https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6013-9544
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ABSTRACT
The article studies the dynamics of fiscal consolidation and public sector reforms in Italy and Spain under the EU governance that took shape as a reaction to the Eurozone crisis. We show how three types of EU pressure – fiscal and economic coordination rules, conditionality, and back-room diplomacy have operated in conjunction. We also show that Italy was more willing than Spain to resist EU pressure. Based on a Two-Level Game framework, we argue that this can be explained by the greater opposition to European integration that has developed in Italy compared to Spain.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. de la Porte and Natali (Citation2014) distinguish ‘domestic vulnerability’ from ‘EU vulnerability’, namely between the Member States’ own vulnerability to market pressures and the vulnerability of the EU as a whole, respectively. Given the size of the Italian and Spanish economies, these two types of vulnerability coincide for these two countries, given the repercussions on the stability of the Eurozone, if not of the EU itself, if either country were to go bankrupt. Vulnerability will be operationalized in terms of the interest rate spread between Italian and Spanish government bonds and German ones (De Grauwe and Yuemei Citation2014).
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Diego Badell
Diego Badell is Predoctoral Researcher at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI). He has previously worked as Research Assistant at ESADE Business School.
Fabrizio Di Mascio
Fabrizio Di Mascio is Associate Professor at the Interuniversity Department of Regional and Urban Studies and Planning, University of Turin, Italy.
Alessandro Natalini
Alessandro Natalini is Associate Professor at the Department of Law, Parthenope University of Naples, Italy.
Edoardo Ongaro
Edoardo Ongaro is Full Professor at the Faculty of Business and Law, The Open University, UK.
Francesco Stolfi
Francesco Stolfi is Lecturer at the Department of Modern History, Politics and International Relations, Macquarie University, Australia.
Tamyko Ysa
Tamyko Ysa is Professor at the Department of Strategy and General Management, ESADE Center for Public Governance, Barcelona, Spain.