States, Debt, and Power
'Saints' and 'Sinners' in European History and Integration
Kenneth Dyson
Table of Contents
Prologue: The Perils of Sleepwalking
1. Contextualizing Debt: History, Morality, and the Triple Structural Dimension
2. The Nature of Sovereign Creditworthiness: Hierarchy, Sovereignty, and Responsibility
3. Moralizing Credit: Bad Debt, Good Debt, and the Troubled Conscience
Part I: Debt and Political Rule in European History
4. The Evolution of Public Debt
5. Financial Repression, Debasement, and the Historic Arc of Default
6. Theological Traces and Social Contexts
7. The Dynamics of Public Debt in Historical Perspective: The Limitations of Economic Reasoning
Part II: Law, Culture, and Statecraft
8. Law, Public Debt, and the Paradoxes of Power
9. Economic Cultures, Ideologies of Debt, and State Virtue
10. Space, Time, and Statecraft: Saints, Fallen Angels, False Prophets, Redeemers, and Sinners
Part III: State Liability and Territorial Control
11. States and Financial Markets: The Imbalance of Power
12. Professional Consensus, Political Silence, and Sovereign Creditworthiness
13. The Dynamics of External Imbalances and Debt
14. Which Truth? The Power of Indicators and Probabilistic Reasoning about Public Debt
15. Public Debt Dynamics: Political Will and State Capacity
16. Public Debt and Multi-Level Statehood: Sub-National Fiscal Governance, Structural Imbalances, and 'Stand-Alone' Fiscal Capacity
Part IV. Sovereign Creditworthiness and European Integration
17. Still the 'Old' Europe? Historical Legacies and Long-Term Political Challenges
18. The Achilles Heel of Post-War European Integration: Endogenous Preference Formation and the Boundaries of Creditor-State Power
Epilogue: History as Oracle
Glossary
References
Index