Money and the ‘Level Playing Field’: The Epistemic Problem of European Financial Market Integration

Abstract

Financial market integration processes in the European Union (EU) are characterised by an epistemic problem of economic theory. This problem encompasses what 'the market' is, how it is to be 'integrated', and the nature and role of 'money' as infrastructure of the fully integrated market. The EU's legal framework has imported this epistemic problem along with the competitive conception of the market as described in economic theory-as a 'level playing field' for private exchange, under free, fair and ideally unrestrained competition. It manifests itself in European financial market integration processes, as exemplified in the article, via two otherwise disconnected areas of European Central Bank (ECB) activity: (a) the provision of central bank credit for the purpose of financial transaction settlement in the Eurozone; and (b) the conduct of ordinary monetary policy in the Eurozone. While the problem can be stabilized through legal, technical and other means, it remains latent, and may manifest itself again in unexpected ways, as happened in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Thus, contrary to ideologies that are widely understood as more or less coherent systems of doctrines, epistemic problems are characterised by specific tensions, contradictions and conceptual uncertainties.

Justification, Values or Concerns? Pragmatist Theories of Morality and Civic Engagements in Local Urban Greenspaces

“…Such structures may not be those of coherent justificatory regimes, but may equally well take the shape of problems, conflicts and contradictions. Thus, instead of defining what 'the market' means in the theory, inquiry would focus on the situated problems of delimiting it from other categories, such as 'nature' (Krarup, 2019(Krarup, , 2021a(Krarup, , 2021b. In other words, the content by which the theory characterizes each of the justificatory regimes is inseparable from the concerns and problems that motivate public contestation in the first place.…”

“…Moreover, how are we to deal with variations within each regime? For example, what do we do with apparently similar discourses about 'the market' that are organized around radically different problems (Krarup, 2019) or with different responses to the same fundamental problems related to 'the market' (Krarup, 2021a, see also 2021b)? The theory refers such variation to 'compromises' between regimes, but in the cited studies, variation stems from tensions and paradoxes intrinsic to 'the market'.…”

Archaeological Methodology: Foucault and the History of Systems of Thought

“…The danger of a priori distinguishing a realm of possibility from that of discourse is to subsume the diversity of discourses under the non-contradiction of history or subjectivity (agency) -of ideology, culture, Zeitgeist, etc. -possibly hidden only by muddy or conflictual practice (Krarup, 2019a). Instead, archaeology seeks 'to divide up' the diversity of discourses 'into different figures' (Foucault, 1972a: 159-60).…”

“…Archaeological methodology may inspire social researchers to initiate new types of investigations of philosophy, science and, in particular, knowledge in a broad sense. Social research deploying archaeological methodology may be referred to as 'problem analysis' (Krarup, 2019a(Krarup, , 2019b. While problem analysis may seek to account for the descent and evolutionary morphology of a problem, it can also be deployed in relation to contemporary societies.…”

“…Thus, I conclude by drawing up the contours of an approach to the study of knowledge designated 'problem analysis', which may be conducted without resorting to the widespread reading of Foucault as a social theorist of power/knowledge. Problem analysis takes manifest contradictions as access points to the study of the more fundamental problems that are common to the contradictions as their condition of existence and that organize a given system of thought, its historical descent and evolutionary morphology (Krarup, 2019a(Krarup, , 2019b.…”