Power of Knowledge Producers and Consultancy in the Eurozone Crisis

This paper analyses to which knowledge producers the EU decision-makers listened the most in the decision-making during the European debt and banking crisis. How and whose analysis was used and processed in the interaction between interest groups, lobbyists and decision-makers? The crisis could have been a time to re-evaluate the dominant neoliberal paradigm. However, despite the initial Keynesian reactions, the European decision-makers chose to return to austerity in the spring of 2010 when adopting the First Economic Adjustment Programme for Greece, the European Financial Stability Facility and Mechanism. Since this pivotal turning point has not been researched thoroughly from the angle of consultancy and lobbying, I demonstrate to which actors the EU decision-makers in Brussels and Finland listened the most when choosing austerity. Discursive practices and paradigms produce and constrain the actions. However, agency is often ignored when analysing the power of ideas. Epistemic communities can cement or revoke the discourse of austerity. Hence, I examine the role of interest groups as actors in (the lack of) paradigm change in the Eurozone crisis. The embeddedness of the dominant economic thinking points at a strong position of a well-established decision-making and knowledge production network. I gather the data on the role of identified knowledge producers and analysis through interviews in Finland and Brussels in the spring of 2018 with politicians, officials and advisers in the proximity of the decisions made in 2010. I also conduct a social network analysis of experts heard in the Finnish parliamentary committees and analyse the content of their input. The conclusions will be presented in the final paper. This research brings new information and contributes to the theory on 1) the power of knowledge in decision-making and in crisis situations, 2) the functioning of the consultocracy and its effects on legitimacy and 3) the power relations behind austerity and the role of interest groups in these relations.