Remaking European Political Economies

From 2009 to 2015, the euro area of the European Union (EU) experienced an existential socio-economic crisis. To secure its institutional integrity, the EU designed several new institutions to support member states in need but also to facilitate socio-economic adjustments. The European Stability Mechanism (ESM) lies at the centre of this strategy: it provides financial assistance to member states in severe crisis on an intergovernmental basis while demanding compliance with adjustment programs from program countries. Based on a comparative political economic analysis, Remaking European Political Economies shows that the EU’s financial assistance programs focused strongly on reforms that led to a partial convergence of program countries based on market-based economic governance and reduced governmental influence in the economy. The book draws on extensive, empirically based case studies of two prominent euro area countries in crisis: Greece and Ireland. Dennis Zagermann illustrates