Law and the Euro Crisis: A View from Political Economy

Abstract

The euro crisis has triggered a healthy debate within law and other disciplines about the scope and limits of existing scholarly approaches. Debates between disciplines have been scarcer here and it is in this spirit of inquiry that this paper asks how political economists writing about the euro crisis understand the roles of law. Most (but not all) political economists show some appreciation of law, it is argued, and in so doing they go beyond the black letter reading of formal treaties and legal texts that legal scholars associate with political scientists. There is also some appreciation for the idea of law as normativity in the political economy literature on the euro crisis but the importance of legal interpretation is underplayed. Political economists are serious about law, it is concluded, but they need to take legal scholarship more seriously.

Keywords: Euro crisis; Law; Political economy; EU studies; Interdisciplinarity