Responsiveness and Responsibility in the Eurozone: Budgetary Discourse in France, Germany and Spain (2007-2019)

This paper offers a comparative content analysis of the budget speeches delivered by finance ministers in France, Germany and Spain between 2007 and today. Through the theoretical lens of the responsive-responsible dilemma of party-government, the paper explores the hypothesis that with the reform of European economic governance (EEG) introduced at the beginning of the 2010s, governments have become fiscally more responsible and politically less responsive towards domestic preferences. Contrary to initial expectations, the paper finds that fiscal responsibility was the main criterion for decision-making only between 2010 and 2013, and has since been declining. In parallel, the relevance of domestic political preferences has progressively increased over the last five years. The paper thereby corroborates recent empirical findings about the persisting relevance of national political preferences for the economic governance of the Eurozone, and calls for further reflections about how EEG may be impacting the balance between responsiveness and responsibility.