Suchergebnisse

This article was supported in part by a Jean Monnet Network entitled "The Politics of the European Semester: EU Coordination and Domestic Political Institutions (EUROSEM)" Agreement number: 600110-EPP-1-2018-1-CA-EPPJMO-NETWORK (Grant agreement nr 2018-1359), with the support of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union. ; There is now a significant literature engaging with questions around gender and economic governance in the European Union. This builds upon research that demonstrates the gendered nature of the economy, and the gendered impacts of policy interventions. This paper draws on that research to develop an account of the gendered nature of the EU's crisis response, moving from analysis of the response to the Global Financial Crisis to some prelimary discussions of the EU's economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper shows how at each stage policies generate gendered consequences, and are built upon gendered assumptions about society and the economy. This paper therefore connects the feminist literature on the European Economic Governance to debates on the Covid-19 response, using a focus on gender and gender equality to examine key continuities between the crisis fighting of the Global Financial crisis to the establishment of the Next Generation EU fund. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed

AbstractThere is now a significant literature engaging with questions around gender and economic governance in the European Union. This builds upon research that demonstrates the gendered nature of the economy, and the gendered impacts of policy interventions. This paper draws on that research to develop an account of the gendered nature of the EU's crisis response, moving from analysis of the response to the Global Financial Crisis to some prelimary discussions of the EU's economic response to the COVID‐19 pandemic. The paper shows how at each stage policies generate gendered consequences, and are built upon gendered assumptions about society and the economy.This paper therefore connects the feminist literature on the European Economic Governance to debates on the COVID‐19 response, using a focus on gender and gender equality to examine key continuities between the crisis fighting of the Global Financial crisis to the establishment of the Next Generation EU fund.

Recent years have seen a distinctive transformation in EU economic governance, including the introduction of a regime of oversight and recommendation as well as the establishment of new policymaking, oversight and expert institutions at both the European and member state levels. These changes raise questions about legal and political accountability, and about the current state of integration. Debates over the political nature of contemporary economic governance have, thus far, ignored the role that the politics of gender may be playing in constructing and legitimising this regime. While much research has documented the gendered impacts of this regime, there remains a gap in the literature concerning how gender influences the regime itself. This article addresses this gap by exploring two ways in which gender politics have shaped and legitimised the new regime. First, it explores the gendered nature of economic expertise within EU economic governance. Secondly, it explores the framing of the economic crisis, and show how the narratives of the crisis helped to create this gendered regime. The article explores the gendered nature of the process of seeking legitimacy in economic policy, and so the analysis helps to deepen the understanding of the politics behind economic policy more broadly. ; Publisher PDF ; Peer reviewed

The 'politics of bullshit' is the practice of rhetoric that communicates falsehoods, with little regard for the truth, and Hopkin and Rosamond (2017: 2) have argued that 'the rise of bullshit (and thus of austerity policies) is rooted in the broader hollowing out of Western democratic politics'. This article argues that seeking to understand bullshit without examining how it interacts with race and gender undermines this emerging research agenda, and weakens its ability to explain bullshit. It examines the role of bullshit in the Brexit campaign and highlights the insights that an intersectional analysis can bring.

In 2016, JCMS's special issue 'Another Theory is Possible' argued that both EU Studies and the EU find themselves in need of a re-invigorated, poly-phonic debate which questions the socio-economic power structures and narratives of exclusion potentially embedded in all politics (Manners and Whitman, 2016). In this contribution focusing on the EU's economic policy, we take up this challenge applying an intersectional lens to review the positive narrative of growth and recovery that the European Commission, amongst others, deployed in 2017. Our analysis shows how EU economic policy plays a key role in establishing gendered and racialised hierarchies in the EU. Additionally, this reveals the gendered and racialised dynamics at the heart of European integration itself. We demonstrate the urgent need for EU studies to take such dynamics seriously in seeking to understand the European Union of 2017 and beyond. Taking an intersectional, perspective, we problematise who the audience for this positive narrative is and whose economic well-being is understood to 'count'. As such, we examine the gender constitutive effects of the EU as an economic actor. We explore how European integration is progressing through the establishment of a common economic space (Hoskyns 2008, 108) built through the pursuit of gender-blind and gender-biased economic goals promoted by the EU. This is an EU which ignores women as economic citizens and economic actors. In building this critique of the narratives of the EU's economic 'success' or of 'the end of the crisis', we draw on two existing bodies of work: existing critical political economic approaches to EU Integration which have sought to understand the full implications of the shifts in the EU's economic governance structures, the flexibility and political opportunism of the EU's economic narrative (Rosamond, 2002; Ryner, 2015; Schmidt, 2016), and Feminist Political Economy critiques which have uncovered 'strategic silences' in 'mainstream' approaches to macro-economic policy (Picchio, 2015; Schuberth and Young, 2011). These perspectives are united by the way that they shed light on how the EU is (re-) shaping the contours and limits of political arena. As the EU's institutions seek to portray a break with the crisis and a return to normality, we interrogate this narrative of exiting crisis, arguing that it serves to entrench and continue economic priorities and assumptions established in the heat of the crisis. The narrow economic interests of finance and global markets that were prioritised during the crisis remain dominant in this 'post-crisis' moment, presented as universal. The pursuit of these interests does not serve those most impacted by the crisis itself: women and marginalised groups.