Political Regulation and the

Strategic Production of Space: The

European Union as a Post-Fordist
State Spatial Project

Jens Wissel and Sebastian Wolff

Institute for Social Research, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany;
j.wissel@soz.uni-frankfurt.de

Abstract: This article addresses the spatial differentiation of statehood in the process of
European integration, looking at its consequences for the reorganization of political rule.
First, we elaborate our theoretical foundations resting in materialist theories of the state. It
is argued that hitherto analytical approaches have hardly been able to systematically
integrate the societal generation of space. This shortcoming is addressed by drawing on
theories of space discussed in radical geography. Second, we trace the spatial transforma-
tion of statehood in the EU. Our assertion is that the latter is characterized by the
emergence of a multi-scalar ensemble of state apparatuses. Finally, we discuss the
implications of this transformation for the reproduction of domination. We assume that
the multi-scalar form of statehood offers a significant basis for the emergence of authori-
tarian forms of politics in the EU. At the same time, social conflicts over the political design
of the EU are intensifying.

Keywords: materialist state theory, production of space, European integration, Euro

crisis, materialist policy analysis

Since the beginning of the 1990s, materialist state theory has paid particular atten-
tion to processes of internationalization and transnationalization of the state. The
debate turned initially to transformations within nation-states and to international
regulatory institutions. However, the process of European integration and its conse-
quences for statehood and the reproduction of political rule have been neglected in
this context for a long time. Still, from the perspective of social criticism, those
authors who drew on Antonio Gramscis theoretical accounts could avoid such
shortcomings (cf. Bieling and Deppe 1996; Cox 1987; Gill 1998; van Apeldoorn
2002; van der Pijl 1998). Just as much as in Gramscis thought, these neo-Gramscian
approaches focus on the transformation of societal power relations. The attention
significant actors pay to European and transnational contexts could be established
early on. At the same time, however, the lack of its systematic integration into an
established theory of the state led to the fact that many analyses suffered from an
only weak grounding in theories of action and elites (cf. Borg 2001). In this way,
the mediation of societal power relations, structural entrenchments as well as insti-
tutional autonomizations were ignored for some time. A number of studies which
drew on state theoretical insights remedied this situation (see Bieling 2003; Brand
2010; Jessop 1997; Panitch and Gindin 2004; Rttger 1997; Ziltener 1999, 2000a).

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2 Antipode

In the following, we draw on this debate but shift its focus somewhat, since we
pay attention to the spatial dimension of the transformation of statehood. Our paper
revolves around both the spatial differentiation of state and society in the process of
European integration as well as their consequences for and effects on the reorgani-
zation of political rule. To do so, we initially elaborate on our theoretical founda-
tions. Besides the already mentioned neo-Gramscian approaches, we mainly draw
on regulation theory, the internationalization of the state from the perspective of
materialist state theory1 and studies on the social production of space in radical
geography (cf. Belina and Michel 2011; Brenner 2004a, 2004b; Jessop et al. 2008;
Smith 1995; Swyngedouw 1997; Wissen et al. 2008). Second, we trace the spatial
transformation of statehood in the European Union. The latter is characterized, our
thesis argues, by a complex process of re-territorialization of political domination
and power and the emergence of a multi-scalar ensemble of state apparatuses (see
Wissel 2014), in which state apparatuses and institutions2 are connected at different
spatial scales and brought into a cooperativecompetitive relation. Jessop et al. have
rightly highlighted that the polymorphic, multidimensional character of
sociospatial relations (2008:389) is not limited to scale and territory but comprises
further dimensions such as place and network. For a comprehensive analysis of the
spatial transformation of the EU, both would certainly have to be incorporated. In
the context dealt with here, however, the rescaling of the EU assumes a special
importance insofar as we, third, show that this constitutes currently one of the deci-
sive preconditions for the accelerated implementation of a neoliberal restructuring
of the EU and the therewith ensuing out-levering of democratic processes.

Capitalism and State

To adopt the position of materialist state theory means to consistently link both the
existence and the concrete historical formation and functioning of the state with the
relations of production in society. These are recognized and criticized as relations of
exploitation and domination. Unequal relations between social classes, genders
and races as well as the pervasive tendency of capitalism to produce crises of
overaccumulation (Harvey 2003:108) establish a social context that is inherently
contradictory and is as such permanently confronted with the risk of undermining
its own pre-conditions. Therefore, capitalism tends neither to a state of equilibrium
by itself nor can its reproduction be secured solely by means of the invisible hand
of market forces. According to materialist state theory, what is necessary is rather an
activity that aims at the material permanence, order and preservation of society in
general and stands outside of the immediate processes of utilization (Hirsch
2005:45, own translation). Precisely this is seen as the central role of the state: with
its formal separation from or particularity with respect to both the economy and
individual social class fractions, it establishes a strategic terrain of conflict with
relative autonomy (Bretthauer 2011:81), on which social relations can be regulated
in a controlled and juridified manner so that they become manageable despite their
inconsistencies.
This line of argument should however not be misunderstood as functionalist. The
particularity of the state is necessary for the preservation of capitalist society but

