Truchlewski Zbigniew, Schelkle Waltraud
Department of Political Science, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands.
Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies of the European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy.
New Polit Econ. 2024 Jun 19;29(6):958-971. doi: 10.1080/13563467.2024.2356552. eCollection 2024.
The literature on fifteen years of European crises leaves the reader with a puzzle. Prominent accounts of the longest crisis - that of the euro area (EA) - assert that the EA is deeply divided between North and South, with Central Eastern European (CEE) member states being ignored. This makes it hard to explain how the union has managed to reform since 2008 and especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Scholars have started to talk of transnational coalitions, but they equate coalition-formation with bringing together the like-minded, typically over solidarity versus sovereignty and more or less integration. However, coalitions of the like-minded are typically too small to sustain reforms and compromise has to be sought with others who have different preferences. To establish empirically how stable or fluid transnational coalitions are, we exploit the EMU|Choices database (Wasserfallen, Leuffen, Kudrna, and Degner 2019) [Analysing European Union decision-making during the Eurozone crisis with new data. , 20 (1), 3-23] on EA reforms and our own original data on Covid-19 reforms. Our findings show a stable pattern but no geopolitical divide - coalitions have varying CEE members. These findings can provide a basis for developing a more plausible conceptualisation of transnational coalitions.
有关欧洲十五年危机的文献给读者留下了一个谜题。关于历时最长的危机——欧元区危机——的主流观点认为，欧元区在南北之间存在严重分歧，中东欧成员国被忽视。这就很难解释自2008年以来，尤其是在新冠疫情期间，欧盟是如何进行改革的。学者们开始谈论跨国联盟，但他们将联盟的形成等同于将志同道合的人聚集在一起，通常是围绕团结与主权以及或多或少的一体化问题。然而，志同道合者组成的联盟通常规模太小，无法维持改革，因此必须与偏好不同的其他方寻求妥协。为了实证研究跨国联盟的稳定性或灵活性，我们利用了欧洲货币联盟|选择数据库（瓦塞尔法伦、洛伊芬、库德娜和德格纳，2019年）[用新数据分析欧元区危机期间的欧盟决策。，20(1)，3 - 23]中有关欧元区改革的数据以及我们自己关于新冠疫情改革的原始数据。我们的研究结果显示出一种稳定的模式，但不存在地缘政治分歧——联盟中有不同的中东欧成员国。这些研究结果可为发展更合理的跨国联盟概念化提供基础。
