Аңдатпа
Bureaucrats dream of a world where economics trump politics, but once they try to realize that dream, the revenge of politics comes in the form of Trump, which is a bureaucrat’s nightmare. This timely volume, edited by Chalmers, Jachtenfuchs, and Joerges, offers an insightful diagnosis of the state of the European Union, which has gone from one crisis to the next, lacking a robust pro-growth agenda due to its self-imposed, constitutionally constraining formulas. By now, everybody has had their say about the multidimensional Eurocrises; yet, with its unique appraisal of the longue durée of European integration, this book is exactly what we need in a field crowded with contradictory commentaries. The book under review incorporates contributions from multiple disciplines, from political and legal sciences to economics. Its bestselling feature is that it hosts the Who’s Who in European Union studies. Given that the contributors are among the most renowned scholars who have dedicated their academic careers to understanding the political, legal, and economic nature of the EU, we should take time to read and consider what they have to say about it. This makes the book a must-have not only for students of European politics, but also for Eurocrats and politicians. Brexit, the fallout from the US presidential election, and the rise of Euroskepticism on both the left and the right of the political spectrum have created a demand for an explanation. If a rollback of European integration, or even disintegration, becomes a reality, this book contains the explanation of what got us there. No book review of an edited volume can do justice to the diversity of ideas and opinions expressed therein, and this is particularly true in this case because the book’s valuable multidisciplinary approach calls for an expansive outlook. The diverse viewpoints result not only from the varied disciplinary backgrounds of the contributors, but also from the wide range of tackled subjects. Legal scholars offer us a much-needed analysis of the “integration by law” practice which continues unabated in the aftermath of the great recession. Particularly relevant is Dieter Grimm’s exam ination of the effect of the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) jurisprudence. He reaches the alarming conclusion that the CJEU’s initial effort at dismantling discrimin atory barriers has morphed into a dangerous anti-regulatory agenda that threatens the institutional diversity of European welfare states. Agustín José Menéndez echoes this conclusion by saying that the Europeanization of national tax systems, albeit occurring in the absence of a uniform EU-wide tax code, has threatened the social Rechsstaat by eroding the fiscal capacities of member states to regulate the mobile tax base. Damian Chalmers offers no less insightful critique of the revised Stability and Growth Pact that has extended the reach of EU law into the public finance of member states via the creation of a more disciplinary enforcement regime under the European Semester. Besides the pertinent assessment of the (un)constitutional features of the EU legal system, as offered by Christian Joerges, the book contains a comprehensive commentary on the state of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) by outstanding political economists. Fritz W. Scharpf masterfully demonstrates what makes the EMU dysfunctional as a macroeconomic regime which has replaced macroeconomic adjustments and necessitates the introduction of microeconomic and Mesoeconomic interventions, which, in turn, deepen the democratic deficit of the EU. Along similar lines, Kalypso Nicolaïdis and Max Watson offer a critique of the post-crisis reform package that has instituted creditor-friendly, supranational governance which comes at high social and legitimacy costs. Giandomenico Majone, on the other hand, by using Mancur Olson’s work on collective action, assesses the current political transaction costs of deepened European integration and concludes that continued participation in collective action will depend not only on the common benefits from such action, but on the incentives received by each member state. The last three contributions differ in their proposed solutions. While Majone embraces the “club goods” model as a way of dealing with the growing heterogeneity among the member states, Nicolaïdis and Watson embrace the notion of “demoicracy,” which goes beyond the binary opposition between “more” versus “less” Europe, and advocates strengthening national fiscal capacities, all the while maintaining a commitment to European coordination. However, the most sobering observation comes from Scharpf, who reminds us that it is time to estimate the cost of non-disintegration. Finally, political scientists point our attention to the political implications of the post-crisis governance reforms. Catherine Colliot-Thélène investigates the state of European democracy by developing a sociological concept of EU citizenship which replaces the focus on political institutions with an emphasis on political subjectivities. Pieter De Wilde, on the other hand, tries to make sense of the increasing politicization that has been exacerbated with the crisis. Philipp Genschel and Marcus Jachtenfuchs emphasize the continuity of an EU conflict-minimizing decision-making strategy in the aftermath of the crisis, which relies on delegation to technocratic bodies, creation of incomplete vague contracts, and governance by regulations. Finally, Mark Bovens and Deirdre Curtin disaggregate the de jure and de facto accountability of the most consequential executive trio: the President of the European Council, the President of the European Central Bank, and the Commissioner for Economic and Monetary Affairs. Like other edited volumes, this book contains multiple, and to some extent opposing, statements that deserve a full discussion of their own. Yet, if I were asked to single out one key thesis that is woven into the analyses of every contribution, I would point to the observation that the recent crises have given rise to institutional reforms, which ultimately spell out business as usual, in that these reforms are merely a continuation of the old doctrine of integration through stealth, even though they have led to a significant pooling of sovereignty. What unites all contributors is the conclusion that the old Eurocrats’ dream of ever-expanding supranational oversight and the delegation of power to non-majoritarian bodies might not be warranted any longer, and that the social, political, and economic costs of sustaining this technocratic dream have turned such integration into everybody else’s nightmare. This volume does not advocate the conventional wisdom that a monetary union requires the construction of a full-scale fiscal union. Although for some, debt mutualization remains an option, most contributors emphasize the pitfalls of this functionalist logic, which is in line with the latest research on development of private risk-sharing mechanisms without fiscal union. The book reminds us that we must not fall into the trap of pushing forward with integration at any cost because of the original sin of the EMU. It also reminds us that we should not succumb to the temptation of dismantling the current achievements of integration. However, the book falls short of providing us with policy solutions of turning the new European Semester into a more democratically sustainable policy cycle that will not constrain the policy options of member states. There is no doubt that this book provides a most sobering assessment of the technocratic ethos to date, and I could not agree more with the overall call for revision of the current trajectory. At the same time, the conclusion that the Eurocrats’ dream “is empirically over and normatively unsustainable” (at 21) is perhaps too alarmist. Although the book elegantly elaborates on why a never-ending technocratization is normatively problematic, the evidence does not support the claim about the impending end of this dream. What is missing in this volume is an explanation of why—despite all the cracks in its edifice—the Eurocrats’ dream has been resilient, which invariably takes us to politics. Since the early 1990s, we have witnessed numerous attacks on the sustainability of the technocratic mode of governance, yet its expansion has continued relentlessly. The book occasionally places too much emphasis on the structural features of the EU governance model, especially when it tries to account for the recent crises. Indeed, there is a general tendency to explain the severity of the Eurocrisis with reference to some constraining features of the monetary union. However, maybe it is time to engage seriously with the Financial Times columnist Martin Sandbu’s claim that the crisis is the result of specific policy errors, rather than of institutional design problems. To conclude, this book successfully traces how the asymmetric governance model came into being. In doing so, it refutes the claim made by some critical political economists who would have us believe that the existing governance system is the result of a deliberate neoliberal project. As Grimm beautifully shows, there was no hidden “neoliberal” agenda behind the CJEU’s revolutionary jurisprudence in the interest of integration apart from taking the treaties themselves seriously. Nonetheless, its consequences were deregulatory and liberalizing.