A reminder that studying comparative politics without considering international and transnational and supranational organizations makes the study incomplete.As Euro Nears 10, Cracks Emerge in Fiscal Union
"The euro turns 10 next January, a milestone that will be marked with celebratory speeches, inch-thick scholarly papers and a commemorative 2-euro coin..."
By most yardsticks, Europe’s common currency has been a success, emerging as an alternative to the fading dollar for bond dealers, central bankers, [and] Chinese exporters..."
Yet fissures are forming in the European monetary union that threaten to widen in coming months."Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain... are struggling with eroding competitiveness, rising prices and bloated debts. Meanwhile, Germany, the sick man of Europe for most of the euro era, is suddenly vigorous again..."
When leaders and laggards use the same money but have opposite problems, tensions are bound to surface."
Take Italy, perhaps Europe’s shakiest economy. Facing high labor costs, slumping exports and a gaping public debt, its old remedy for hard times would have been to devalue the lira. Now, chained to the mighty euro, it cannot do that. Instead, it will probably have to endure a recession and rising unemployment, something no politician — but especially not one just elected, like Silvio Berlusconi — wants to face..."
In some sense, the political honeymoon for the euro ended in May 2005, when voters in France and the Netherlands rejected the proposed constitution for the European Union. While that document had little direct bearing on the currency, it symbolized Europe’s steady march from economic to political integration, a process that, for now at least, has stalled..."
Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and other Eastern European countries once hoped to adopt the currency fairly soon after joining the European Union. Now, with a deeper awareness of its cost, most will wait until after 2012..."
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Some other examples of organizations (international, transnational, supernational) : United Nations; International Monetary Fund (IMF); World Bank. Also, multi-national coorporations
and non-governmental linkage organizations (DATA, The ONE Campaign, INICEF).
2 comments:
The EU is really hard on Europe in some ways. Italy really wants to leave the Euro (I do not know how that would work) and France and Germany keep stealing from other nations with the Euro. Germany and France are the leaders and the strongest nations in the EU. When Germany and France starts printing off Euros, it devaluates the Euros in the other countries, and due to their size they really only get a slap on the wrist. The Euro is not practical since the EU is not strong enough yet. When the government becomes more homogenous over all of Europe, the Euro will become a lot more practical for smaller nations.
When you have any union of sovereign nations, problems are inevitable. Also, twenty-odd nations means twenty-odd economies managed in twenty-odd ways, so somebody could drag the group down. The EU is a good theory, but I don't think it's as viable, economically or politically, as they think it is.
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