Suchergebnisse

AbstractThis article shows how the European Central Bank (ECB) reduced the risk of politicization and de facto de‐delegation despite experiencing contestation. During the euro area crisis and the coronavirus emergency the ECB's monetary policy measures have been widely praised for their effectiveness. Even though the ECB is an independent trustee that cannot be easily sanctioned, it needs to engage with its principals to receive their political backing for common projects and in order to reaffirm its own centrality in governance. This article identifies different trustee strategies to reduce politicization and thereby to decrease the risk of de facto de‐delegation: (i) dualism, (ii) voluntary self‐restraint, and (iii) changing the yard stick. It concludes by showing that the ECB has expanded its monetary policy toolbox without triggering neither formal nor de facto de‐delegation.

AbstractThis article provides an assessment of the EU institutions' response to the coronavirus pandemic. By building on a synthesis of the new intergovernmentalism and the emergency politics approach it contends that the effectiveness and legitimacy of de novo bodies like the European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and the European Investment Bank (EIB) have fallen prey to its intergovernmental decision‐making structure, whereas the ECB has proven to be more resilient. The European Commission as the traditional engine of European integration was able to fill the gap with its large‐scale recovery instrument termed 'Next Generation EU' and via the creation of a temporary loan‐based instrument to support national short‐term work schemes (SURE). The historic July 2020 European Council produced policy outputs such as the 'emergency brake' and the diluted 'rule of law mechanism' that have the potential to deepen the rift between polarized member states.

AbstractThe European Fiscal Board (EFB) is a supranational fiscal council advising the European Commission on the European Union (EU) fiscal framework. It was created as a response to the EU member states' repeated non-compliance with the EU fiscal rules and the emergence of national fiscal councils. Non-compliance with EU fiscal rules was often left unpunished and required a new expert body to regain some of the lost credibility of the EU's fiscal framework through enhanced fiscal monitoring. This article argues that the European Commission created the EFB in response to the new intergovernmental dynamics. A supranational fiscal watchdog that depends on the Commission for financial resources and access to information would deflect member states from delegating more competences away from the Commission. Thus, the Commission was able to counter a potential threat to its authority in EU fiscal governance by creating a supranationalde novobody that it controlled.

AbstractThis article shows that the troika institutions – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – formed a technocratic consensus about the desirability of establishing national fiscal councils in the European Union (EU). Considerable disagreement existed, however, with regard to their design features. Each institution promoted a distinct mode of indirect governance by ranking national fiscal councils depending on their adopted governance model (agent, trustee or orchestrator). This persuasion, through entrepreneurial benchmarking, constitutes an important mechanism by which member states were nudged to adopt a distinct fiscal council model. Preference heterogeneity among the troika members ultimately prevented the spread of a one‐size‐fits‐all fiscal council in the EU.

This article distinguishes theoretically two conceptual models of a fiscal council – the trustee and the orchestrator model. The article reviews the arguments that prominent advocates of fiscal councils have put forth and finds that those who argue that the deficit bias is caused by the common pool problem prefer the trustee model, while others identifying asymmetric information as the root cause of the deficit bias prefer the orchestrator model. While the latter model relies on throughput legitimacy, the former relies on output legitimacy. The article concludes with a discussion about fiscal councils' contribution towards strengthening EMU.

Published: 28 February 2019 ; This article distinguishes theoretically two conceptual models of a fiscal council – the trustee and the orchestrator model. The article reviews the arguments that prominent advocates of fiscal councils have put forth and finds that those who argue that the deficit bias is caused by the common pool problem prefer the trustee model, while others identifying asymmetric information as the root cause of the deficit bias prefer the orchestrator model. While the latter model relies on throughput legitimacy, the former relies on output legitimacy. The article concludes with a discussion about fiscal councils' contribution towards strengthening EMU.

Published: 16 May 2019 ; This article shows that the troika institutions - the European Commission, the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) - formed a technocratic consensus about the desirability of establishing national fiscal councils in the European Union (EU). Considerable disagreement existed, however, with regards to their design features. Each institution promoted a distinct mode of indirect governance by ranking national fiscal councils depending on their adopted governance model (agent, trustee or orchestrator). This persuasion through entrepreneurial benchmarking constitutes an important mechanism by which member states were nudged to adopt a distinct fiscal council model. Preference heterogeneity among the troika members ultimately prevented the spread of a one-size-fits-all fiscal council in the EU.