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Contested governance: The new repertoire of the Eurozone crisis
Author(s) -
Jabko Nicolas
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.46
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1468-0491
pISSN - 0952-1895
DOI - 10.1111/gove.12389
Subject(s) - austerity , repertoire , corporate governance , scholarship , blueprint , european debt crisis , political economy , politics , political science , contest , sociology , european union , economics , european integration , economic policy , law , mechanical engineering , physics , finance , acoustics , engineering
The austerity policies that EU policymakers adopted in response to the Eurozone crisis are often criticized as the product of institutionalized neoliberal ideas. This critique has merits, but tends to overlook institutional changes that do not neatly conform to well demarcated neoliberal ideas considered as “switchmen,” “paradigms,” or “blueprints.” This article offers an alternative reading of the Eurozone's institutional evolution that bridges pragmatist scholarship with cognitive and social psychology. The Eurozone crisis saw the emergence of a new and contested repertoire of governance. Policymakers agreed that “stronger governance” was necessary, but they struggled over how to perform that repertoire. This contest ultimately produced institutional changes that typically mixed austerity and unconventional policies. The advantage of thinking about ideas in terms of repertoires that actors perform is to afford a more granular view of institutions as sites of individual cognition, collective innovation, and political contestation.