Sticks and carrots in the making of integration

European economic governance between changes and continuities

Bibliographic Data

ID7706573
AuthorsGemma Gasseau (0000-0001-9768-3589, Scuola Normale Superiore, corresponding author), Vincenzo Maccarrone (0000-0002-6965-3179, Scuola Normale Superiore)
Year2025
Publication date2025-08-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCapital & Class (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0309-8168 • E-ISSN: 2041-0980
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/03098168251372447
OpenAlexW4413858909
LanguageEN
References cited14

The European Union’s expansionary policies as a response to the COVID-19 crisis have brought scholars once again to debate the ‘return of the state’ because of the adoption of a different crisis management strategy compared to the austerity measures associated with the global financial crisis. While acknowledging such differences, in this short piece we rather highlight the continuities in European economic governance. We build on critical political economy scholarship to reiterate that the debate on the ‘return of the state’ should rather focus on what kind of state is there; in other words, go beyond the form of EU integration, to interrogate its content. We make this argument through the vantage point of local public services that underwent commodification throughout decades of crises; and through the Draghi report on EU competitiveness, marking the shift from a ‘Green Deal’ to a ‘Clean Industrial Deal’. The findings point to a specific role of the state of market creation and private sector subsidising. We identify the red thread that runs through a changing landscape: while methods change (‘carrots’ rather than ‘sticks’), the continuities point to neoliberalisation – as a political project, and as a set of policies reconfiguring the relation between state and market. In short, in this piece we highlight the continuities in European economic governance across ‘sticks’ and ‘carrots’, shaping the neoliberal content of the integration process

Corporate governance · Economic system · Economics · Management · Political economy · Political science · European Union Policy and Governance · Political and Economic history of UK and US

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