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Shielding the Market from the Masses: Economic Liberalism and the European Union

Review products

Michael A.Wilkinson, Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe (Oxford University Press2021) pp. 352.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2021

Hilary Hogan*
Affiliation:
Ph.D candidate at the European University Institute, Florence.

Abstract

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Type
Book Review Essay
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of European Constitutional Law Review

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References

1 K. Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Beacon 2001) p. 3.

2 Ibid., p. 80.

3 H. Heller, ‘Authoritarian Liberalism?’, 21 European Law Journal (2015) p. 295 at p. 300.

4 See R. Cristi, Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism: Strong State, Free Economy (University of Wales Press 1998). See, in particular, Appendix of Cristi for translation of C. Schmitt, ‘Strong State, Free Economy: An Address to Business Leaders’ 23 November 1932.

5 W. Streeck, ‘Heller, Schmitt and the Euro’, 21(3) European Law Journal (2015) p. 361.

6 P. Mair, Ruling the Void: The Hollowing-Out of Western Democracy (Verso 2013).

7 S. Moyn, Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (Harvard University Press 2017) p. 35.

8 K. Loewenstein, ‘Militant Democracy and Fundamental Rights, I’, 31 The American Political Science Review (1937) p. 571.

9 J.W. Müller, Contesting Democracy: Political Ideas in Twentieth-Century Europe (Yale University Press 2011).

10 J. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy (Harper 1942); R. Dahl, A Preface to Democratic Theory (Chicago University Press 1956); G. Sartori, Democratic Theory (Wayne University Press 1962).

11 C. Joerges, ‘The Overburdening of Law by Ordoliberalism and the Integration Project’, in Ordoliberalism, Law and the Rule of Economics (Hart Publishing 2017) p. 183.

12 M.A. Wilkinson, Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe (Oxford University Press 2021) p. 120.

13 Ibid., p. 121.

14 Ibid., p. 120.

15 Ibid., p. 93.

16 Ibid., p. 93.

17 Ibid., p. 122.

18 D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press 2005) p. 19.

19 E. Balibar ‘The Rise and Fall of the European Union: Temporalities and Teleologies’, Constellations (2014) p. 202.

20 As he describes at p. 275: ‘This blockage of the constituent power, the “undoing of the demos” did not occur only after Maastricht. It was cemented at Maastricht, but its foundations were laid at the outset of the post-war project’.

21 Art. 127 TFEU. The European Central Bank has been described as ‘the most independent central bank in the world… There is hardly an institution that corresponds more closely to the ideal of authoritarian liberalism’. See, W. Streeck, ‘Heller, Schmitt and the Euro’, European Law Journal (2015) p. 369. See also B. Eichengreen, The European Economy since 1945: Coordinated Capitalism and Beyond (Princeton University Press 2006) p. 355 and K. Dominguez, ‘The European Central Bank, the Euro and Global Financial Markets’, 20(4) Journal of Economic Perspectives (2006) p. 67 at p. 73-74.

22 H. Beck and A. Prinz, ‘The Trilemma of a Monetary Union: An Impossible Trinity’, 47 Intereconomics (2012) p. 39.

23 A. Mody, Eurotragedy (Oxford University Press 2018) p. 93.

24 M.A. Wilkinson, Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe (Oxford University Press 2021) p. 165-167.

25 R. Hirschl, Towards Juristocracy (Harvard University Press 2004).

26 See F.W. Scharpf, Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? (Oxford University Press 1999).

27 Wilkinson, describing the European Central Bank’s priority of price stability, notes at p. 101 that it was ‘effectively constitutionalised, based on Treaty provisions close to unamendable, since amendment would require unanimous consent from all the member states. This made its mandate more resistant to change than many entrenched domestic provisions’.

28 ‘There was an attempt to explain the problems of the southern countries exclusively in terms of their economic policy errors, which was only part of the truth, and probably, not the most important part, because these errors were the result of poor EMU architecture and that was, obviously, everyone’s responsibility’: L. Máximo dos Santos, ‘European Monetary Union: Political Motivation’, in N. da Costa Cabral et al. (eds), The Euro and the Crisis: Perspectives the Eurozone as a Monetary and Budgetary Union (Springer 2017) p. 120.

29 See further A. Mody, EuroTragedy: A Drama in Nine Acts (Oxford University Press 2018); J. Stiglitz, The Euro (Penguin 2016); M. Blyth, Austerity: The History of Dangerous Idea (Oxford University Press 2013); M. Wolf, The Shifts and the Shocks (Penguin 2014).

30 Polanyi, supra n. 1, p. 148.

31 See, for example, P. Spiegel, ‘Donald Tusk interview: the annotated transcript’ Financial Times, 16 July 2015.

32 This is the conclusion reached by Nanapoulos and Vergis; see E. Nanapoulos and F. Vergis, ‘The Inherently Undemocratic EU Democracy: Moving Beyond the “Democratic Deficit” Debate’, in The Crisis Behind the Eurocrisis: The Eurocrisis as a Multidimensional Systemic Crisis of the EU (Cambridge University Press 2019).

33 Wilkinson has, however, addressed this elsewhere: see H. Lokdam and M.A. Wilkinson, ‘The European Economic Constitution in Crisis’ LSE Legal Studies Working Papers, 03/2021.

34 In other words, indicating that the European Central Bank would not reduce the cost of borrowing for pandemic-stricken Italy.