Schmidt Gives Talk on European Capitalism
Vivien Schmidt, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, gave a talk on March 8, 2017 organized by the Faculty of Philosophy and Social Sciences at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) on varieties of European capitalism in the shadow of the Eurozone crisis.
Schmidt discussed whether European capitalism is converging on a single model, as expected by European monetary and market integration or whether national varieties of capitalism continue to diverge.
According to Schmidt, the policy response to the Euro crisis has had a differential impact that has negatively affected some much more than others. She questioned whether this is due to the greater virtues of some countries and the failures of others, to the characteristics of the particular variety of capitalism, or to the design of the Euro and its policy responses in the sovereign debt crisis.
The conference was followed by a debate introduced by Amandine Crespy CRESPY, Professor in the Department of Political Science at ULB, and Nicolas Verschueren, Professor attached to the Department of History, Arts and Archeology at ULB.
Prof. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at Boston University. Her research focuses on European political economy, institutions, democracy, and political theory. She has published ten books, over 100 scholarly journal articles or chapters in books, and numerous policy briefs and comments, most recently on the Eurozone crisis. Her current work focuses on democratic legitimacy in Europe, with a special focus on the challenges resulting from the Eurozone crisis, and on methodological theory, in particular on the importance of ideas and discourse in political analysis (discursive institutionalism). You can learn more about her here.