Social Content of the International Sphere: Symbols and Meaning in Franco-German Relations, CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 02.2, 2002

“The Franco-German friendship is rich in memories and gestures that are at once important and symbolic, and that characterize the exceptional nature of the relationship between our two countries,” reflects former French economics minister and European Commission President Jacques Delors. Such symbolic acts and joint memories are not primarily about cooperation in specific instances. Rather, more generally, they denote what it means to act together. They lend significance to a relationship; they signify what is “at stake,” or what it is “all about.” They are about a deeper and more general social purpose underlying specific instances of cooperation. They are about the value and intrinsic importance that social relations incorporate. Symbols contribute to the institutionalization of social meaning and social purpose in dealing with one another. In this paper I clarify the concept of “predominantly symbolic acts and practices among states,” systematically explore such acts for the bilateral Franco-German relationship between the late 1950s and the mid-1990s, and scrutinize the specific meaning and effects that these practices have helped to generate and perpetuate.

Ties That Bind? The Parapublic Underpinnings of Franco-German Relations as Construction of International Value. CES Germany & Europe Working Papers, No. 02.4, 2002

Beneath the relations among states, and distinct from the exchanges of an autonomous regional or global civil society, there is another set of international practices which is neither public nor private but parapublic. The Franco-German parapublic underpinnings consist of publicly funded youth and educational exchanges, some two thousand city and regional partnerships, a host of institutes and associations concerned with Franco-German matters, and various other parapublic elements. This institutional reality provides resources, socializes the participants of its programs, and generates social meaning. Simultaneously, parapublic activity faces severe limits. In this paper I clarify the concept of “parapublic underpinnings” of international relations and flesh out their characteristics for the relationship between France and Germany. I then evaluate the effects and limits of this type of activity, and relate this paper’s findings and arguments to recent research on transnationalism, Europeanization, and denationalization.

The creation of euro area financial safety nets. Bruegel Working Paper 2012/09, July 2012

The financial crisis has exposed the need to devise stronger and broader international and regional safety nets in order to deal with economic and financial shocks and allow for countries to adjust. The euro area has developed several such mechanisms over the last couple of years through a process of trial and error and gradual enhancement and expansion. Their overall architecture remains imperfect and leaves areas of vulnerabilities. This paper provides an overview of the recent financial stability mechanisms and their various shortcomings and tries to brush the outline of a more comprehensive safety net architecture that would coherently address the banking, sovereign and external imbalances crises against both transitory and more permanent shocks. It aims to provide a roadmap for further improvements of the current mechanism and the creation of new devices including a banking resolution mechanism and amore powerfulmechanismto provide financial assistance addressing both the sovereign and external dimensions of the shocks thereby reducing the need for the ECB to fill the current void.