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The EU as a Post-Fordist State Spatial Project 3

not guaranteed from the outset. They are not functionally predetermined and
guaranteed, but rather produced and reproduced by societal actions, i.e. shaped
by existing class relations and relations of exploitation (Hirsch and Kannankulam
2011:16). The same applies to the design of state apparatuses as well as to the
way of state regulation: while both are closely related to the structural principles
of capitalist relations of production,3 they cannot be derived from them but are in
their concrete manifestation the result of social conflicts and struggles.4 In this
context, Antonio Gramscis concept of hegemony proves to be a particularly
fruitful approach (Hirsch et al. 2008; Morten 2007:87102). On the one hand,
Gramsci extends the state conceptually as well as theoretically. The latter does
not only encompass state institutions and apparatuses but also the realm of civil
society. Such an understanding of the integral state (Gramsci 1971:244, Q 15,
10; for its reception in the Marxist debate, see Jessop 2014) leads to an analysis
of political processes which is not limited to conflicts in the political-administrative
spherein Gramscian terms political societybut must also include the strategies
of civil societal actors. On the other hand, Gramsci points to the fact that processes
of social negotiation are highly influenced by power relations, which always play
out under the leadership of a hegemonic class or class fraction. Political power is
therefore not based solely or primarily on violence and oppression but rather on
the organization of (asymmetrical) consensus and political leadership (cf. Opratko
2012). With regard to the debate about the structure of the state, this means that
societal actors must always try to involve other (also subaltern) actors in their pro-
jects by means of moral and material concessions. The state is thus not a committee
of the (ruling) class, but, as Poulantzas argues, thehighly contradictorymaterial
condensation of a relationship of forces (2000:129).5
If we examine in the following the transformation of statehood in the process of
European integration, we therefore see the state primarily as astructured and
structuringfield of conflict, on which social actors struggle for hegemony.
Elsewhere (Buckel et al. 2014:4359) we have developed a historical materialist
policy analysis as a method which uses the insights of materialist state theory for
the benefit of empirical analysis. Our approach revolves around the concept of
the hegemony project. By clustering different actor constellations around the strate-
gies and longer-term goals in their pursuit of specific political projects, we try to
reduce the complexity of social power relations so that they become accessible
for empirical analysis. If a hegemony project succeeds in achieving political leader-
ship by pursuing specific strategies and implementing concrete political projects,
we refer to this as a hegemonic project (for the concept of the hegemonic project,
see also Jessop 1990:208209). To conceptualize the state as a strategic field
and process (Poulantzas 2000:136), on which hegemonic projects exercise a
multitude of divergent micro-policies (2000:136), raises ultimately the question
of how its internal unity can be ensured. Apart from political projects, our approach
argues, hegemonic projects must always also pursue state projects which focus on
the institutional structure of the state apparatuses and give them a certain order
and hierarchy (cf. Jessop 1990:79).
The above should have made clear that in materialist state theory the state is not
considered to be a mere instrument of the ruling classes. Conceptions of the state

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which take it to be the guarantor of the public good in society are also rejected.
Since the state stabilizes the capitalist relations of domination by mitigating their
proneness to crisis, it assumes a central role in guaranteeing this constellation;
moreover, as tax state, it remains fundamentally dependent on the maintenance
of capitalist relations of production. The state is thus not the state of the capital
but certainly a bourgeois-capitalist state.

State and Space

Mainstream political science in the 2000s focused increasingly on analysing
processes of global governance.6 The nation-state as well as rule in general were
considered more or less a relic of the past. In contrast, approaches in regulation
theory and materialist state theory highlighted that it was precisely the nation-
states which promoted globalization (Hirsch 2005:142; Jessop 2008:190).
Approaches in political economy included into their analysis the world market,
the internationalization of production and emerging international regulation.
However, the relevance of these developments for the spatiality of statehood
has been overlooked for a long time. Ultimately, however, also studies in state
and regulation theory were caught in the territorial trap famously criticized
by John Agnew (1994), insofar as they have conceived state territoriality as a
static background structure for regulatory processes rather than as one of their
constitutive dimensions (Brenner 2004b:70). Instead of conceptualizing the
Fordist nation-state as a historically specificand thus contingentform of the
territorialization of statehood, the shape of the nation-state was turned into a
quasi-natural feature of state sovereignty.
In the late 1990s and early 2000s, this obsession with the nation-state met
increasing criticism. In the debates about the internationalization of the state
(cf. Hirsch et al. 2001), the perspective was broadened, and it was stressed that
important processes of policy formulation and implementation move to the level
of international organizations (Hirsch 2005:147; own translation); in other words,
it was argued that there had been a greater spatial diversification of government
and regulation.7 However, despite this inclusion of the spatial rescaling of state-
hood, an explicit discussion of the category space did not occur.
This lacking theoretical account of space was recently addressed via the growing
reception of debates in radical geography, especially those dealing with re-scaling
and the politics of scale. The basic assumption of the scale debate is that social pro-
cesses do not take place in a single social space; rather the social world is character-
ized by the presence of multiple and mutually overlapping spatial and social
dimensions (Mahon and Keil 2008:35). Within this multi-scalar spatial structure,
which encompasses the global and supranational, national and regional as well
as local levels, there is no spatial scale which would enjoy causal primacy. This in
turn relativizes the significance of the national scale. Unlike in the methodological
nationalism which underpins many political science approaches, it can a priori not
be considered to be the primary arena for social interaction. It rather needs to be
taken into account that spatial scales and their relation to each other are socially
produced and changeable (Wissen 2009a:1f). The scale debate thus extends the

