Tag / European integration

by Erik Jones

Three Perspectives on the Crisis of Democracy in Europe

The usual story about the crisis of democracy centres on populists and other bad actors who spoiled the party for the all the rest. There is some truth to this account. But it only captures a small part of what is happening. To get a full picture, you need to look at the failure of democrats and democracy to deliver on what was promised. You also need to consider the perverse incentives that democratic institutions create. And you have to imagine that there are important groups of people – many of whom are poor and disadvantaged – who come out better under other systems of government (and for whom democratization has made things worse). These perspectives on the crisis of democracy do not deny the great promise that democratic institutions have to offer. But they do give pause to consider the many different challenges that democrats have to face if the project of giving power to the people is going to be a success. Three recent books by Philipp Ther, Zsuzsanna Szelényi, and John A. Gould explain why.

Continue reading →
by Erik Jones

Europe Today — A Twenty-First Century Introduction (Sixth Edition)

European politics is changing, and fast. But the significance of that change is hard to appreciate without a deep understanding of ‘Europe’, meaning its history, politics, culture, and economics. Unfortunately, so much of what we ‘know’ about Europe is based on caricatures and stereotypes. (The same is no doubt true for the rest of the world as well. I blame the demise of area studies, but that is another conversation.) This edited volume — called Europe Today and published by Rowman & Littlefield — can help shed important light.

Continue reading →
by Erik Jones

Five Examples of the Strength of Area Studies

Universities do not like to study people who live in places anymore. Instead, they emphasize the importance of theory and method. There are many good reasons for doing so, particularly as you consider the wide range of skills involved in analyzing the enormous amounts of data that the internet makes available. But there are also costs. Theory is a relatively poor guide for understanding why Russia invaded Ukraine, for example. You can make arguments from theory after the fact, but a close examination of developments in the country offered a better chance for anticipating what Russia did and where we are likely to go from here. The first book in this collection is a good illustration of what I mean with that statement. That book was published just weeks before the Russian invasion. The insights it offers on the war as it is unfolding are compelling.

Continue reading →
by Erik Jones

The Italian Presidential Elections and the Politics of Trust

The Italian electoral college will start voting for the successor to Sergio Mattarella as President of the Republic on 24 January. Between now and then, at least two pages of every major national newspaper will be devoted to rumours and speculation about what Italy’s party leaders are planning, who might get drafted as a candidate, and how the votes are likely to line up. It is the usual blizzard of noise that comes at the end of the white semester — the last six months of any presidential mandate, during which the President of the Republic is no longer able to dissolve parliament. What is at stake is not just who will take over the leadership of the Italian state but also whether the current government can hold together and whether the any new President will send Italy’s parliamentarians back to face the voters. By implication, Italy’s successful implementation of its national recovery and resilience plan is also on the table — together with all that entails for the rest of the European Union.

Continue reading →
by Erik Jones

The European Central Bank as Hostage

The European Commission’s proposal for a ‘next generation’ recovery fund is an important step in forging a common response to the economic challenges that will follow in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis. Together with fiscal efforts at the national level, this fund should add useful stimulus to European economic performance. What remains to be seen is how the negotiations will play out within the European Council. There is reason for optimism but also reason for caution in that respect.

Meanwhile, the European Central Bank remains the primary source of macroeconomic stabilization. When the ECB’s Governing Council meets on 4 June, we should expect to see them add more stimulus of their own into the mix. The pandemic emergency purchase program will need to be larger. The Governing Council may need to adjust some of its other instruments as well. But Europe’s heads of state and government should be under no illusion that such actions will solve Europe’s macroeconomic problems or that they take any pressure off the European Council in agreeing on an ambitious recovery fund. The ECB can buy more time, but it cannot be the only game in town. And, as we have seen, even buying time is getting expensive. Increasingly, the Governing Council finds itself in situations where it is damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t: The ECB is a hostage to the effects of this crisis, to the actions of the European Council, and to the economic and political consequences of its own policy response – both real and imagined.

