Abstract
The negotiations on the reforms of the Economic and Monetary Union were highly conflictual. This article analyses the dimensions of conflict that structured these negotiations. Using several dimension-reduction methods, we conduct an in-depth analysis of the ‘EMU Positions’ dataset, which codes the positions of all EU member states over a broad range of fiscal, financial, economic, and institutional integration proposals. The empirical findings show that the political contestation in the reform of the Eurozone is one-dimensional between advocates of fiscal transfer and discipline. On this one-dimensional scale, we identify three broader coalitions, while Germany and France lead the two opposing groups. This conflict structure provides a setting conducive to the constant (re-)negotiation of compromises. We conclude the analysis with a discussion of several implications.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
