Evaluating Leadership: The Hard Case of the Eurozone
The first section in this chapter presents the comparative results of the analysis. It demonstrates that actors supplied leadership only if they expected individual benefits from doing so. The interplay of power resources, preference distribution, and ins
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Evaluating Leadership: The Hard Case of the Eurozone
This chapter evaluates the findings of the book and assesses the eurozone leadership record since the outbreak of the crisis in late 2009. Section 6.1 presents the comparative results emerging from the single case studies. With regard to the emergence of leadership, it demonstrates that actors supplied leadership only if they expected individual benefits from doing so in advance. Once a leader has emerged, the chapter argues that it is the interplay of power resources, preference distribution, and institutional constraint that accounts for her impact. Moreover, the comparison yields important empirical and theoretical insights. With regard to powerful actors in the eurozone, for instance, it shows that Germany’s veto power is much bigger than its actual shaping power, and that the ECB crucially differs from other EU institutions as it does not seek to increase its political influence when this comes at the cost of its independence. Theoretically, the chapter argues that although leadership can be a solution to collective action problems, it is no altruistic sacrifice by powerful actors. This may lead to a “leadership vacuum”, but also to “leadership by default”. Extending the empirical scope of the analysis, Sect. 6.2 provides an overview assessment of the eurozone’s leadership record since the outbreak of the crisis. It shows that single member states or institutions only in rare cases provided leadership. As a consequence, we can observe a shift from an unmet demand for leadership targeted at single member states to the provision of collective leadership from behind by the EU institutions. Still, with the exception of the announcement of Outright © The Author(s) 2019 M. G. Schoeller, Leadership in the Eurozone, Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12704-6_6
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Monetary Transactions (OMT) by the ECB, the impact of leadership remained limited. Powerful actors like Germany or the ECB often lack the incentives to provide leadership, whereas those motivated to take the lead, such as the so-called “debtor states” or the EP, lack the necessary resources. The limited impact of leadership can be explained with the diverging preferences in the eurozone and the high institutional hurdles for reform. Finally, the model predicts a pessimistic scenario regarding future emergence of leadership in EMU: given the lack of “push-” and “pull-factors” for powerful actors to provide leadership, the emergence of leadership appears unlikely unless a renewed flare-up of the crisis will increase both the status quo costs and the individual incentives for taking the lead. Hence, due to the heterogeneous distribution of preferences and high hurdles for institutional change, eurozone governance and reform turns out to be a hard case for the provision of political leadership.
6.1 Comparative Results Leadership Emergence and Influence The book’s theoretical model consists of two analytical steps. The first step postulates
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