Remaking European Political Economies: Financial Assistance in the Euro Crisis

The EU designed new institutions to support member states in need and facilitate socio-economic adjustments, with the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) providing financial assistance on an intergovernmental basis. Remaking European Political Economies argues that EU financial assistance programs focused strongly on reforms that led to a partial convergence of program countries based on market-based economic governance and reduced governmental influence in the economy.

Format: Hardback
Length: 296 pages
Publication date: 05 January 2024
Publisher: University of Toronto Press

The European Union's (EU) euro area faced an existential socio-economic crisis from 2009 to 2015. To uphold its institutional integrity, the EU established several new institutions to assist member states in need and facilitate socio-economic adjustments. At the heart of this strategy is the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), which provides financial assistance to member states facing severe crises on an intergovernmental basis, while imposing adjustment programs on program countries.

Drawing on a comparative political economic analysis, Remaking European Political Economies demonstrates that the EU's financial assistance programs primarily focused on reforms that resulted in partial convergence among program countries, characterized by market-based economic governance and reduced governmental influence in the economy. The book utilizes extensive, empirically-based case studies of two prominent euro area countries in crisis: Greece and Ireland. Dennis Zagermann illustrates that socio-economic models in the euro area can undergo institutional change when exposed to severe crises in conjunction with financial assistance programs that include policy conditionality. By doing so, his book sheds light on the central question of whether there is a potential convergence of European models of capitalism, a topic that has been the focus of comparative political economic debates for over thirty years.

Weight: 624g
Dimension: 161 x 237 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781487549039