Germany and Italy: conflicting policy paradigms towards European monetary integration?

Ivo Maes () and Lucia Quaglia

Constitutional Political Economy, 2006, vol. 17, issue 3, 189-205

Abstract: In the literature on European monetary integration Germany and Italy are mostly strongly contrasted. However, this paper argues that there were important similarities between the policy paradigms in these two countries, in particular if a broader historical perspective is adopted. This work analyses the policy paradigms towards European monetary integration in Italy and Germany. Moreover, it contextualises these paradigms into the national institutional setting: while Germany was characterised by power sharing institutions, Italy featured power fragmentation (something which also affected the economic performance of both countries). There were significant differences between the policy paradigms of foreign policy-makers and economic policy-makers. Foreign policy makers, in both countries, under the influence of a European federalist vision, were strongly in favour of European monetary integration. These beliefs of foreign policy decision makers were crucial in charting EMU policy at history-making moments. The pro EMU policy paradigms of foreign policymakers contrasted, during most of the period covered, with the more sceptical beliefs of economic policy makers. In both countries, economic policy-makers, at different moments, had doubts whether enough “convergence” had been reached to make a more stable exchange rate system sustainable. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2006

Keywords: European monetary integration; EMU; Germany; Italy; A11; B20; E58; F02; P16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10602-006-9001-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:copoec:v:17:y:2006:i:3:p:189-205

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ce/journal/10602/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10602-006-9001-1

Access Statistics for this article

Constitutional Political Economy is currently edited by Roger Congleton and Stefan Voigt

More articles in Constitutional Political Economy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().