Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-gb8f7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T20:14:30.121Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Modular sovereignty, security, and debt: The Excessive Deficit Procedure of the European Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2023

Andreas Langenohl
Andreas Langenohl*
Affiliation:
Justus Liebig University of Giessen, Germany
*
Corresponding author: Andreas Langenohl, Department of Sociology, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Karl-Glöckner-Str 21 E, D-35394 Giessen, Germany. Email: [email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP) is a political mechanism that aims at ‘multilevel governance’ of state indebtedness in the European Union. As such, it has become the concern of research that asks how sovereignty becomes articulated in this process. This article approaches this question through the conceptualization of a modular notion of sovereignty elaborated through a discussion of work on the finance-security nexus. The article argues that existing accounts of the formation of sovereign power in relation to state debt can be combined into a notion of modular sovereignty when seen through the prism of critiques of contractualism that take issue with liberal notions of state sovereignty and credit security. This way, the indebted state becomes visible as the referent object of multiple, and potentially contradictory, invocations of sovereignty as exercised in the EDP. First, it figures as the seat of budget sovereignty, holding its social substrate liable for its debts while ignoring inequalities in that substrate. Second, it is appealed to, within a biopolitical rationality, as the sovereign guarantor of the financial wellbeing of its population. Third, it is seen as the executor of financial wisdom that is mobilized in struggles between different levels of financial governance in the EDP.

Keywords

European UnionExcessive Debt Proceduresovereigntysovereign debtcontractualism
Type
Article
Information
Finance and Society , Volume 3 , Issue 2: Finance and security , 2017 , pp. 124 - 142
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2017

