An article co-authored by Alan Cafruny, the Henry Platt Bristol Chair of International Affairs and Professor of Government, was recently published in the journal Critical Sociology. “German Ordoliberalism and the Future of the EU” was written with Leila Talani of King’s College London and focuses on German economic policy and the mutually dependent relationship between Germany and the European Union.
The authors say that “far from enabling France to enhance its power over European monetary policy, the Euro has served to consolidate the Federal Republic of Germany’s primacy in Europe.” In their article, Cafruny and Talani argue that “German policies that have underwritten this primacy are determined not primarily by the ordoliberal ideas of German state managers, but rather because these ideas correspond to the requirements of Germany’s neo-mercantilist export model and the interests of its most powerful socio-economic actors.
“Germany’s material/corporate interests—and its particular domestic and regional predicament—create enormous obstacles to the abandonment of ordoliberalism and the adoption of the more expansive fiscal policies that most observers believe are necessary to sustain the Eurozone,” they said.
