The evolving timescapes of European economic governance: contesting and using time

Abstract: This article examines the ambivalent character of time in European economic governance and how it is conceptualized, especially by its constituent expert lites. On the one hand, it serves to rationally order and stabilize power relationships; on the other, it provokes contest about its appropriate use, focused on fiscal and economic reform policies. The article also highlights the different functional specificities in temporal governance in monetary, fiscal, financial stability and economic reform policies and the differences in potential of issues to mobilize political opposition and to produce problems of synchronization. In particular, monetary union forms an inner circle within European economic governance. Its discursive, regulative and strategic effects radiate with varying results into its other circles. Nevertheless, European economic governance is not a single 'time-rule' exercise. Finally, the article examines how, through its 'compression' effects on European states, European economic governance raises serious issues about the quality of modern democracy.