Governing the EU: Gender and Macroeconomics

Abstract

The European Union (EU) predates and prefigures debates about global governance. The post-war decision to create an economic union between previously warring states, strong enough both to restrain hostile intent and build prosperity, involved innovative macroeconomic thinking. The resulting union has developed many of the features at regional level, which are now seen as characterizing global governance. In particular, it operates through a widespread and diffuse interstate bureaucracy interacting with highly specialized professional networks, the so-called ‘epistemic communities’. The effect of this is to produce, particularly in the commercial and business field, a broad spread of regulation enforced through European law. These developments have involved new roles for the state, the functions of which have become fragmented in the economic sphere while remaining central in the social sphere and in the harnessing of public loyalty. Up to now, this has allowed a neo-liberal thrust in external policy to co-exist with more welfare-oriented social policies. This combination has proved sufficiently powerful for the union gradually to absorb states in the northern and southern peripheries and towards the east.