Austerity reforms embed budget-balancing mandates into constitutions.

Evidence

The antidemocratic structures of economic institutions certainly do not stop at central banks. Since the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, the European Union has embraced austerity policies and empowered technocrats to propose institutional reforms that undermine democracy. Our contemporaries call for electoral reforms aimed at reducing proportional representation (to favor stronger governments) and rewriting the constitutions of local and national governments to include the obligation of a balanced budget. Italy, like many other countries, passed both recommendations in the 2010s, removing the political guardrails that were erected to mark the distance from its fascist past. — Clara E. Mattei, Escape from Capitalism, 378

Categorization

• XREF: The constitutional balanced-budget mandate is a concrete instance of Miliband’s ‘economic necessity’ internalization from Matthew 366 — institutionalizing the exclusion from decision-making. — connects to: Ordoliberals saw the economic constitution as imposed by deliberate political will from above — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 697
• QUESTION: The Maastricht debt criterion (3% deficit, 60% debt) — is that a constitutionalized austerity mechanism worth tracing back to its 1920s Brussels/Genoa origins?

Broader Connections

• Ordoliberals saw the economic constitution as imposed by deliberate political will from above #expands (0.72) — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists, 697