It is quite clear that Germany and France, the "core" of the EU experiment in the Single European Market (SEM), must squarely face the problems of Europe's periphery. Such an assertion, I confess, is also a product of hindsight. In this vein, I found it fascinating to review David Hamilton and James Anderson and James Goodman's insights regarding the socio-political and 'Institutional' deficit obtaining within the Common Market..
In Peter Shirlow's essay collection, Development Ireland, I got a contemporaneous glance at the immediate pre-Boom period in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland. (Ironically, my parents hail from either side of the border, my brother and I being born in Dublin). In the 1980s, the ROI was running a structural deficit and spent 24 per cent in debt service with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 116.8 per cent! Plus ca change?
In any event, I will hazard an hypothesis regarding the Core of Europe's woes: a fundamental legitimation/governance crisis. In spite of superficial improvements to aggregate output experienced through the new regionalism in places like Emilia Romagna, the European core still profits disproportionately from a deficient economic architecture. On paper, Europe looked good in the good years. Now not-so-peripheral issues are coming home to roost.
To reverse the Habermasian democratic deficit, it will be essential for a chastened Europe to redress the lack of geographic equity whilst rejuvenating a sense of fiscal discipline. Anderson and Goodman chide the Republic and successive Taiseoachs for chasing the 'four motors' - Catalonia, Rhone-Alpes, Baden-Wurtemberg and Lombardy - in a race to situate Ireland slap 'in the middle'. Under Haughey's tutelage, the Republic grandiosely propped up the punt only to see the currency pincered by Germany and the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). We all know Spain and France's problems now, not to mention deepening malaise in the periphery, a rot which attacks the peripheral of the peripheral.
Crucially, Ireland, Portugal, Greece et al should rather look toward a commonly productive future to 'counter the core'. This was the Irish authors' conclusion, back in the developing nineties. Discounting Iceland perhaps, the Scandinavian countries have instantiated Nobel Prize winning economist, Gunnar Myrdal's notion of 'autocentric' development through cluster blocks of intra-regional innovation.
According to Hamilton, the key to structural innovation is stable supply chains within a stable economic infrastructure. Through intra-regional value-adding activity, indigenous adjustment to global competition and North-South cooperation, the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland can tap their almost limitless educational resources and human capital. 'Fast money' Northern Europe could certainly profit socio-culturally, if not economically from this observation.
Contrary to John Nash's predicament in a Beautiful Mind, it may indeed be possible for Ireland and the rest in hock to 'peripherality' to think their way out of their current desperation.. By challenging the core, they will strengthen the (European) Project.
And in the process of recovery, Ireland and her dolorous sisters may reveal, as in Pollock's painting, their still shimmering substance.
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