also a political crisis, and principally a crisis of democracy. This is reflected in challenges to the manner in which the European Union (EU) has intervened in member states. The predominant form of intervention has been the imposition of austerity policies, which involve reductions in public spending, wage cuts, diminished welfare provision and an increase in the power of capital over labour reflected in higher unemployment. During the Eurozone crisis, such policies have been imposed in new and extreme forms on peripheral countries in the EU, especially Greece. This has made the crisis more severe, as peripheral countries have become stuck in a prolonged recession or, in the case of Greece, a depression. In this context new anti-austerity movements have arisen, demanding more democracy both nationally and internationally. These movements directly challenge the technocratic forms of elitist governance that have characterised the EU, with its lack of popular control and accountability (Anderson, 2009). After the end of the Cold War the main product of these forms of governance in the EU was the creation of the euro: a common currency for most EU states that was seen by European businesses as potentially rivalling the US dollar. Popular challenges to austerity policies have arisen during the Eurozone crisis because the EU’s democratic deficit has been compounded by the use of anti-democratic forms of governance to impose, through supranational institutions such as the European Commission (EC) and the European Central Bank (ECB), an austerity policy that has made the crisis worse.
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