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The EU as a Post-Fordist State Spatial Project 5

arguments about the internationalization of the state in an important aspect: of

interest is no longer only the scale as such but the processes by which these
scales are produced (Schmid 2003:222). Rather than to per se assume a space,
the focus is now on the spatiality of social relations, i.e. on the societal debate about
the institution of the social space.
The benefit of the scale debate for state theory is undoubtedly that the ontolog-
ical fixation on the nation-state (Schmid 2003:233) can be overcome in favour of a
multi-scalar, process-based view of statehood. From such a vantage point, the
spatiality of the state cannot be established theoretically in advance but has to be
explained as a historical found object (Lipietz 1985:114) by unpacking the
societal struggles for hegemony. In the present situation, this means that an exten-
sive relocation of functions can be observed above and below the nation-state;
functions which were fulfilled by nation-states in the Fordist era.8 This finding must
not be misread in the sense of a complete de-territorialization of the state. Due to
the inherent contradictions of capitalism, territoriality is not a feature of state regu-
lation. The territorially organized state system is rather the structural expression of
these contradictions (see Belina 2011; Brenner 2004b:92; Hirsch 2005:59; Jessop
2002:4251). What is needed is therefore an interpretation of contemporary
global restructuring as a contradictory process of reterritorialization and rescaling
(Brenner 2004b:30).
As indicated above, theinitially only abstract-logicalparticularization of the
state always manifests itself as a political form through concrete political projects
and state projects. The same applies to the spatial characteristics of the state.
Processes of territorial inclusion and exclusion as well as the relation of state appa-
ratuses and institutions across different scales are neither pre-societal facts nor are
they fixed once and for all, they rather depend for their realization on spatially
effective political strategies. With respect to the concept of state project, one can,
following the geographer Neil Brenner (2004b),9 speak of state spatial projects,
which social actors have to pursue in the struggle for hegemony in order to ensure
a spatial connexion of the state conducive to their interests. State spatial projects
thus represent initiatives to differentiate state territoriality into a partitioned,
functionally coordinated, and organizationally coherent regulatory geography
(Brenner 2004b:92).
While state spatial projects aim at the spatiality of state apparatuses and institu-
tions, Brenners concept of state spatial strategies in addition points to the fact
that the state itself is a key player in the shaping of the geographies of accumulation
and regulation. Spatially effective state policies arelike all other government poli-
ciesthe result of the conflictive interplay between the state spatial strategies of
different societal actors (see Brenner 2004b:93).
However, struggles about the geography of the state do not take place on a
tabula rasa. Men make their history always under circumstances existing already,
given and transmitted from the past (Marx 2009:15). This applies no less to the
production of political space than any other active-creative process. In this regard,
actors in pursuit of their spatial strategies are situated within inherited regulatory
landscapes (Brenner 2004b:72). Due to previous conflicts over the constitution
of political space, such landscapes entail specific spatial selectivities. The latter

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allocate particular significance to specific locations and scales for the struggles over
rule and related processes of compromise formation. These spatial selectivities do
not determine conflicts and strategies but imply path dependency.

The Multi-Scaling of Statehood in the EU

What conclusions can be drawn for the European Union and its space on the basis
of materialist state theory extended by a theory of space? How has the European
integration process changed the spatial dimension of the state and political rule?
We pose this question at a time of deep crisis in the EU which has also put into ques-
tion its current spatial order. Whether this crisis leads to a deepening of integration
or whether it results in a re-nationalization of politics and economics can hardly be
answered at the moment. What can at this stage, however, be done is an analysis of
the inherited regulatory landscapes, within which the social conflicts around this
question play out.

