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The literature on fifteen years of European crises leaves the reader with a puzzle. Prominent accounts of the longest crisis – that of the euro area (EA) – assert that the EA is deeply divided between North and South, with Central Eastern European (CEE) member states being ignored. This makes it hard to explain how the union has managed to reform since 2008 and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Scholars have started to talk of transnational coalitions, but they equate coalition-formation with bringing together the like-minded, typically over solidarity versus sovereignty and more or less integration. However, coalitions of the like-minded are typically too small to sustain reforms and compromise has to be sought with others who have different preferences. To establish empirically how stable or fluid transnational coalitions are, we exploit the EMU|Choices database (Wasserfallen, Leuffen, Kudrna, and Degner 2019) [Analysing European Union decision-making during the Eurozone crisis with new data. European Union Politics, 20 (1), 3–23] on EA reforms and our own original data on Covid-19 reforms. Our findings show a stable pattern but no geopolitical divide – coalitions have varying CEE members. These findings can provide a basis for developing a more plausible conceptualisation of transnational coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Next Generation EU (NGEU) package transformed European economic governance. This article examines the implications of this change in terms of EU polity formation and in terms of social policy content. It asks whether the temporary availability of large funds increases the leverage of the Commission in the European Semester and how this innovation affects sensitive policies. In the tradition of Stein Rokkan, the article advances a conception of the EU as a compound polity that needs to reconcile dispersed authority with second‐order loyalty. We then contrast our theoretical expectations with traditional reform surveillance and experimentalist governance theories. The drafting of Recovery and Resilience Plans for Italy and Spain provides the empirical basis for assessing these expectations. The analysis shows a dual effect: adding fiscal capacity to the European Semester enhances the Commission's hierarchical power whilst the need to ensure member states' loyalty leaves room for national executives to insist on their priorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue recalls the alarm raised in EU capitals and Brussels after the UK's in-out referendum delivered a Leave vote in June 2016. The fear was of a domino effect and the further fragmentation of an already divided EU. Seven years later, it is clear that there was rapid attrition of Eurosceptic triumphalism, and the EU-27 showed remarkable unity. This required a sustained collective effort to contain a membership crisis and maintain the EU polity. Yet, the issue contributors challenge the notion that the alarm was unfounded and explain why this counter-factual did not materialise, even though potential for future membership crises of different sorts was revealed. Theoretically, this supports an understanding of the EU as a polity that is fragile, yet able to assert porous borders, exercise authority over a diverse membership, and mobilise a modicum of loyalty when the entire integration regime is under threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU is still fragile after its long decade of crises since 2008, and its durability remains an open question. New capacities were created during this time. But it is not clear how robust they are and whether developing them further will encounter insurmountable obstacles, including resentment by citizens. Over time, tensions and disagreements unleashed three foundational conflicts: conflicts over sovereignty (who decides), solidarity (who gets what when and why) and identity (who we are). The crisis politics that was deployed to deal with such tensions has often constrained policy responses in scope and effectiveness. Against the odds, however, the destructive spiral stopped short of driving the Union into self-destruction: a circumstance that calls for an explanation. We summarize empirical research that shows three ways in which this unexpected resilience can be explained: public rhetorical action, externalization strategies, and the paradoxical strengths of a weak centre in achieving polity maintenance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the framing of crises shape public support for inter-state solidarity? We focus on three dimensions that have been salient in the characterisation of European Union crises and may affect public support for solidarity more generally: (a) how country-specific or common a crisis is; (b) whether policymakers are seen as responsible for the crisis or not; and (c) how existential or manageable the threat posed by a crisis appears. We employ a pre-registered factorial vignette experiment conducted in 15 European Union countries to assess how characterising a hypothetical crisis affects voter support for fiscal and financial solidarity. Our results show that exposure to different crises frames shapes public support for risk-sharing in the European Union. Changes in solidaristic attitudes vary significantly with the means of fiscal risk-sharing proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does the inherent norm of integration, notably to share risks among its members in good faith, become a self-sustaining practice? I address this question generally and for a critical case of a divisive institution, i.e. the evolution of sovereign bailout funding in the Euro Area since 2010. Community building between states is a potential outcome of solidaristic practices, reinforced by positive feedback processes. Inspired by Deborah Stone's [Stone, D. A. (1999). Beyond moral hazard: Insurance as moral opportunity. Connecticut Insurance Law Journal, 6(1), 12–46] work on insurance, I demonstrate that there are social mechanisms at play that favour the secular expansion of risk sharing between states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue leverages the variation across Europe to expand on the conceptualisation of and the empirical knowledge about finance and financialization. As we will show, focussing on Europe can offer a richer understanding of the reach of financialization than the prevalent focus on the Anglo-American world, with surprising insights that may be of more general relevance to other world regions. More specifically, a focus on