The economic governance architecture of the European Union has been profoundly shaped by the multiple crises, and responses to those crises, of the past six years. The resulting structure, in particular the “Six Pack” of reforms and the European Semester, can be usefully conceptualised as exemplary of the logic of new governance in the EU. New governance refers to policy or rule making that departs from the traditional community method, e.g. soft law, the use of networks, the open method of co-ordination etc. This paper focuses on two of these reforms in particular – “Regulation 1175/2011 On the strengthening of the surveillance of budgetary positions and the surveillance and coordination of economic policies”, and “Regulation 1173/2011 On the effective enforcement of budgetary surveillance in the euro area”. These regulations are intended to enhance the oversight capacity of the EU with regard to member states’ economic policy.
In delivering a feminist analysis of these regulations, this paper introduces feminist analysis of new governance. This analysis evaluates the tools and policies of new governance against the stated aims of gender equality of the EU, as well as engaging with questions of democratic legitimacy and gendered institutions. This analysis is concerned with uncovering the gendered power dynamics in the two regulations. In particular, it highlights the role of expert knowledge, the intensive-transnationalism characterising the new supervisory regime, and the re-enforcing of problematic conceptualisation of the interaction (or not) between gender and economics.
The paper finds that in the aftermath of crisis, there remains a gap between the EU’s conception of itself as a champion for gender equality and the structure that has emerged in this field, and it illustrates the utility of engaging with the normative and empirical studies of new governance from a feminist perspective.
