The EU’s truth by omission: Learning and accountability after the Eurozone crisis
| Author | Mustafa Kutlay,Iosif Kovras |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211013705 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211013705
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2022, Vol. 24(1) 187 –204
© The Author(s) 2021
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
DOI: 10.1177/13691481211013705
journals.sagepub.com/home/bpi
The EU’s truth by omission:
Learning and accountability
after the Eurozone crisis
Iosif Kovras1 and Mustafa Kutlay2
Abstract
While the literature generally frames crises as catalysts for organisational learning, most theories
focus on ‘success’ stories of learning – ex post facto explanations of why certain ideas gained
traction after a specific crisis. Less emphasis has been placed on lessons that were likely to be
drawn, but were not. In probing this point, we explore the European Union’s selective learning
after the recent Eurozone crisis. Reforms were mostly top-down institutional and macroeconomic
ones, while good practices developed by individual European states in the domain of accountability
were ignored. In particular, we focus on the absence of a truth commission, an independent
institutional mechanism mandated to carry out a forensic investigation of crisis management and
convert past policy failures into lessons for future institutional reform. Why, despite the direct
exposure of EU policymakers to these commissions, did this institutional mechanism not travel
to Brussels? Drawing on semi-structured elite interviews and analyses of primary sources, we
argue only organisations with an embedded institutional capacity for self-reflection (meta-learning)
possess the required institutional skills to put certain issues into the spotlight.
Keywords
crisis, crisis management, European Union, learning, truth commissions
Introduction
After major crises, national, international, and transnational organisations often take time
to examine what went wrong. As the maxim states, a ‘crisis is too valuable an opportunity
to waste’. Yet not all organisations seize the opportunity to learn, particularly those les-
sons related to their own institutional responses to the crisis. While the literature has
developed theories explaining learning once it has occurred, the reasons for remaining
resistant to certain lessons that could be drawn (potential learning) are unclear. For exam-
ple, while a growing body of research has shed light on the economic and political lessons
learned in the aftermath of the Eurozone crisis (Dinan et al., 2017; Schmidt, 2015; Zeitlin
1Department of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus
2City, University of London, London, UK
Corresponding author:
Mustafa Kutlay, Department of International Politics, City University London, Northampton Square, London
EC1V 0HB, UK.
Email: Mustafa.Kutlay@city.ac.uk
1013705BPI0010.1177/13691481211013705The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsKovras and Kutlay
research-article2021
Original Article
188 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 24(1)
and Vanhercke, 2018), less attention has been paid to the relevant lessons that could have
been included but simply fell off the radar.
To explore this interesting theoretical puzzle, we focus on the European Union’s (EU)
decision after the Eurozone crisis to avoid setting up a truth commission as an independ-
ent institutional mechanism to convert past policy failures into lessons for future institu-
tional reform. A caveat is in order: truth commissions are historically associated with
societies emerging from authoritarianism and trauma and are intended to help them come
to terms with the past and foster reconciliation and forgiveness. A good example is the
South African truth commission (see Kovras, 2017). This article focuses on a different
type of investigative commission, one designed to document institutional, political, and/
or individual failures in the lead up to complex crises or policy failures and publish reports
offering guidelines for institutional, policy, and regulatory reforms.1 As such, it can be an
organisation’s key mechanism of learning after a crisis, and the EU might well have prof-
ited from its use. While scholarship has explored different levels of learning – individual/
policymaker, policy, ideational (Bermeo, 1992; Chwieroth, 2010) – we focus on institu-
tions of learning. We argue that understanding why the EU did not adopt a truth commis-
sion after the recent crisis reveals a lot about the nature of the EU itself and the scope of
the lessons learned, including why some but not others were learned.
Setting up an institutional mechanism of learning has helped a number of countries
come to terms with a crisis, strengthening their institutional responses to future crises. In
the United States, for example, the ‘Pecora Commission’ not only identified the causes of
the 1929 Crash leading to the Great Depression but also recommended institutional
reforms that resulted in the protection of the markets from another financial crisis for
decades. More recently, days after the collapse of 97% of the Icelandic banking system in
2008, a very successful independent ‘Special Investigation Commission’ (SIC) was set up
to document the causes and recommend reforms to Icelandic state institutions
(Hjalmarsson, 2017). After a detailed investigation, in late 2010, the SIC released a 2200-
page report revealing systemic flaws in state institutions and the banking sector – it
became an instant best-seller. Parliament adopted its recommendations and converted the
reform proposals into legislation ranging from banking regulation to ministerial code of
contact and institutional culture (Government of Iceland, 2015; Hjalmarsson, 2016). By
offering an evidence-based/authoritative narrative of the causes of the financial crash, the
commission delimited the number of permissible lies circulated by demagogues and
spoilers who could have revised and/or denied fundamental aspects of the crisis.2 Similar
commissions of inquiry, albeit less successful, were set up in Ireland and Cyprus (Kelly,
2017; Pegasiou, 2017). As Boin et al. (2017: 18) note, ‘Rendering account of what hap-
pened, and why, is a crucial task’ in a democratic institution. Another consideration is that
from the perspective of accountability, the technical aspects of contemporary economic
crises are frequently so complex that they are fully understood only by a small number of
experts. Therefore, truth commissions have gained currency as mechanisms establishing
a simplified, yet authoritative, narrative of the causes of a crisis that can be easily under-
stood by the broader public (Boin et al., 2017).
The absence of such an independent commission to convert past policy failures into
institutional lessons in instances when it would clearly help poses a puzzle to the organi-
sational theory of learning. Organisational theory posits intelligent organisations have the
capacity and the interest to learn from failures to improve their legitimacy and their per-
formance. From this vantage point, a crisis, such as the Eurozone crisis, represents an
opportunity for organisations, such as the EU – especially if it forces the organisation to
investigate the (mis)management of the crisis and recommend improved responses in the
To continue reading
Request your trial