Policy Conditionality, Structural Adjustment and the Domestic Policy System. Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda

Abstract

The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS), created in 1992 and directed by Professor Brigid Laffan, aims to develop inter-disciplinary and comparative research on the major issues facing the process of European integration, European societies and Europe's place in 21 st century global politics. The Centre is home to a large post-doctoral programme and hosts major research programmes, projects and data sets, in addition to a range of working groups and ad hoc initiatives. The research agenda is organised around a set of core themes and is continuously evolving, reflecting the changing agenda of European integration, the expanding membership of the European Union, developments in Europe's neighbourhood and the wider world.

The “Trilemma” of Public Bodies: Bureaucratic Structures Versus Agencies Under Policy Conditionality

“…Decision-making, implementation, and governance. Policy conditionality has a direct effect on the domestic policy-making system (Spanou, 2016), which is further reflected on the tools, methods, and processes of policy implementation. The new agencies, apart from their distinct legal status, incorporate new decision-making and governance methods that differ from the typical bureaucratic practice.…”

External influence on structural reform: Did policy conditionality strengthen reform capacity in Greece?

“…The ordinary policy-making process was altered since the areas, the means and ends, as well as the timeframe of reforms are out of the government's hands (Spanou, 2016). It is revealing that, beyond detailed policies and the obligation to provide a 'compliance report on the fulfillment of conditionality', the MoUs systematically include a clause according to which 'the authorities commit to consult with the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF on adoption of policies that are not consistent with this memorandum' (IMF, 2010: 91).…”

“…Reform is delegitimized by a sense of being imposed. Some of the reform failures can therefore be attributed to the crafting of the conditionality strategy (see Featherstone, 2015;Spanou, 2015Spanou, , 2016. Bellamy and Weale (2015: 12) highlight in this respect the potential contradiction in the 'normative logic of two-level games' embodied in the EMU: government credibility vis-a`-vis international partners level 'presupposes political legitimacy at the domestic level; but the domestic legitimacy of democratic governments in turn presupposes that commitments may be modified or altered through political processes'.…”

Policy responses to the Eurozone crisis: A comparative analysis of southern European administrations

“…The Eurozone crisis led to the creation of new institutions and procedures 2 and affected the strategies and the balance of actors in decision making (Papadakis and Ghellab, 2014;Verdun, 2015;Warren et al, 2017). A new, critical variable in policy decisions was the conditionality linking the programmes' implementation with the loans disbursement (Spanou, 2016). In addition, new powerful (supranational) actors emerged, such as the 'Troika'.…”

“…The discourse that legitimized (or not) the crisis agenda and the way by which problem definition was linked with policy reforms and the ownership of the programmes (Ladi, 2016;Spanou, 2016) could explain the weak results in cases where the latter were perceived by the national governments as a 'necessary evil'. The Spanish and Portuguese reform programmes were characterized by stronger ownership than the Greek one (Mors, 2016).…”