Page - 67 - in Austrian Law Journal, Volume 1/2015

ISSN: 2409-6911 (CC-BY) 3.0 license www.austrian-law-journal.at Fundstelle: Somek, Authoritarian Liberalism, ALJ 1/2015, 67–87 (http://alj.uni-graz.at/index.php/alj/ article/view/37). Authoritarian Liberalism Alexander Somek*, University of Iowa Abstract: In light of the reforms undertaken for the sake of the Euro, the article revisits the con- cept authoritarian liberalism that was introduced in 1933 by the German public law scholar Hermann Heller. This notion seeks to capture the liaison between the “strong state” and eco- nomic liberalism. The article suggests that this notion can be fruitfully used to designate the new governance of economic and monetary union. It argues, particularly, that it makes sense to speak of an authoritarian style of governance even if the latter does not wear vestiges of out- right repression. Two different faces of authoritarian liberalism can be distinguished: one that looks more towards authoritarianism and another one that views authoritarian rule as a man- agerial strategy that is good for the economy. The article then speculates whether the European Union has been, indeed, successful because it shifts between the two. Disturbingly, there may be something deeply as well as more accidentally authoritarian about European integration. Keywords: European Union; authority; transnational governance; delegation; trust. I. Major changes As is well known, over the last six years the Member States of the European Union have been wrestling with a banking crisis, a fiscal crisis and a real economic crisis.1 While responses to the first crisis have now materialized in plans for a “banking union”,2 the two latter crises have occa- sioned to a whole series of measures, not least because they implicated the viability of Monetary Union. Various efforts at tackling the Fiscal Crisis and its implications for the financing of sover- eign debt have profoundly altered the legal framework of Economic and Monetary Union. These relevant reforms concern two areas of law. First, existing law concerning economic convergence3 was amended, in particular with regard to the multilateral surveillance of economic performance and the prevention of excessive benefits. The core of these reforms is manifest in the strong and deep-reaching involvement of the Com- mission the economic and budgetary planning of the Member States. Key thereto is the “Europe- * Alexander Somek holds the Charles E. Floete Chair in Law at the University of Iowa. Earlier versions of this article were presented at the Law Department of the London School of Economics and Po- litical Science, the Iowa Legal Studies Workshop and at the Georgetown University Law Centre. The author would like to thank all participants for their feedback. 1 I am following Streeck’s depiction of the situation. WOLFGANG STREECK, GEKAUFTE ZEIT: DIE VERTAGTE KRISE DES DEMO- KRATISCHEN KAPITALISMUS (Suhrkamp 2013). For a more complex picture that identifies five crises, see Agustin Menendez, The Existential Crisis of the European Union, 14 GERMAN LAW JOURNAL, 2013, at 453. 2 See http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-12-570_en.htm?locale=en. 3 It has essentially is basis in Articles 121-126 and Article 136 TFEU.