The Fordist State Project

In the 1950s, Fordism grew as a new societal formation out of the ruins of the Great
Depression of the 1930s and the two world wars. Especially in the countries of the
capitalist centre (US, Western Europe, Japan), it became possible to re-stimulate
capital accumulation through the coupling of Fordist-Taylorist mass production
and mass consumption financed by relatively high wages. It thus stabilized the
intrinsically crisis-prone nature of capitalism for some years. Both accumulation
strategies and the manner of social regulation were primarily geared towards the
nation-state. Added value generation took place in highly self-centred national
economies, whose actors were integrated in a network of state regulation, which
had also been formulated and enforced in the framework of the nation-state.10
The Keynesian policy mode which aimed at the balancing and harmonization of
social differences also guided state spatial strategies: In sum, the spatial strategy
of Fordism can be described with the formula: production of equality in space and
creation of a homogenized national space (Schmid 2003:238). Brenner therefore
speaks of spatial Keynesianism (2004b:114).
But although Fordism was mainly built on inner conquest (Lutz 1984), the
outer boundaries of Fordist nation-states were not clearly defined. Even in Fordism,
the individual nation-states were embedded in global markets and the international
system of states (cf. Aglietta 1979; Hirsch 1993; Lipietz 1987; Poulantzas 2000). The
spatial transformation processes of capitalism after the crisis of Fordism are there-
fore no qualitatively novel phenomenon; they are rather the manifestation of inten-
sified and re-evaluated strategies transcending the nation-state.
The project of Western European integration was in its infancy primarily shaped
by security concerns (cf. Altvater and Mahnkopf 2007; Tmmel 2008). Then, how-
ever, economic motifs began to impinge more and more on the considerations and
actions of European elites; they saw in the creation of a common market free from
customs duties and quantitative restrictions an opportunity to challenge the dom-
inance of the United States on the world market. Through larger production units,

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The EU as a Post-Fordist State Spatial Project 7

greater capital concentration, and more rational location of factories and utilization
of transport facilities (Mandel 1970:48) the Fordist formula for successmass
production plus mass consumption equals prosperitywas meant to be realized
at a higher level, thus improving the position of Europe in international competition
(cf. Bieling 2010:66; Statz 1989:15). But despite initial socialization steps, which
also included the creation of supranational institutions at the European level,11 it
was still the nation-states which formed the central elements of European integra-
tion. The project was less about the transfer of state sovereignty to the suprana-
tional level than rather a partial, functionally definedi.e. geared towards
increased stability, peace and welfare pooling of state sovereignty (Bieling
2010:61; own translation). The orientation towards Europe did not (yet) establish
a counter-project to nation-state centred state spatial strategies; they were rather
pursued as promising spatial strategies in order to safeguard the nation-states in a
context of heightening world market competition (cf. Tmmel 2008:124; Ziltener
1999:126).

In Crisis
With the erupting economic crisis in the 1970s,12 national state projects were
initially strengthened further. The domestic promotion of macroeconomic and
demand-oriented policies, protectionist measures and the restriction of the free
movement of capital were the key dimensions of a crisis management strategy
which had a negative impact on the integration process and weakened the
European institutions (cf. Tmmel 2008:23). These measures were poorly coordi-
nated, sometimes contradictory and could not change the basic problemthe
exhaustion of Fordist-Taylorist productivity reserves (Hirsch 2005:124; Ziltener
1999:125). Instead of a renewed dynamic of capital accumulation, there was a
general decline in productivity and growth.13 This undermined the foundations of
the Fordist national-social state (Etat national social) (Balibar 2012) and
increasingly eroded the conditions for successful Keynesian crisis intervention
(Sttzle 2013:163).

The EU as a Multi-Scalar Ensemble of State Apparatuses

Before this backdrop, the Fordist national-social state became the central target of
conservative and neoliberal actors (Kannankulam 2008; Streeck 2014), who
managed to forge a new elite pact and to change the previous mode of integration
fundamentally.14 The deregulation and liberalization of production, trade and
capital flows should address the so-called Euro-sclerosis, i.e. the regulatory
rigidities and stagnation of existing labour, social security and tax systems (Bieling
2010:75); in this way, faltering capital accumulation was meant to be revived.
However, the societal power relations and state apparatuses at the national scales
of many countries initially resisted substantially to these neoliberal attacks, since
they were still heavily influenced by the fundamental Fordist compromise. In
contrast, the EC (EU) with its weak institutions, lack of a stable civil society and
dominance of resource-heavy actors displayed a much more favourable strategic

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selectivity for the neoliberal project.15 The strategies of the neoliberal hegemony
project aimed therefore increasingly at the European scale to put national models
of capitalism under intensified disciplinary and competitive pressure (Bieling
2010:88).
The political key projects which achieved this goal were the expansion of the
European Single Market by dint of the Single European Act (SEA) in 1987 as well
as the realization of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) since 1990. With
the convergence criteria, established in the 1992 Treaty of Maastricht and later
the Stability and Growth Pact, it was finally possible to constitutionalize the neolib-
eral monetarist turn.16
From our viewpoint, the described political projects should be interpreted as part
of a novel state project which emerged out of the neoliberal hegemony project. The
latter succeeded in emerging as a hegemonic project out of the debates on the
future of Europe during the crisis of Fordism (see van Apeldoorn 2002); it had a
crucial impact on the ECs further mode of integration. What has changed, on the
one hand, is the way socio-economic processes are regulated: Keynesian, welfare-
state forms of intervention were replaced by a neoliberal monetarist orientation
thus establishing an austerity corset for statehood in Europe (see Ziltener
2000b:251260). This also became manifest in a fundamental restructuring of
the institutional structures and hierarchies of the EC/EU. Thus, on the other hand,
the relationship between the different scales of social and political action changed,
especially the one between the national and the European level: The state spatial
project of neoliberal actors led to an enhanced status of the European level and
the emergence or respectively further development of genuinely supranational
state apparatuses (the European Commission, ECB, countless agencies). These
developed at least a partial independence from the Member State apparatuses. At
the same time, nation-states also experienced a process of inner Europeanization.
While Ziltener highlights the phase of Fordism as being characterized by the
complementarity and protection of national paths of development by the
European level, in post-Fordism the relationship of the two scales is characterized
by a much more complex relation of mutual entanglement.
Moreover, institutional hierarchies also changed within the individual levels.
Especially, the finance ministries and central banks became much more important
in the hierarchy of state apparatuses in recent decades. The newly created European
Central Bank was also given a central position. Less significant are, on the other
hand, those apparatuses which embody the Fordist class compromise, such as
the ministries of labour, social or economic affairs (cf. Baker 1999; Panitch and
Gindin 2004).
In addition to the outlined changes, it is also noticeable that the regional and
urban levels have increased significance for political regulation. Greatly reduced
to the role of a passive transmission belt in Fordism for economic and social policies
formulated by central governments, independence and self-steering ability have in
turn expanded at both levels. The interconnection between state apparatuses of
different nation-states has also increased at the vertical level. European agencies,
for instance, encompass alongside Commission officials also officials from the
relevant ministries of Member States, although these bodies are formally not

