ESRC Wales DTC PhD (Modern Languages & Politics): Small-State Diplomacy: The Benelux States in the Making of European Financial, Banking and Monetary Union (PhD Studentship)

The progression from European monetary union (1999) to European banking union (2014) and financial union (including the European Commission’s new priority to capital markets union) involves major institutional innovations and poses key questions about where power lies in the new Europe. This studentship will contribute new expertise on the power resources and strategies of small states and their influence over these developments, comparing their initial negotiating positions with final outcomes. The existing literature has been preoccupied with the large Member States. However, prima facie, the three Benelux states have core national interests at stake in monetary, banking and financial union, not least Luxembourg in financial and capital markets union. Are the Benelux states ‘rogue’ states, ‘free-rider’ states, passive team players or active team players in these issue areas? What determines their strategies for seeking influence? How successful are these strategies in shaping outcomes and how significant are these outcomes for other Member States? Depending on both the skills and capacities of the student, and a more precise appraisal of opportunities, choices will have to be made about the country and policy case studies.

The project will build on the existing literature on small states in international negotiations, including the conceptual framework developed by Dyson (2015). It will involve advanced qualitative research methods including historical archive research, semi-structured elite interviewing, and discourse analysis. It will also require learning French and, ideally, Dutch, the latter a language that has been seriously neglected in EU research. Before joining Utrecht University as an expert on EU historical research, Mathieu Seggers worked in the Dutch finance ministry and has contacts across the Dutch government (Dyson was visiting professor in Utrecht in June). The NBB and the CVCE (see below) offer superb research resources.

The project will require a combination of historical archive research with economics to master the debates about monetary, banking and financial union with political science and IR to deal with questions about power. The project will benefit from existing collaborations with external partners such as the National Bank of Belgium and the Centre Virtuel de la Connaissance sur l’Europe (Luxembourg).