The panel presents papers in development for a book to be published by OUP. The case studies examine the role of domestic political and economic configurations in accounting for the evolution of each country’s economic performance over time, and in particular, in shaping the domestic political responses to the changing incentives and constraints set up by successive phases of European integration.
We adopt a theoretically guided comparative framework through which we identify a number of commonalities as well as variations in countries’ experiences. All four countries ranked as the poorest in the EU during the 1980s; all four were in receipt of Structural Funds; all four were late industrializers facing the particular problems this brings in its train. These countries’ growth profiles diverged over the next two decades, before reconverging as we have noted. Some deeper commonalities persisted in their structured relationships with the better-developed European economies. In particular, these countries were magnets for the surfeit of low-interest capital loans made available by the banking sectors of the European ‘core’. Yet diversity in their domestic conditions set them on rather different pathways toward crisis.
The papers in this panel tease out the explanatory role of changes in the domestic political configurations of these four countries for their shifting economic performance. The papers trace these changes across three phases of European integration: from accession to implementation of the Single Market and adoption of the Maastricht Treaty; the run-up to EMU; and the experience of membership of the Eurozone.
Four country case studies will be considered. Niamh Hardiman discusses Ireland; Sebastian Dellepiane discusses Spain; Spyros Blavoukos discusses Portugal; George Pagoulatos discusses Greece.
