The Economic Idea of a European Union: An Intellectual History

我想在我的研究中解决的第一个问题是，欧洲邦联的经济思想是如何以及为什么随着时间的推移而演变的？每一个文本，都有很多东西要解包。思想家的个人和专业背景，出版的历史社会，经济，政治和知识背景，以及这些文本本身之间的相互作用和联系都很重要。例如，哈耶克在《州际联邦制的经济条件和货币的非国有化》中的观点，可以部分地被视为对圣西蒙早期贡献的回应，因为圣西门对为共同和明确目的而组织的崇拜被认为是哈耶克思想的最终目标（Jones，2002）还有一个问题是，这些想法在多大程度上决定了欧盟的最终经济结构，这意味着更密切地关注战后时期。影响“新欧洲”的经济结构是1947年Mont Pèlerin会议的一个重要目标，该会议汇集了一群由哈耶克精心挑选的知识分子，以建立一个发展和传播新自由主义思想的国际组织（Innset，2017）。会议甚至还讨论了根据哈耶克1939年的文章建立欧洲联邦的可能性。事实上，许多学者认为，欧盟的经济结构是哈耶克式的（伊辛，2000;马约内，2011;贝拉米和威尔，2015）或新自由主义（Streeck，2011; Biebricher，2015;理解欧洲统一经济思想的演变不仅是一项学术活动，也感谢他承认我们的联盟本可以有多种经济形态。回顾历史的思想可能有助于我们思考未来如何改进欧盟。

The first question I would like to address with my research is how and why economic thought on European confederation has evolved over time? With each text, there is a lot to unpack. The thinker's personal and professional background, the historical social, economic, political and intellectual context of publication, and the interaction and linkages between these texts themselves are important. Hayek's ideas in The Economic Conditions of Interstate Federalism and Denationalisation of Money, for example, may be seen in part as a reaction to Saint-Simon's earlier contributions, given that the Saint-Simonian cult of organisation for a common and defined end has been deemed the ultimate target of Hayek's thought (Jones, 2002).There is also the question of how far these ideas determined the eventual economic set-up of the Union, which implies a closer focus on the post-war period. Influencing the economic set-up of "new Europe" was an important aim of the Mont Pèlerin conference in 1947, which brought together a group of intellectuals, handpicked by Hayek, to establish an international organisation for the development and spread of neoliberal ideas (Innset, 2017). The conference even included a discussion on the possibility of European federation based on Hayek's 1939 essay. And indeed, a number of scholars have argued that the economic set-up of the European Union is Hayekian (Issing, 2000; Majone, 2011; Bellamy and Weale, 2015) or neoliberal (Streeck, 2011; Biebricher, 2015; Stiglitz, 2016).Understanding the evolution of economic ideas on European unity is important not only as an academic exercise, but also for acknowledging that our Union could have taken many economic shapes. Turning to ideas from history may help us to think about how the Union could be improved in the future.