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The EU as a Post-Fordist State Spatial Project 9

subordinated to any other authority; this in fact establishes vertical cross-links

between national apparatuses.17
The EUs statehood has thus a completely different character than the national state
projects of Fordism. No coherent European state has emerged; the EU rather displays
a spatially fragmented form of statehood. This has created a multi-scalar European en-
semble of state apparatuses which is characterized by the cooperative-competitive inter-
play and interpenetration of different spatial scales (Wissel 2015:2355). This
fragmentation should, however, not lead to the assumption that the European ensem-
ble of state apparatuses would lack internal cohesion. On the contrary, its individual
parts from the urban and regional up to the national and European level subordinate
themselves to an overall goal: to make Europe the most competitive and dynamic
knowledge-driven economy in the world (Lisbon Strategy/Europe 2020). Moreover,
it is precisely the internal fragmentation of the European ensembles of state apparatuses
which enables the actors of the neoliberal hegemonic project to implement their
market-centric agenda. After all, with the help of scale-jumping or forum-shifting (see
Smith 1995) it allows them to address different spatial scales with their strategies and
thus to evade potential resistance to their policies. Instead of having to engage in
tedious and costly processes of compromise formation, the neoliberal hegemonic
project manages to expose national models of capitalism to a process of competitive
reorganization, whichdepending on productivity levelsconsists of a more or less
pronounced redefinition of state and collective bargaining redistributive policies
(Bieling 2010:92; own translation). How beneficial the spatially fragmented form of
statehood is for neoliberal actors also becomes apparent with the current European
crisis management.

Crisis Management in the Multi-Scalar Ensemble of

State Apparatuses
Since 2010, the European Union has become a focal point of the global economic
crisis. In contrast to initial impressions, the world economic crisis has so far not
led to a serious challenge of the neoliberal paradigm in Europe. Benefiting from
the inherited regulatory landscapes of the multi-scalar European ensemble of
state apparatuses, neoliberal actors rather succeed in imposing a further radicaliza-
tion of both the mode of regulation via regulatory competition among states as well
as authoritarian-statist forms of politics (cf. Klatzer and Schlager 2014; Oberndorfer
2014; Sttzle 2013).
As part of the so-called six-pack, the already existing Stability and Growth Pact
was rearranged by adding preventive and corrective regulations. At its core, this
process was about the strengthening of the European Commission and an intensi-
fication of austerity through additional sanctions (Klatzer and Schlager 2014:3). The
deficit limit of 3% of the national gross domestic product (GDP) was reduced to
0.5%, and the debt limit set at 60% of GDP (Heine and Sablowski 2013:16). The
Fiscal Compact required the Member States (the Czech Republic and the UK did
not participate) to codify the debt limit in their national constitutions. The newly
introduced European Semester follows the very same logic. It combines measures
of coordination and the monitoring of budgetary and economic policy with a policy

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orientation towards competitiveness within the framework of the Euro-Plus Pact. In

this vein, the European Commission and the ECOFIN Council were equipped with
extensive rights to intervene in the economic policies of Member States (Heine
and Sablowski 2013:16). With the introduction of macroeconomic monitoring,
excessive economic imbalances in Member States are meant to be identified early on
and tackled by stronger control from the Commission and the imposition of sanctions
if member states do not comply with guidelines from the European level (Klatzer and
Schlager 2014:4). The definition of what an imbalance is and what action needs to be
taken to eliminate it lies with the neoliberally dominated Directorate-General for
Economic and Financial Affairs (Klatzer and Schlager 2014:4). The new European Stabil-
ity Mechanism (ESM) was introduced as a permanent and independently institutional-
ized mechanism. It allows granting Member States financial aid on condition that
massive macroeconomic adjustments are implemented:

Euro-zone ministers of finance negotiated the treaty and set themselves in key positions
within the ESM. The problem is that the ESM is structurally designed in a way so that it
can act in an opaque manner, fully insulated from democratic institutions. The ESM
closely cooperates with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European
Central Bank (ECB), while the European Parliament (EP) remains excluded (Klatzer and
Schlager 2014:4).

