Resisting in Times of Crisis: The Implementation of European Rigor Plans in the Irish and Greek Cases

The financial crisis originating in the US subprime market morphed into the aggravated budget crisis of some Eurozone countries (Greece, Ireland, Portugal) since December 2009. These countries were experiencing severe difficulties in borrowing money on financial markets, which prompted an intervention of the ECB, the IMF and the Eurozone countries. This rescue mission has been conditioned to the adoption of rigorous economic structural reforms, aiming at reducing public deficit. This paper focuses on resistances by national administrations against the implementation of these plans in Ireland and Greece. Although these rescue plans are not legally binding norms with compulsory judicial control, they are still highly likely to trigger change or resistance to it in national spaces. This paper analyzes the variation of domestic resistance (dependent variable) based on the analysis of three independent variables 1) the national institutional configuration (number of veto players), 2) the resources of these veto players and 3) the “dispositions” of these veto players towards these plans.In a context of crisis, these resistances are also influenced by the timing of 1) both national and other EU elections and 2) financial markets deadlines (intervening variables). Instead of concentrating solely on the institutional framework, this article argues that it is the nature and intensity of administrative preferences which must be considered the main variable in explaining resistance. Thus special attention is paid to agency and the strategic use of ideas by the bureaucracy.