References

Adloff, F. (2016) Gifts of Cooperation, Mauss and Pragmatism. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Adloff, F. and Mau, S. (2005) Giving social ties, reciprocity in modern society. European Journal of Sociology, 47(1): 93–123.Google Scholar
Agamben, G. (2002) Homo Sacer: Die souveräne Macht und das nackte Leben. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Agamben, G. (2005) State of Exception. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Amoore, L. (2013) The Politics of Possibility: Risk and Security Beyond Probability. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Andromidas, D. (2015) Greece asserts sovereignty; the debt cannot be paid. Executive Intelligence Review, 42(7): 16–19.Google Scholar
Banco de Espana (n.d.) Methodological note: General government debt compiled according to the methodology of the Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP). Available at: <https://www.bde.es/webbde/en/estadis/infoest/htmls/notamet_pde.pdf>. Accessed 9 August 2017..+Accessed+9+August+2017.>Google Scholar
Best, J. (2017) Security, economy, population: The political economic logic of liberal exceptionalism. Security Dialogue, 48(5): 375–92.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, P. (1997) Marginalia: Some additional notes on the gift. In: Schrift, A.D. (ed.) The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity. London: Routledge, 231–41.Google Scholar
Boy, N. (2014) Öffentlichkeit als public credit. In: Langenohl, A. and Wetzel, D.J. (eds.) Finanzmarktpublika: Moralität, Krisen und Teilhabe in der ökonomischen Moderne. Wiesbaden: Springer VS, 301–17.Google Scholar
Boy, N. (2015) Sovereign safety. Security Dialogue, 46(6): 530–47.Google Scholar
Caillé, A. (2008) Anthropologie der Gabe. Frankfurt: Campus.Google Scholar
Callon, M. (1998) An essay on framing and overflowing. In: Callon, M. (ed.) The Laws of the Market. Oxford: Blackwell, 244–69.Google Scholar
Cohen, B.J. (2012) The future of the euro: Let's get real. Review of International Political Economy, 19(4): 689–700.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dean, M. (1994) Critical and Effective Histories: Foucault's Methods and Historical Sociology. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
de Goede, M. (2012) Speculative Security: The Politics of Pursuing Terrorist Monies. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Haan, J. et al. (2012) Beyond the Fiscal Compact: How Well Designed Eurobonds May Discipline Governments. Available at: <http://www.szgerzensee.ch/fileadmin/Dateien_Anwender/Dokumente/Conferences/Swiss_Debt_Brake/JDeHaan_Nov_2012.pdf>. Accessed 22 August 2017..+Accessed+22+August+2017.>Google Scholar
Donnelly, S. (2014) Power politics and the undersupply of financial stability in Europe. Review of International Political Economy, 21(4): 980–1005.Google Scholar
ECOFIN 233 (7904/09) Council recommendation to Spain with a view to bringing an end to the situation of an excessive government deficit. Brussels: Council of the European Union, 6 April 2009.Google Scholar
ECOFIN 675 (10793/16) Council decision establishing that no effective action has been taken by Spain in response to the Council Recommendation of 21 June 2013. Brussels: Council of the European Union, 11 July 2016.Google Scholar
ECOFIN 742 (11552/16) Council decision giving notice to Spain to take measures for the deficit reduction judged necessary in order to remedy the situation of excessive deficit. Brussels: Council of the European Union, 2 August 2016.Google Scholar
ECOFIN 745 (11555/16) Council implementing decision on imposing a fine on Spain for failure to take effective action to address an excessive deficit. Brussels: Council of the European Union, 5 August 2016.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (2003) Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1975-76. London: Penguin.Google Scholar
Foucault, M. (2007) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977-1978. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Gocaj, L. and Meunier, S. (2013) Time will tell: The EFSF, the ESM, and the Euro crisis. Journal of European Integration, 35(3): 239–53.Google Scholar
Graeber, D. (2001) Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value: The False Coin of Our Own Dreams. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 151–63.Google Scholar
Graeber, D. (2011) Debt: The First 5,000 Years. New York, NY: Melville House.Google Scholar
Hebekus, U., Matala de Mazza, E. and Koschorke, A. (eds.) Das Politische: Figurenlehre des sozialen Körpers nach der Romantik. München: Fink.Google Scholar
Hennessy, A. (2014) Redesigning financial supervision in the European Union (2009-2013). Journal of European Public Policy, 21(2): 151–68.Google Scholar
Kindleberger, C.P. (1996) Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crisis. Third edition. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Kolb, R.W. (2011) Sovereign Debt: From Safety to Default. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Langenohl, A. (2015) Collateralized polities: The transformation of trust in sovereign debt in the wake of the Eurozone crisis. Behemoth: A Journal on Civilisation, 8(1): 67–90.Google Scholar
Langley, P. (2013) Toxic assets, turbulence and biopolitical security: Governing the crisis of global financial circulation. Security Dialogue, 44(2): 111–26.Google Scholar
Langley, P. (2015) Liquidity Lost: The Governance of the Global Financial Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lazzarato, M. (2015) Governing by Debt. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Manow, P. (2011) Politische Ursprungsphantasien: Der Leviathan und sein Erbe. Konstanz: Konstanz University Press.Google Scholar
Mauss, M. (1954) The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York, NY: W.W. Norton.Google Scholar
Miller, P. and Rose, N. (1990) Governing economic life. Economy and Society, 19(1): 1–31.Google Scholar
Mortensen, J. (2013) Economic Policy Coordination in the Economic and Monetary Union: From Maastricht via the SGP to the Fiscal Pact. CEPS Working Documents, No. 381.Google Scholar
Neocleous, M. (2007): Security, liberty and the myth of balance: Towards a critique of security politics. Contemporary Political Theory, 6(2): 131–49.Google Scholar
Peebles, G. (2008) Inverting the panopticon: Money and the nationalization of the future. Public Culture, 20(2): 233–65.Google Scholar
Priddat, B.P. (2014) Schuld, Schulden, Kredit: Der Beginn ökonomischer Moderne. In: Macho, T. (ed.) Bonds: Schuld, Schulden und andere Verbindlichkeiten. München: Fink, 95–104.Google Scholar
Regling, K. (2012) Europe's response to the European sovereign debt crisis. Presentation at the Anders Chydenius Free Trade Seminar, Kokkola, 8 June.Google Scholar
Sanchis i Marco, M. (2014) The Economics of the Monetary Union and the Eurozone Crisis. Cham: Springer, 13–28.Google Scholar
Scharpf, F.W. (1988) The joint-decision trap: Lessons from German federalism and European integration. Public Administration, 66(3): 239–78.Google Scholar
Scharpf, F.W. (1999) Governing in Europe: Effective and Democratic? Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Seikel, D. (2016) Flexible austerity and supranational autonomy: The reformed Excessive Deficit Procedure and the asymmetry between liberalization and social regulation in the EU. Journal of Common Market Studies, 54(6): 1398–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skinner, Q. (2008) Hobbes and Republican Liberty. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Staehr, K. (2012) The Fiscal Compact: Implementation, Enforcement and Efficacy. Tallinn: Tallinn University of Technology.Google Scholar
Tutty, M.G. (2012) Reforming European Economic Governance: The European Semester and Other Recent Developments. Dublin: The Institute of International and European Affairs.Google Scholar
Vilpisauskas, R. (2013) Eurozone crisis and European integration: Functional spillover, political spillback? Journal of European Integration, 35(3): 361–73.Google Scholar