The European Union (EU)and its Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in particularis often criticized as a predominantly marketoriented project. We analyse to what extent such claims can be substantiated by focusing on one key aspect of the EU's post-crisis framework for economic governance: the country-specific recommendations (CSRs) that the EU has been issuing annually since 2011. Based on an original dataset, we analyse more than 1300 CSRs, which show that the EU does not push uniformly for less state intervention. Rather, the CSRs tend to suggest fiscal restraint and less protection for labour market insiders, while simultaneously promoting measures that benefit vulnerable groups in society. During the second decade of EMU, CSRs have gradually become more permissive of higher public spending and more in favour of worker protection, while the share of recommendations advocating more social protection has stagnated at a high level.
In 2010 the European Semester was created to improve coordination of fiscal and economic policies within Europe's Economic and Monetary Union. The Semester aims to tackle economic imbalances by giving European Union (EU) member states country-specific recommendations (CSRs) regarding their public budgets as well as their wider economic and social policies with a view to enabling better policy coordination among Euro Area member states. In this article, we develop a method to assess the way in which the CSRs have been addressing coordination and offer a systematic analysis of the way they have been formulated. We offer a way to code CSRs as well as one to analyse progress evaluations. Furthermore, we seek to use our results to address one of the reoccurring questions in the literature: whether the EU is pursuing a 'one size fits all' approach to economic policy making in the Euro Area? The findings indicate that recommendations for different types of market economies among the Euro Area members tend to focus on different policy areas.
The European Union (EU)and its Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) in particularis often criticized as a predominantly marketoriented project. We analyse to what extent such claims can be substantiated by focusing on one key aspect of the EU's post-crisis framework for economic governance: the country-specific recommendations (CSRs) that the EU has been issuing annually since 2011. Based on an original dataset, we analyse more than 1300 CSRs, which show that the EU does not push uniformly for less state intervention. Rather, the CSRs tend to suggest fiscal restraint and less protection for labour market insiders, while simultaneously promoting measures that benefit vulnerable groups in society. During the second decade of EMU, CSRs have gradually become more permissive of higher public spending and more in favour of worker protection, while the share of recommendations advocating more social protection has stagnated at a high level.
The economic imbalances that characterize the world economy have unequally distributed costs and benefits. That raises the question of how countries could run long-term external surpluses and deficits without significant opposition against the policies that generate them. We show that political discourse helps to secure public support for these policies and the resulting economic outcomes. First, a content analysis of 32 000 newspaper articles finds that the dominant interpretations of current account balances in Australia and Germany concur with very distinct perspectives: external surpluses are seen as evidence of competitiveness in Germany, while external deficits are interpreted as evidence of attractiveness for investments in Australia. Second, survey experiments in both countries suggest that exposure to these diverging interpretations has a causal effect on citizens’ support for their country’s economic strategy. Political discourse, thus, is crucial to provide the societal foundation of national growth strategies.
The economic imbalances that characterize the world economy have unequally distributed costs and benefits. This raises the question how countries could run long-term external surpluses and deficits without significant opposition against the policies that generate them. We show that economic ideas, and their emphasis in the public discourse, help to secure mass political support for these policies and the resulting economic outcomes. First, a content analysis of 32,000 newspaper articles finds that the dominant interpretations of economic outcomes in Australia and Germany concur with very distinct perspectives: external surpluses are seen as evidence of competitiveness in Germany, while external deficits are interpreted as evidence of attractiveness for investments in Australia. Second, survey experiments in both countries suggest that exposure to these diverging interpretations has a causal effect on citizens' support for their country's economic strategy. Economic ideas, thus, are crucial to provide the societal foundation of national growth strategies.
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