Moral Economies, Economic Moralities

University of California - Berkeley

U.S.A.

June 24 - 26, 2016

The recent economic crisis in the European Union has unveiled dramatic differences in the patterns of integration and economic vulnerabilities of different peripheral economies in the EU, with the Southern EU members hit harder and recovering slower than those in the East of Europe. Earlier research on the EU governance of economic integration of its peripheries has found substantive differences in the ways in which the EU has tried to manage the integration of economies with vastly different economic capacities and levels of competitiveness.  While in the course of Eastern enlargement, the EU developed several instruments to anticipate and manage potential negative developmental externalities of integration, it adopted rather different goals and means for managing economic integration of its Southern periphery. The goal of this session is to explore the strengths and limitations of analyzing the management of developmental disparities in Europe in the framework of the broader debate on pathways away from the periphery in other parts of the world. We want to discuss the factors that could account for different EU strategies of economic integration and the roles played by domestic and transnational agency in shaping diverging developmental outcomes. Finally, the third goal is to explore what, if any, lessons could be drawn from the integration of Eastern periphery for finding a longer term solution to the overall EU strategy to manage developmental disparities within the regional market