Commodifying Public Utilities
EU's New Governance Prescriptions for Rail and Water
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6264149 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Darragh Golden (0000-0002-0095-8564, University College Dublin Dublin Ireland), Imre Szabó (0000-0002-3091-5864, Central European University Wien Austria), Imre G Szabó (0000-0002-6012-5935, Central European University), Roland Erne (0000-0003-2791-4454, University College Dublin Dublin Ireland, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Publication date | 2025-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Governance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0952-1895 • E-ISSN: 1468-0491 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/gove.12909 |
| OpenAlex | W4406278924 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 44 |
In the mid‐2000s, the Single Market Program and European Monetary Union lost momentum, as public services advocates increasingly succeeded in tempering attempts to liberalize public utilities through legislative amendments and Court of Justice rulings. After the 2008 crisis, however, the EU's shift to a new economic governance (NEG) regime provided EU executives with a new tool to advance their objectives. Unlike EU directives, country‐specific NEG prescriptions require neither the approval of the European Parliament nor their transposition into law, making it more difficult for social forces to contest them. Our analysis of NEG prescriptions for public utilities in two sectors (rail and water) and four countries (Germany, Ireland, Italy, Romania) across 10 years (2009–2019) shows that the shift to NEG provided EU executives with new extra‐parliamentarian and extra‐juridical tools that allowed them to revive their stalled commodification agenda; at the price of accentuating the EU's democratic and justice deficits
Business · Corporate governance · Medical prescription · Political science · EU Law and Policy Analysis · European Union Policy and Governance · Public Administration · Public Procurement and Policy · Finance
Ruling Ideas
Ruling Europe
The Politics of European Competition Regulation
Europe's Crisis of Legitimacy
Resilient Liberalism in Europe's Political Economy
Welfare Markets in Europe
Politicising Commodification
Towards a Socialization of the EU's New Economic Governance Regime? EU Labour Policy Interventions in Germany, Ireland, Italy and Romania (2009–2019)
The Critique of Commodification
L'Europe, nouvelle figure de la crise syndicale
Exploring the Keynesian–Ordoliberal Divide. Flexibility and Convergence in French and German Leaders’ Economic Ideas During the Euro-Crisis
Issue framing in the European Commission
What “Brussels” means by structural reforms
International actors and multinational water company strategies in Europe, 1990–2003
The Unexpected Winner of the Crisis
Transforming a steam train
EMU and political union revisited
Economic and fiscal policy coordination after the crisis
A supranational regime that nationalizes social conflict
When Is It Rational to Learn the Wrong Lessons? Technocratic Authority, Social Learning, and Euro Fragility
Socializing the European Semester
Commission activism
Contested governance
Why the single market remains the EU’s core business
Europe's fast- and slow-burning crises
Parliamentary accountability in multilevel governance
European economic integration in times of crisis
European Disintegration
Scope of Negative Integration
Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State
Pursuing an overarching commodification script through country-specific interventions? The EU's New Economic Governance prescriptions in healthcare (2009-2019)
What is privatization? A political economy framework
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |