Date of Submission

Fall 2019

Academic Programs and Concentrations

Economics; Global and International Studies

Project Advisor 1

Pavlina Tcherneva

Project Advisor 2

Gregory Moynahan

Abstract/Artist's Statement

The recent characterization of German economic hegemony in the Eurozone is oversimplified without a historical and economic analysis of the ascendancy of German economic hegemony in the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). The thesis finds that Germany in the EMU negotiations was an economic hegemon, albeit not in a traditional realist sense. Germany neither explicitly stated that it wanted to create the EMU for its economic hegemony nor initiated any attempt for European monetary integration. Ironically, these two traditional hegemonic motives were represented by France. Instead, Germany only assumed the role as the reluctant economic hegemon in the EMU negotiations upon invitation and consent by other countries. The thesis further examines the extent that Germany was able to use its hegemonic bargaining power to embed its economic hegemony in the institutional framework of the EMU. Using a Post-Keynesian economic lens, the paper finds that the hegemonic vacuum opened by the flawed institutional structure of the Euro for the dominant economic country to fulfill in a financial crisis did not automatically coincide with Germany. For that reason, German economic hegemony was the inadvertent outcome of the collective economic ignorance underpinning the EMU.

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On-Campus only

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
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