The European crisis management has so far resulted in a transfer of central tasks
of budgetary and economic policy to institutions which are not democratically
legitimized. In particular, the sovereignty of bailout states was suspended in
key areas. In contrast, the position of the European Commission, especially the
Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs, was enhanced significantly.
In the European ensemble of state apparatuses a massive upgrade of the executive
apparatus (Oberndorfer 2014:28; for the gendered dimensions of these processes
see Klatzer and Schlager 2014; Lang and Sauer 2015) is currently at work. It equips
this apparatus with decision-making and sanctioning powers.
In addition to the still unbroken dominance of the neoliberal paradigm, the EUs crisis
management demonstrates that the neoliberal actors strategies have also aimed at the
European scale during the current crisis. Their dominant position within the European
ensemble of state apparatuses allows them to formulate and implement specific state
spatial strategies which amount to a further strengthening of European apparatuses to
further increase the adjustment pressures exerted by the regulatory competition
among statesa process which has continually accelerated since the 1970s.
However, what becomes manifest here is not a unilateral strengthening of the
European level at the expense of Member States ability to act. Rather, the European
state project is also realized via the nation-states.18 Germany in particular has
become the focal point of neoliberal policies. Instead of nation-states generally
losing sovereignty, what can be observed is a further fragmentation of the European
ensemble of state apparatuses and a deepening of centreperiphery relations. In this
process, the EUs southern Member States are degraded and become mere transmis-
sion belts of European requirements; while other countries (especially Germany)
succeed in expanding their influence on the European process of policy formulation
and strengthening their position in the European balance of power.

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The EU as a Post-Fordist State Spatial Project 11

Crisis Management and Social Relations of Power

The European crisis interventions have converted the economic crisis into a political
crisis and aggravated the societal disputes over the political organization of the EU.
Admittedly, new measures to monitor the Stability and Growth Pact could be
established in the course of the crisis; at the same time, however, the legitimacy
crisis has been further escalating. Increasingly, fractures emerge in the European
Union. The mode of restructuring of the European Union indicates that neoliberal
policies are hardly possible anymore via organizing a social consensus. The object
of fierce disputes have been and still are the crisis measures themselves as well as
the question on which scale the crisis processes have to be confronted. Particularly
in Spain, Portugal and Greece19 the ever tighter application of the neoliberal
austerity-corset by the Troika comprising the ECB, the IMF and the EU Commis-
sion is met with protest and resistance. The traditional party system of these
countries has been eroding dramatically. The demands of new, or strengthened,
leftist parties stretch from a welfare-state-oriented re-regulation of the economy
to an anti-capitalist and radically democratic transformation of society. On the other
side of the political spectrum the fragmentation and social dislocations as conse-
quences of the austerity policies have resulted in a revival of national-conservative
and right-wing populist movements. Calls for a retreat to the national commu-
nity combine therein with partly openly racist and chauvinist attitudes.
Beyond the challenge of the neoliberal hegemony by other actors or oppositional
hegemony projects20 the crisis has also led to fractures within the neoliberal hege-
mony project. Already previous to the crisis the neoliberal hegemony project was
characterized by national differences and internal fractioning; in the critical phase
of the euro crisis between 2010 and 2012 these have openly erupted. Among the
neoliberal actors a profound dissent prevailed with regard to the shape the crisis
management was supposed to take. From our point of view, one can identify three
roughly different factions within the neoliberal hegemony project (cf. Buckel et al.
2012; Kannankulam and Georgi 2014).
First, a pro-European authoritarian-neoliberal current, which is resolved to defend the
common market and the currency union by institutionally increasing and codifying the
pressure to implement austerity policies. It is attempted to keep political influence at
distance from the austerity and competitiveness orientation via the positioning against
an economic government among other things (Heine and Sablowski 2013:31). To res-
cue the Eurozone, an expansive monetary policy of the ECB is also advocated, however
only with clearly formulated demands for budget cuts (Buckel et al. 2012:3334). This
strategy is primarily pursued by the German export industry as well as those transna-
tional corporations which are organized in the European Round Table of Industrialists
and in Businesseurope (Buckel et al. 2012:33).
Second, a pro-European neoliberal current which is equally concerned with the
defence of the sate-competitive mode of regulation, but perceives this to be linked to
the necessary re-regulation of the economy on a European level. Its representatives,
who can be mostly found in social democratic parties, therefore demand e.g. a regula-
tion of the banking sector or the introduction of Eurobonds and thus an expansive mon-
etary policy to reduce the interest rate pressure burdening the indebted Member States.
In a medium-term perspective they strive for the creation of an economic government

