Droit et Économie - L'avenir de l'Union économique et monétaire : une perspective franco-allemande - 113

A LEGAL AND POLITICAL ECONOMY MAPPING 113

to explain the current (political) state of EMU. Instead, this contribution
adopts what Jones and Verdun label a methodologically narrow understanding of the concept of 'political economy' that makes use of insights from
other disciplines 'to answer questions or address phenomena usually restricted to the other'.7 At the same time the disciplinary scope of this concept is
broadened by not only engaging with economics and politics, but also law.
With Kennedy it can be observed that law has a constituting role for main
elements of what this author refers to as 'economic life - capital, labour,
credit, money, liquidity', as well as 'elements of political life - power and
right'.8 In this vision, law is perceived as offering 'a privileged window
onto political economic dynamics', because:
'Law not only regulates these things, it creates them. The history of political and economic life is therefore also a history of institutions and laws. Law constitutes the
actors, places them in structures, and helps set the terms for their interaction. It
often provides the language - and the stakes - for economic and political struggle.'9
Indeed, European integration in general and EMU more specifically can be
considered a perfect case in point for the way in which a given legal framework can function as a point of reference or even reflection of an economic
and political struggle, while at the same time also highlighting how this
legal framework itself can be the cause of this economic and political struggle. As such, EMU or monetary integration for that matter is more than just
the economic and political phenomenon that Eichengreen and Frieden
refer to.10 It is at least as much a legal phenomenon.
Understood in such a broader way, political economy is no longer confined
to the recognition of the 'inextricable link'11 between economics and politics, but recognises also other relevant factors, such as namely law. As such,
legal and political economy mapping then entails a study of the interdependencies between law, politics and economics, including its main determinants and the systemic consequences of these three factors and namely of
economics from politics and/or law or, vice versa, of law from economics
and/or politics. It is this relationship between law, politics and economics
7. JONES and VERDUN (op. cit., supra note 2), at 2.
8. KENNEDY D., "Law and the Political Economy of the World", Leiden Journal of International Law
(2013), 26, 7-48, at 8.
9. Ibid.
10. EICHENGREEN B. and FRIEDEN J., "The Political Economy of European Monetary Unification: An
Analytical Introduction" (1993), Economics & Politics, 5: 85-104. See also FELDSTEIN M., "The
Political Economy of the European Economic and Monetary Union: Political Sources of an
Economic Liability", NBER Working Paper Series, Working Paper 6150, August 1997.
11. An expression used by KING M., "The Political Economy of European Monetary Union", EIB
Lectures Series, European University Institute, 1998, at 2.

Droit et Économie - L'avenir de l'Union économique et monétaire : une perspective franco-allemande

Table des matières de la publication Droit et Économie - L'avenir de l'Union économique et monétaire : une perspective franco-allemande