States, Debt, and Power: 'Saints' and 'Sinners' in European History and Integration

by Kenneth Dyson

Overview

States, Debt, and Power argues for the importance of situating our contextually influenced thinking about European states and debt within a commitment to historically informed and critical analysis. It teases out certain broad historical patterns. The book also examines the inescapably difficult and contentious judgements about 'bad' and 'good' debt; about what constitutes sustainable debt; and about distributive justice at times of sovereign debt crisis. These judgements offer insight into the nature of power and the contingent nature of sovereign creditworthiness. Three themes weave through the book: the significance of creditor-debtor state relations in defining asymmetry of power; the context-specific and constructed character of debt, above all in relation to war; and the limitations of formal economic reasoning in the face of radical uncertainty. Part I examines case studies from Ancient Greece to the modern Euro Area and brings together a wealth of historical data that cast fresh light on how sovereign debt problems are debated and addressed. Part II looks at the conditioning and constraining framework of law, culture, and ideology and their relationship to the use of policy instruments. Part III shows how the problems of matching the assumption of liability with the exercise of control are rooted in external trade and financial imbalances and external debt; in financial markets and vulnerability to banking crisis; in the character of the 'private governance of public debt'; in who has power over indicators of sustainability; in domestic institutional and political arrangements; and in sub-national fiscal governance. Part IV looks at how the problems of mismatch between liability and control take on an acute form within the historical context of European monetary union, above all in Euro Area debt crises.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780198714071
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/19/2014
Pages:	796
Product dimensions:	6.80(w) x 9.70(h) x 2.10(d)

About the Author

Kenneth Dyson, Research Professor, School of Law and Politics, Cardiff University

Kenneth Dyson is a Fellow of the British Academy; an Academician of the Social Sciences; a Founding Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales; a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society; and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was twice chair of the Research Assessment Exercise Panel for European Studies; chair of the Association for the Study of German Politics, as well as of the Standing Conference of Heads of European Studies. He has held various British Academy, ESRC, and EU research grants. He was adviser for the BBC2 series 'The Money Changers'. He is Research Professor in the School of Law and Politics at Cardiff University.

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Perils of Sleepwalking1. Contextualizing Debt: History, Morality, and the Triple Structural Dimension2. The Nature of Sovereign Creditworthiness: Hierarchy, Sovereignty, and Responsibility3. Moralizing Credit: Bad Debt, Good Debt, and the Troubled ConsciencePart I: Debt and Political Rule in European History4. The Evolution of Public Debt5. Financial Repression, Debasement, and the Historic Arc of Default6. Theological Traces and Social Contexts7. The Dynamics of Public Debt in Historical Perspective: The Limitations of Economic ReasoningPart II: Law, Culture, and Statecraft8. Law, Public Debt, and the Paradoxes of Power9. Economic Cultures, Ideologies of Debt, and State Virtue10. Space, Time, and Statecraft: Saints, Fallen Angels, False Prophets, Redeemers, and SinnersPart III: State Liability and Territorial Control11. States and Financial Markets: The Imbalance of Power12. Professional Consensus, Political Silence, and Sovereign Creditworthiness13. The Dynamics of External Imbalances and Debt14. Which Truth? The Power of Indicators and Probabilistic Reasoning about Public Debt15. Public Debt Dynamics: Political Will and State Capacity16. Public Debt and Multi-Level Statehood: Sub-National Fiscal Governance, Structural Imbalances, and 'Stand-Alone' Fiscal CapacityPart IV. Sovereign Creditworthiness and European Integration17. Still the 'Old' Europe? Historical Legacies and Long-Term Political Challenges18. The Achilles Heel of Post-War European Integration: Endogenous Preference Formation and the Boundaries of Creditor-State PowerEpilogue: History as OracleGlossaryReferencesIndex

Editorial Reviews

"Dyson's major accomplishment is to offer a readable synthesis of a highly demanding topic - debt and European cooperation - which lies at the very heart of our European political history." — Laurent Warlouzet, Journal of European Integration History

"This book is enormous in every sense- spanning theology, European fiscal history, government debt statistics, Anglo-Irish literature and the current plight of the Eurozone. Dyson is eminently qualified to write such a work, having been publishing on European political economy since the early 1980s and the Eurozone since the mid-1990s; no serious work on the political economy of the Eurozone can avoid repeated citations to his work. The sheer size of the book makes it a useful read. Few people will fail to learn, whether about the reputation of Ottoman budgeting or the correct reading of net external debt positions today." -Publius

"States, Debt and Power stands out in a growingly crowded field for (at least) two related reasons. Firstly, the author aims not only at interdisciplinary analysis but also at a very long durée reconstruction of the causes (and potential consequences) of the present crises. Secondly, the monograph combines a subtle and contextual analysis of the present European crises with a constructive approach to history, which allows the author to engage into prognosis and (cautiously and judiciously) in drawing the framework within which constructive policy-making should proceed. … the book rewards its reader with a thorough, contextual and genuinely deep knowledge of its subject matter." -Political Studies

From the Publisher