Abstract
This paper applies the concept of post-democracy coined by Crouch to shed light on the emerging political dynamics of macro-economic policy coordination in the Eurozone as they applied to France during Hollande’s presidency. Firstly, the paper explains the nature of EMU reform, characterized here as post-democratic by institutional design, before analysing its impact on France’s budgetary politics. Finally, the French case involving Hollande’s balancing act between supranational rules and domestic spending preferences is used as a way to reflect on the stability of this post-democratic arrangement for rescuing the Euro. The 2017 presidential election pitting Macron against Le Pen showed that post-democracy by design is sustainable only if the supply side of politics remains supportive of EMU – a condition undermined by the institutionalization of austerity, at least in France.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 119–134 |
| Journal | French Politics |
| Volume | 16 |
| Issue number | 2 |
| Early online date | 6 Feb 2018 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jun 2018 |
Bibliographical note
The Author(s) 2018. This article is an open access publication. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.Keywords
- Post-democracy
- EMU reform
- Hollande
- budgetary politics
- France