Continue reading →

by Erik Jones

Why Is the ECB Politically Independent?

The recent decision by the German Constitutional Court has triggered an avalanche of commentary about the primacy of European law and about the political independence of the European Central Bank. These are important issues for debate. I am persuaded by colleagues like R. Daniel Kelemen, for example, that you cannot have a ‘rule of law’ in Europe without a clear hierarchy of legal interpretation. Hence, while I can see the point being made by the German constitutional court about its obligations to uphold the constitutional rights of German citizens, I can also see why the European Court of Justice would insist on having the last word in any assessment of whether a European institution acted within its European mandate.

By contrast, the debate about the political independence of the ECB has taken a detour. The focus lies too narrowly on whether complying with the German court would or would not violate the ECB’s political independence given the wording of the Treaty on the functioning of the European Union and the Statute of the European System of Central Banks. That focus is too legal and in any event crabwalks back into the debate about the primacy of European law. The focus should lie on why the ECB is politically independent instead. Along the way, we should ask whether that independence is necessary for the ECB to forge an effective response to the current economic crisis.

Continue reading →

by Erik Jones

An East-West Divide in Europe?

There is a big conversation brewing about the deepening East-West divide in the European Union.  Much of this conversation started long before the pandemic.  Social scientists like R. Daniel Kelemen have been worried for a long time now about the diverging trajectories in democratic institutions and about the possible roles that European Union (EU) institutions may have played in supporting that evolution.  More recent scholarship shows how the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated that tension.  This raises questions about whether such developments were always likely to happen, and about how we can better understand East-West relations in Europe.  Fortunately, three brilliant new books promise to help in that understanding.  The first, by Larry Wolff, examines the role of Woodrow Wilson in help shaping the politics of Central and Eastern Europe.  The second, by John Connelly, explores the evolution of East European nationalism.  The third, by Lenka Bustikova, examines the problem of extreme right mobilization.  The conclusion I take away from these books is that there are important political dynamics at work in Eastern Europe that need deeper understanding; it is not that East and West are fundamentally different.  We can learn a lot from the study of Eastern Europe as we struggle to interpret developments elsewhere as well – Western Europe very much included.

Continue reading →

by Erik Jones

This Is What European Disintegration Looks Like

The European Council decided during a summit organized to address the COVID-19 crisis on 23 April to confirm a European Commission program to support national insurance systems. They also approved a program by the European Investment Bank to support lending to small and medium-sized enterprises, and another by the European Stability Mechanism to make loans available to national governments to pay for health care expenses related to the pandemic. Finally, the Council asked the Commission to set out a roadmap for the creation of a ‘recovery fund, which is needed and urgent’. Supporters of the decision hailed it as an unprecedented leap toward a Europe of solidarity; critics decried it as vague and insignificant. They are both wrong and right at the same time.

Continue reading →

by Erik Jones

Getting Ready for the 23 April European Council

The European Council will meet by video conference next Thursday.  When it does, the three main items on the agenda will be to approve the recommendations made by the Eurogroup on 9 April, to push forward the conversation about a European Recovery Fund, and to restart and restructure the talks about the upcoming multi-annual financial framework.  In English, that means the conversation will be about money.  Like any conversation about money it will be difficult.  The opportunities for misunderstanding are everywhere.  Now is a good time to sort out some of the issues.

Continue reading →

by Erik Jones

Why Share Risk through the ECB?

I am an American – an outsider – not a European. I have been studying and living in Europe for a while; I wrote my doctoral dissertation on Dutch politics; I spend more time now looking at politics in Italy. Alongside that political interest, I have spent much of the past thirty years looking at European monetary integration. Europe has taught me a lot, but there are still many things I find confusing. Top of the list right now is that the governments of the euro area would rather accept a higher shared risk in the ECB than they would face if they agreed to share risks through an institution specifically designed to raise credit in the markets. This strange choice about how to share risks matters because the risks the European face have never been greater.

Continue reading →