Search

Hard-line Euroscepticism appears to be, nowadays, a persistent phenomenon of the later stages of European integration. However, it is unclear to what extent the joint effects of economic insecurities and growing numbers of immigrants play a role in determining the people's choice to actually support hard-line Eurosceptic parties with their vote. Building upon the existing body of literature on the economic determinants of voting for anti-European parties, this study brings the analysis further by breaking down the electoral performance of strictly Eurosceptic parties for different types of elections at the regional level, accounting for within-country variations otherwise lost in national-level analysis. We build a dataset including the regionally distributed results of all electoral episodes (regional, national, European) between 2007 and 2016 in Austria, France, Germany, Greece and Italy for a total of 522 elections. Methodologically, the paper adopts panel-level econometrics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates media representations of the European financial crisis in Greece and Italy. We study the Euro crisis as an 'emergency situation' with domino effects, where media played a central role in shaping communication practices at the national level as well as between the two countries. Drawing upon vertical and horizontal dynamics of Europeanization, we map the convergences and divergences in media discourses that surround the period 2011–2015. In doing so, we elaborate a qualitative analysis of newspaper articles focusing, in particular, on the themes of austerity and the fragmentation of Europe. Our argument suggests that national public spheres in times of transnational crisis become increasingly nationalized; yet under certain circumstances such as when the supranational infrastructure is the target of blame, they converge, opening the path toward a transnational discursive dialogue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The euro crisis and a new debate about immigration in Europe have undermined support for the EU while the unsolved Greek debt problems as well as the ECB's quantitative easing policy have raised new crucial policy issues. It is necessary to identify the key issues of Eurozone stabilization and to clarify the economic benefits from monetary integration. As regards the economic welfare analysis of the euro, the new model presented shows the benefits of the euro's reserve currency position, namely in the framework of a neoclassical growth model with seigniorage based on international reserve holdings. Discounted benefits are about 10,000 € per capita in a stable Euro area. Thus the benefits are bigger than often considered, at the same time one may raise the question of whether the existing institutional setting of the Eurozone is sufficient for achieving long-term stability and prosperity. As regards the envisaged third rescue package for Greece it is emphasized that a haircut of public creditors along with adoption of a Greek capital levy plus privatization efforts are required to achieve debt sustainability and growth. The traditional interpretation of subsidiarity in the EU is found to be misleading and the vertical division of politics is destabilizing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With his concept of governmentality, Michel Foucault delivered one of the most innovative approaches to analyze neoliberalism, which is predominant on the international stage since "Thatcherism" (1979-90) and "Reagonomics" (1981-88). Even an own discipline developed around this concept (governmentality studies), bringing fruitful theoretical merits. However, there is a huge gap. Benchmark for most researches in the governmentality studies is always the geographical and jurisdictional confined state. Thus, inter-, trans-, and supranational organizations such as the UN, IMF, EU, World Bank or INGOs are completely neglected. I try to fill that gap and to deliver starting points for further analysis of (neoliberal) governmentality on a supranational level by asking: How do neoliberal socio-economic programs of the IMF and European Commission (EC) for Greece work in a Foucauldian perspective? While conducting a theoretical discussion of the governing principles of Troika programs for Greece and using the concept of governmentality, I find that social security is reconcilable with neoliberalism, but an organization of it on a public basis is not. Public welfare is not excluded in neoliberalism; the neoliberal governmentality even insists on private, personal provision, which is based on individual responsibility of a rational acting subject. The objective is to transform social security to a private good. And the same principles are used by the Troika through their adjustment programs during the Greek crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the parallel to the negative effect of the global crisis on the world economy, the economies in the EU started to give negative signals. The member countries such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain seeing the first negative effects of the global crisis are located in the periphery of the continent. Among these countries, Greece is more important with respect to the depth of its ongoing crisis, its observed effects and being an initial example. This is the biggest financial crisis since the EU accepted the euro as a single currency and Greece involved in the Euro Region in 2001. Like some of the other member countries in EU, Greece has a huge amount of sovereign debts and budget deficit. The most sovereign debts in Greece were taken from financial institutions located in central countries such as Germany, France and Belgium. It is possible that the problems caused by the Greek non-performance issue could spread over Euro Region and that risk could affect directly currency union at first, then economic and political structure of the EU and create some problems for maintaining of its single currency, namely the euro and also the ECB. Called recently as a "naughty boy" or a "sick man" in the EU, Greece has created an important test atmosphere with regard to the integration and control of EU countries' monetary and economic policies and the creation of common policies against global crisis. It became a laboratory country for the Union. Taking into consideration the process, the ongoing problems in the EU currency system after global crisis will be debated around the notion of "Greek Crisis" in our work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]