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12 Antipode

and the deepening of political integration. In this current, demands of oppositional

actorssuch as attackcould be integrated. They are however separated from the
context of a sustainable societal redistribution. The goal is a stabilization by re-regulation
while simultaneously maintaining central parameters of competition stateness.
Third, a national-neoliberal current can be identified. Almost every form of a European
intervention in the debt crisis is rejected in favour of national crisis solution strategies. An
expansive monetary policy is categorically opposed as interest rate socialism. Accord-
ingly, indebted states should in the case of necessity be left to sovereign default and
excluded from the Eurozone, instead of rescuing them through costly measures.
The different constellations of social power relations and the varying interests of the
individual Member States have also brought about rifts among the Member States.
While France, Spain and Italy led by the pro-European neoliberal hegemony advocated
in the immediate crisis for an expansive monetary policy, and in a medium-term per-
spective, endorsed a European economic government, Germany and other countries
with trade surpluses opposed for a long time every kind of expansive monetary policy.
In the latter countries, pro-European authoritarian-neoliberal currents had taken the
lead and integrated national-neoliberal demands.
For a long time it was not clear which current would assert itself in Europe in this sit-
uation. Thus, it remained open, whether, when and how one would act to solve the
problems of Greece on the bond market. This fuelled interest rates of southern Member
States bonds to rise more and more, and let the sovereign debt crisis escalate further. A
focal point of the dispute was constituted by the policies of the ECB in which the
positions of Germany and France collided as well as the neoliberal re-regulation strate-
gies of, amongst others, the European social democratic parties and the authoritarian-
neoliberal strategies which were seeking to codify the austerity pressure and for this
required access to the decision-making mechanisms in the respective states. Mario
Draghis announcement in August 2012, to buy up state bonds of Euro states unlimit-
edly on the secondary market in case there was a need to preserve the Euro, resulted in
a preliminary pacification of the constellation (Sttzle 2013:333). He thereby
contradicted the position of Germany and of the German representative in the ECB
Council Weidmann.21 Nevertheless Draghis politics represented in a way a mediation
between the position of France to introduce Eurobonds and the German opposition
against any attempt to reduce the pressure indebted states have been under: a prereq-
uisite for the bond buying was the application for aid money from the European
Stability Mechanism (ESM), so that the applicants are subjected to the rules of the Fiscal
Compact (Illing 2013:103). The situation is similar with regard to the mechanisms of
the Economic Governance and the Fiscal Compact (see below). Particularly the
representatives of the authoritarian-neoliberal current prevailed therein, although re-
regulation elements (e.g. the banking union) as they were called for by the
pro-European social democratic parties have also been included. The individual mea-
sures and instruments of the European crisis management have thus to be seen as a
result of a double effort: while they are supposed to establish a compromise structure
internally, to make processable the conflicts which broke out in the crisis within the
neoliberal hegemony project, they function towards the outside as the central vehicle
with which the competition-state mode of integration is proofed and secured against
contrary to political demands.

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The EU as a Post-Fordist State Spatial Project 13

The Multi-Scalar Ensemble of State Apparatuses and

the Lack of Democratic Legitimation
The structural change of European integration (Ziltener 1999, own translation), ini-
tially implemented as a response to the crisis of Fordism and pushed further in view
of the anew crisis eruption in 2010, has far-reaching consequences for the
sociopolitical and democratic design of the EU. Given the current developments, Lukas
Oberndorfer speaks of the emergence of an authoritarian competitive statism
(2014:29), which begins to assert itself in Europe with the crisis interventions. The cen-
tral building blocks of the crisis policiesEconomic Governance and Fiscal Compact
have no adequate legal basis in the European Constitution and could be established
only through bypassing the ordinary revision procedure (Article 48 of the Treaty on
European Union [TEU]) (Oberndorfer 2014:29; see also Fischer-Lescano 2014).
The charge of a lacking democratic legitimation of the EU (e.g. Abromeit 1998;
Huget 2007; Tmmel 2008:230; cf. Moravcsik 2002) is thus not to be understood
as the shortcoming of a not yet fully matured political structure. The insufficient
separation of powers, i.e. the far-reaching amalgamation of the legislative, executive
and juridical powers as well as the preferential access to the apparatuses and
decision-finding processes in the European ensemble of apparatuses,22 which is
granted to the interests of capital, are rather an integral component of the neoliberal
state project being based on a substantial de-democratization and erosion of societal
solidarity. With this new constellation it was possible since the 1980s to put massive
pressure on national social security systems and at the same time to socially and po-
litically weaken demands for a stronger sociopolitical profiling of the European level.
These developments are the result of contingent social developments which
shifted the balance of power to the detriment of the subaltern. The strategic selec-
tivity of the multi-scalar European ensemble of state apparatuses presents itself as
an extremely unfavourable terrain for counter-hegemonic movements which aim
at a democratization of the EU. It is therefore no coincidence that the project of a
social Europe has so far made little progress. But however beneficial the fragmented
spatial structure of the European state apparatus ensemble might be for the imple-
mentation of a neoliberal projectin the medium and long term, it runs the risk of
undermining the foundations of neoliberal hegemony: to the extent that it leads to
the deepening of social inequality and de-democratization, it amplifies the general
proneness to crisis and subverts neoliberal hegemony since it is hardly possible any-
more to incorporate subaltern forces consensually. There are a range of indications
that we have to be prepared for in a persistent political crisis.

