Bulletin n. 2/2016
December 2016
INDICE
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Kevin Featherstone
    Conditionality, Democracy and Institutional Weakness: the Euro-crisis Trilemma
    in Journal of Common Market Studies , Volume 54, Issue Supplement S1 ,  2016
    The sovereign debt crises of the eurozone have raised a set of systemic challenges for the Eu-ropean Union (EU) that questions the credibility and legitimacy of its govern ance across twolevel s, European and domestic. The challenges are both instrumen tal and normative. The cr it-ical cas e in these respects is Greece. In 2015 it needed a third bailout, but it also lau nched apolitical confrontation with the EU fol lowing th e election of a leftist-led government. The po-litical dram a made the enduring chal lenges even more ac ute. Firstly, there were (and are)questions of leadership. How could the eurozone provide leadership and lever domesticreform to keep Greece inside the euro? Was there the political will to do so, at either theEuropean or national levels? Further, t here was the institutional challenge that stems fromthe juxtaposition of complex and disparate lead ership at the EU level with low-quality insti-tutions for policy delivery domes tically. Beyond the structural conditions there are normativequestions of the terms of the rescue, but also iss ues of the accountability and legitimacy of thedec ision-mak ing process. What ca n elect ions decide in a state under an adjustment pro-gram me? Together, these challenges pose a conundrum that is existential in nature for theEU: a trilemma in which the external leadership of reforms via condit ionality confrontsnat ional democratic choice and the operational deficiencies of weak domestic institutions.
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