Join Jordy Weyns and Lauren Leek for their presentations at the next EGPP seminar series co-organised with the EU Studies and the Political Economy Working Groups.
Trade policy: Increased politicization and alternative policy instruments | Jordy Weyns
Liberal political economy literature on the determinants of trade policy traditionally focuses on the role of strong economic interest groups, downplaying other factors which increasingly affect trade policy, especially under conditions of heightened politicization. Jordy Weyns's prospectus proposes to investigate under what conditions other factors such as anti-globalism can affect aspects trade policy such as transnational regulations and standards. Secondly, Weyns wants to broaden the scope of trade policy scholarship by including corporate subsidization as an alternative trade policy instrument, which trade policy scholars underappreciate as a determinant of trade flows. By doing so, Weyns hopes to connect traditional interest representation perspectives with recent work on different types of anti-globalism and scholarship on policy instrument choice in multilevel systems.
The ECB and Political Behaviour | Lauren Leek
The ECB has been highly politicised and experienced a decrease in its legitimacy, especially following its arguably political role during the euro crisis. Lauren Leek's proposed research will employ a mixed methods analysis, including quantitative text analysis, to examine the ECB and political behaviour. Specifically, three papers will be proposed. The first paper will examine whether and to what extent the preferences of national central bankers in the Governing Council of the ECB are independent of governmental positions, using scaling methods. The second proposed paper will examine whether and to what extent the ECB is ‘listening’ to its audiences (e.g. financial markets, governments, experts, the public) to regain legitimacy and how this is mediated by the degree of politicisation. The third proposed paper will examine, employing a conjoint survey experiment, whether listening to certain audiences, politicisation and framing the communication, significantly influences the legitimacy of the ECB.