Lavery, S. (2024) Rebuilding the fortress? Europe in a changing world economy. Review of International Political Economy, 31 (1). pp. 330-353. ISSN 0969-2290
Abstract
Two rival visions of Europe’s place in the world economy competed for primacy throughout the post-war era. The idea of an ‘Atlantic Europe’ promoted close economic ties to the United States and integration into the liberal international order. An alternative ‘Fortress Europe’ vision aimed to carve out a sphere of relative European autonomy backed by trade barriers and industrial protectionism. While many argued that the ‘Fortress Europe’ vision was defeated during the globalization of the 1990s and 2000s, concepts such as economic sovereignty, industrial strategy and ‘strategic autonomy’ have returned to EU circles. Is a rebuilding of ‘Fortress Europe’ taking place in this context? This paper argues that the old tension between ‘Atlantic’ and ‘Fortress’ Europe is re-emerging but in a new form and under a new set of international conditions. A ‘selective fortification’ of European industrial strategy and trade policy is taking shape, as EU policymakers develop targeted instruments and institutional capacities that aim to insulate European firms from new patterns of international competition. The selective refortification of European capitalism has implications for debates within international political economy (IPE) on the future of liberal international order, new patterns of competitive regionalization, and the restructuring of the relation between the state and global capitalism.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
Keywords: | European Union; globalization; international political economy; state capitalism; industrial strategy; trade |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number LEVERHULME TRUST (THE) ECF-2017-281 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 01 Aug 2023 15:31 |
Last Modified: | 03 Oct 2024 15:47 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Informa UK Limited |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/09692290.2023.2211281 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:202046 |
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