The clash of titans: France, Germany and the discursive double game of EMU reform

Crespy Amandine, Schmidt V.

The clash of titans: France, Germany and the discursive double game of EMU reform

This paper investigates why and how French and German leaders converged on an agreement for reforming the European Monetary Union in response to the outbreak of the debt crisis in Europe. To answer these questions, we begin by revising Putnam's two-level game in order to offer a constructivist account of the politics of 'grand bargains' in the European Union. The Eurozone negotiations, we argue, are better viewed as a simultaneous double game in which preferences are constructed and reconfigured as leaders address simultaneously the other European decision makers and their own constituencies. In a discursive institutionalist perspective, a frame analysis is conducted on the basis of press conference speeches and press interviews in 2011 and 2012. It is demonstrated that the Franco-German agreements on new policy and institutional arrangements were only possible because the respective leaders resorted to differing discourses in terms of paradigms, norms and values. © 2014 Taylor & Francis.

Type Article
Identificateur urn:issn:1350-1763
Language En
Length 1085 1101
Themes
  • Europe as an Area of Economic and Social Regulation
Discipline(s)
  • Science politique générale
Publication date 2014
Notes
  • SCOPUS: ar.j
Keywords
  • discourse
  • double game
  • Eurozone
  • France
  • Germany
ULB Institutional Reference http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/175097