Europe allows new insights on the reach of financialization, central actors that brought it about, and the choices and trade-offs that have shaped the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successive crises in the European Union have led critics to identify a pervasive tendency to emergency politics, where democratic deliberation gives way to policy decisions forced through by executive authority. By contrast, in this article it is argued that crises may stimulate deliberation and compromise, even when preceded by open conflict and an evident collective action failure. Drawing on a new dataset of 1759 policy-related actions covering the EU and its member states' responses to COVID-19 between March and July 2020, the timing, sequencing and origins of policy claims and steps are traced. Both urgent epidemiological responses are found, where emergency measures were in evidence; and responses to anticipated economic challenges that had to overcome disagreement concerning necessary institutional reforms. The findings depict a multifaceted crisis response. The European Commission acted swiftly but also bought time for member state governments to deliberate. This casts doubt on the many-crises-one-script account of EU emergency politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article asks whether the EU's pension policy promotes and achieves financialisation of old age security. Financialisation in this context means financial market integration that, in conjunction with pension reforms in member states, creates a market-based mode of governance for old age security. After an overview of how significant private pension funds have become in the EU, the article takes a most-likely case study of financialisation, the Pan-European Pension Product (PEPP), to see how successful the EU's pension policy proved to be in establishing the PEPP. The findings suggest that EU policymaking in pensions tries to instrumentalise financial market integration for pension provision but this does not necessarily lead to financialisation of old age security. Market integration is a multi-faceted process of creating, emulating and correcting markets that obstructs a single-minded policy thrust like financialisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK's negotiating position in the area of 'economic governance' started from the assumption that there is a deep dividing line between insiders and outsiders of the 'euro zone'. To protect the outsiders, the UK government did not ask for a veto, but for a safeguard mechanism that can postpone a decision in the euro area. This is exactly what David Cameron achieved in the negotiations with Council President Tusk. This article explains why the UK demands were so modest. Key is the peculiar situation of the UK being the major financial centre for a currency union to which it does not belong. Hence, the UK taxpayer needs protection from the City, and EU membership has helped to provide this. There is not much else a UK government could ask for. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The governance of EMU was premised on the idea that market discipline, informed by fiscal surveillance, supports the building of a hard currency union. Theory would lead us to expect that the international–commercial and the supranational–technocratic assessments of sovereign debt are fairly aligned. But they were not. We show that credit rating agencies and Eurostat have rather different assessments of what certain policies mean for sovereign debt. These assessments reveal divergent institutional logics of market actors and regulators. Private agencies are prone to conformism and herding behavior, allowing for little consistent discipline, while the public agency follows a bureaucratic imperative of accountability and transparency, which gets in the way of evolving policy priorities. Our findings thus shed light on the difficulties of fiscal governance by regulation only but they also suggest that reforms at the EMU level do not provide quick fixes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three theories or rationales can be invoked to explain the formation of the monetary union as well as its policy architecture. One sees its rationale as forming an optimal currency area, another as making macroeconomic policies credibly stability-oriented and a last one as overcoming collective action problems of mutually beneficial policy coordination. Each theory also implies an explanation for why the euro area is in crisis now. The article contains a critical assessment of these theories, with a view to how they have informed crisis management of the euro area but have also failed so far to stabilize the monetary union effectively. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The crisis of 2007-09 was prefigured by bubbles in the housing and mortgage credit markets of major Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. A comparison of the United States, the United Kingdom, and France reveals that, contrary to popular perception, the two European countries had a bigger housing price bubble, more volatility, and a more short-termist mortgage market. Yet, the fallout of the crisis—in terms of overindebtedness of mortgage holders, foreclosures of homes, and the extent to which the “nest-eggs” of households were devalued—has been worse in the United States. This article explores which differences in the use of credit markets for the social policy of promoting homeownership can account for this puzzling finding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This special issue of Politics & Society explores the relationship between social policy and financial markets, which was thrown into sharp relief by the financial crisis of 2007-09. The research asks how particular social policies underpin and even create financial markets, specifically mass markets for consumer finance, mortgages, and pensions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This special issue identifies the forces which weaken or strengthen the role of unions in the reconfiguration of welfare states. The contributions cover a wide range of institutions in employment relations, different degrees of welfare state maturity and diverse social policy areas. This introduction argues that we may discern a pattern against the background of both an economic and a political role of trade unions and collective rights. Trade unions are not weakened or strengthened in any unilinear manner, but their economic and political roles evolve in different directions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]