Endnotes
1
Since the 1970s, a plethora of studies dealing with processes of internationalization (e.g.
Bieler et al. 2006; Cox 1987; Murray 1971; Robinson 2004) has emerged, which cannot be
discussed in this article in detail. In our context, we draw on studies which have emerged
in the debate around a materialist theory of the state (see, for instance, Aronowitz and Bratsis
2002; Jessop 1990, 2008; Gallas et al. 2011).
2
Apparatuses denote state organizations and bodies, like ministries, central banks, security
apparatuses, etc. Following Giddens (1984), we conceptualize institutions as routinized
social practices which provide order across space and time.

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14 Antipode

3
One of the key reasons is that the state as tax state is dependent on a dynamic process of
capital utilization. It is therefore in its very own interest to ensure the accumulation of capital.
4
A materialist perspective is not constituted by deriving actions and institutions from social
structures but by focusing on the dialectic interplay of structure and practice.
5
For the term power relations, see Wissel (2010).
6
For a critical assessment, see Brand et al. (2000).
7
Cf. Wissel (2007:135151). With regard to Europa, see Jessop (1997).
8
Examples for this are the World Trade Organization at the supranational level and regions
and cities equipped with greater autonomy at the subnational level.
9
In his analyses, Brenner focuses on the inner fragmentation of the Fordist nation-state.
The concept of state spatial project used by him can, however, also be used to analyse the
reconfiguration of spaces and state apparatuses in the framework of the EU (see Brenner
2004a, 2004b; Jessop 2008; Jessop et al. 2008; Smith 1995; Swyngedouw 1997; Wissen
2009b). With regard to the European Union, see Moisio (2011) and Rumford (2006).
10
The concept of Fordism denotes a pattern of accumulation and regulation which differs
significantly depending on its respective national context. For instance, although Germany
had a strong export sector under Fordism, the Internal Market played a significant role.
11
The European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), for instance, established a High Author-
ity, a Council of Ministers as well as a Court of Justice.
12
For the origins of the Fordist crisis, see for example Lipietz (1987:4146).
13
The institutionalised welfare state distributive mechanism and the structurally conserva-
tive subsidy policies of monopolist regulation can no longer be financed by the significant
growth of the national product and leads therefore to an additional and ever increasing pres-
sure on capital profit (Hirsch 2005:125).
14
The social basis of the neoliberal hegemonic project is constituted in particular by the key
sectors of the post-Fordist regime of accumulation: the exclusive male club (Young and
Schuberth 2010:III) of finance and large transnational corporations and their networks (cf.
van Apeldoorn 2009). Included are also privileged and highly qualified workers, the self-
employed as well as elements of the state bureaucracy and property owners (Buckel et al.
2014:65).
15
For the term strategic selectivity, see Jessop (1990:260).
16
Accordingly, the rate of inflation in Member States ought not to exceed the rate of the
three countries with the lowest rate by 1.5%. The debt rate ought not to exceed 60% of
GDP, and the budget deficit ought not to exceed 3%.
17
FRONTEX can be used as an example here. The European border agency is an instrument
for the European coordination of border policies. Domestic authorities and police authorities
can in this way expand their powers (Huke et al. 2014:178).
18
During the crisis, the transnationalized German capital managed to assume the lead
position within the European power bloc. The often-made claim that Germany takes advan-
tage of its European partners needs therefore to be qualified. The policy of the German
government does not only pursue genuinely national interests; rather, in its policy, the strat-
egies of the transnationalized European capital faction solidify.
19
At the moment only Greece is still under the rescue umbrella; the pressure to maintain
austerity policies, however, has hardly been decreasing in Portugal and Spain.
20
The constellation of social relations of power in the crisis, only hinted at here, requires of
course a more detailed and systematic empirical investigation.
21
Already in April 2011 the president of the German Central Bank, Axel Weber, stepped
back in protest against the policies of the ECB (Sablowski and Schneider 2013:5). In Septem-
ber 2011 the German chief economist of the ECB, Jrgen Stark, resigned from office. He also
represented the classical monetarist position of the German Central Bank according to which
the central banks primary task is to ensure price stability and fight inflation. He feared that an
expansive monetary policy of the ECB would reduce the austerity enforcement and threaten
the economic and monetary union (interview Handelsblatt, 17 November 2011).
22
Between 15,000 and 30,000 lobbyists are bustling on the corridors of EU-institutions
(Corporate Europe Observatory 2011:3). Approximately 70% of Brussels lobbyists are
representing the interests of capital. They work in one of the ca. 500 offices of transnational
corporation, for one of the ca. 1,500 business associations or for law offices, PR-firms, think

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The EU as a Post-Fordist State Spatial Project 15

tanks or consultancy firms. 20% of the lobby scene represents the interests of cities, regions
and EU Member States. Only 10% are advocating for human and labor rights, environmental
and climate protection or the economic development in the Global South (Eberhardt
2012:105, own translation).

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