The crisis and possible reform of South European welfare regimes faced with the post-2008 financial crisis is generally presented as” game” with national politicians and electorates on one side and the EU and external creditors on the other. This paper explores the limits of this approach and uses historical precedents to suggest that a limited modification of the framework, adding national experts and civil servants as a potentially autonomous third “player,” provides a significant increase in analytical effectiveness.
Employing the language of game theory as a heuristic device only, I suggest that the simultaneous interactions occurring at the national and supra-national levels in the South European Eurozone states can most usefully be understood as a two-level game involving three loosely structured but nonetheless distinct aggregate actors:
• EU institutions and international creditors
• National politicians, parties, and elected officials
• National civil servants and experts
Historical precedents, in particular the implementation of EU structural policy in the 1980s and ‘90s and the adoption of the Euro in the 1990s and 2000s, suggest that the third group has a number of unique properties.
• Its motives and strategies cannot be reduced to those of an agent for either of the other two
• It has a unique ability to be present both at the national and supra-national levels.
• Given its relatively small size and its professional and social homogeneity, it has a much better chance than either of the others to coalesce into a genuine collective actor, with an identifiable normative viewpoint and distinct substantive agenda.
Based on this logic and these examples, the paper poses the hypothesis that national experts and civil servants are an under-valued force for pro-European resolution of the crisis, and sets out a systematic program of research intended to test this hypothesis.
