European States and the Euro: Europeanization, Variation, and Convergence

With Economic and Monetary Union, the European Union has embarked on one of the biggest projects in its history. Previous literature has focused on how EMU came into being and on the policy issues that it raises. European States and the Euro seeks to move the discussion forwards by offering the first systematic evaluation of how it is affecting EU states, both members and non-members of the Euro-Zone. It is the first book to explicitly situate EMU in the growing literature on Europeanization. It examines the effects on public policies, political structures, discourses, and identities. The book seeks to identify the scope of EMU's effects, the direction that it imparts to political and policy changes, the mechanisms by which it produces its effects, and the role of domestic institutions, political leadership and specific forms of discourse in shaping responses. In addition, the book assesses how, and with what effects, EMU is affecting key policy sectors labour markets and wages, welfare states, and financial market governance. What conditions the degree of convergence discernible in these sectors? Finally, the book seeks to 'contextualize' EMU by assessing its effects both in comparison with other variables like globalization and in a historical perspective of the European Monetary System as a 'training ground'. The book combines sectoral and country case studies with a thematic treatment by recognized experts in their fields. It moves from globalization, through EU-level changes, to member states and finally to specific sectors. The main conclusions are that EMU is most important in affecting the timing, tempo and rhythm of domestic change that these changes are experienced pre-eminently at the level of policy; that it strengthens pressures for convergence; but that different domestic institutional arrangements and discourses lead to variations in policy processes and effects and in the way change is 'framed'. In particular, whilst EMU contains a neo-liberalizing tendency exhibited most clearly in financial market effects, it is not to be characterized as a neo-liberal project by means of which the EU is becoming an economic and social space simply converging around Anglo-American market capitalism. Contributors to this volume - Colin Crouch is a Professor of Sociology at the European University Institute, Florence. Kenneth Dyson is Professor of European Studies at the University of Bradford. Andrew Gamble is a Fellow of the British Academy, Professor of Politics and Director of the Political Economy Research Centre at the University of Sheffield. David Howarth is Lecturer in Politics at Queen Mary and Westfield College, London. Gavin Kelly is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London. Ingo Linsenmann is a researcher at the University of Cologne. Martin Marcussen is Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Copenhagen. David McKay is Professor of Politics at the University of Essex. Michael Moran is Professor of Government at the University of Manchester. Claudio Radaelli is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Bradford. Martin Rhodes is Professor of European Public Policy at the European University Institute, Florence. Geoffrey Underhill is Professor of International Governance at the University of Amsterdam. Amy Verdun is Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the European Studies Programme at the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Wolfgang Wessels is Jean-Monnet Professor of Political Science at the University of Cologne and Visiting Professor at the Colleges of Europe in Bruges and Natolin.