Mapping Contestation on Fiscal and Economic Integration: Evidence from New Data

Deep internal political cleavages overshadow the discussions on how the Economic and Monetary Union should be stabilized. For example, some countries advocate more rigorous fiscal rules, while others emphasize the need for fiscal transfer payments. As part of a large-scale Horizon 2020 project, we collected new data on member states governments' positions in the discussions on economic and fiscal integration policies from 2010 to 2015 – such as the ESM, the fiscal compact, and the assistance to Greek. The data have been gathered using an innovative approach with document analysis and validation through elite interviews. We analyze this original data with scaling methods to empirically investigate the dimensionality of the contested issues and to map the dominant cleavages across countries. In addition, we compare the political contestation in the more recent negotiations with comparable data before 2010, such as the DOSEI data on member states' positions at the European Convention. The findings show which cleavages structure the negotiations on fiscal and economic integration, and how stable they are over time.