This volume investigates the mechanisms of European Union fiscal policy coordination during periods of severe economic instability, specifically questioning whether member states engaged in widespread free riding during the Great Recession and the European Debt Crisis. Charlotte Rommerskirchen, a scholar of international political economy, challenges the prevailing narrative of an austerity-driven regime plagued by moral hazard. By applying Mancur Olson’s theory of collective action to the European context, the author argues that member states generally aligned their fiscal policies with their actual economic capacity rather than shirking their responsibilities. The work posits that the primary failure of the European project lies not in state-level free riding, but in the institutional inability to effectively sanction non-compliance and the subsequent reliance on volatile bond markets to enforce fiscal discipline.

Scholars and political economists frequently cite this work for its rigorous application of collective action theory to the complexities of EU governance. Readers often note the academic density of the prose, which serves as a foundational text for those studying the intersection of institutional design and fiscal crisis management.