Miloslav Grundmann

Conflicts of interest involving members of national governments create a distinct legal problem when European Union funds are involved. Domestic conflict-of-interest law may determine whether a minister, head of government, or other public office-holder complies with national rules. EU financial law, however, asks a different question: whether expenditure submitted to the Union budget has been implemented, controlled, audited, certified, and reimbursed under conditions compatible with impartiality, objectivity, sound financial management, and the protection of the Union budget. This paper argues that domestic compliance alone is not always sufficient where EU-funded expenditure may benefit undertakings economically connected to a member of government. It identifies “governmental self-verification” as a structural weakness in EU financial governance: the executive branch may be asked to certify the neutrality of a process from which one of its own political leaders may directly or indirectly benefit. The paper therefore distinguishes domestic compliance from EU financial eligibility, and political eligibility from financial eligibility. The paper proposes that, in structurally sensitive cases, EU-funded expenditure connected to members of national governments should be subject to independent verification outside the ordinary governmental chain of command. Such a mechanism would not determine who may hold political office. It would determine whether expenditure connected to such office-holders may be charged to the Union budget with sufficient legal and institutional assurance. Recent Czech controversies concerning undertakings economically linked to a head of government are used only as an illustration of a broader structural problem in the management of Union funds.

This paper develops the distinction between productive capital and claim capital as a balance-sheet approach to capital composition in monetary production economies. Productive capital is defined as capital that expands reproducible productive capacity. Claim capital is defined as capitalized claims on future output that do not necessarily expand the economy’s ability to produce that output. The paper situates this distinction within a broader line connecting Marxian and post-Keynesian concerns with reproduction, monetary production, effective demand, credit, financial instability and the heterogeneity of capital. It also shows why the framework can be made compatible with contemporary Chinese discussions of high-quality development and new quality productive forces, provided these terms are treated analytically rather than as substitutes for empirical validation. More broadly, the paper argues that capital theory should not remain Western-centric and should take East Asian economic thought seriously as a source of theoretical orientation and empirical questions. The argument is especially relevant for economies under persistent capital saturation, where high savings and accumulated capital exceed the productive sphere’s capacity for efficient absorption. In such economies, growth potential cannot be inferred from total capital alone. The paper proposes the productive capital share – the ratio of productive capital to total capital – as the primary structural indicator of growth potential under capital saturation, while treating claim-capital measures as complementary indicators of accumulated claims. The paper is conceptual and outlines a research program rather than a fully formalized or empirically tested model.

This paper proposes a balance-sheet theory of growth slowdown based on the distinction between productive capital and claim capital. Productive capital is defined as capital that expands an economy's capacity to generate future output. Claim capital is defined as a legal, financial, institutional, or accounting claim on future output that does not itself expand productive capacity. The central argument is that economic growth depends not merely on the quantity of capital, but on the relation between productive capital, claim capital, and the economy's productive absorption capacity. Productive absorption capacity is the ability of an economy to transform incoming or accumulated capital into additional productive capacity rather than into claims on future output. The paper argues that many economic phenomena usually studied separately---public debt, private debt, mortgage credit, real estate inflation, pension entitlements, central bank liabilities, foreign capital inflows, resource rents, and financialization---share a common balance-sheet structure. They increase claims on future output. They are economically beneficial only if they are accompanied by a sufficient expansion of productive absorption capacity. A key implication is that claim instruments do not cease to be claim capital merely because the resources raised through them are used productively. Public debt, private debt, and central bank liabilities are claim capital by construction. Their net economic effect depends on whether they are accompanied by productive assets or institutional changes that expand productive absorption capacity. The framework is applied to saturated economies, foreign direct investment, inflation, education, mortgage subsidies, resource-rich economies, colonial Spain, euro-area imbalances, and central bank balance sheets. The theory does not claim that all its components are new. Rather, it unifies ideas from classical rent theory, fictitious capital, financialization, secular stagnation, foreign investment spillovers, and resource-curse literature into a single balance-sheet framework organized around one question: whether a given economic structure expands productive absorption capacity, or merely creates claims on future output. This paper is a conceptual contribution to the philosophy of economics and political economy. It examines the functional ontology of capital-like economic entities by distinguishing productive capital from claim capital.

This paper argues that the explanatory limits of theoretical frameworks are structurally determined by scale. Any framework that is sufficiently general to apply across domains necessarily loses explanatory power, while frameworks that provide strong explanations are inevitably restricted to specific scales. To formalize this tension, the paper introduces three concepts: scale-dependent causality, threshold-based stability, and thought frameworks as emergent constraints. It is shown that many phenomena commonly described as “complex” are in fact artifacts of scale mismatch between the analytical framework and the underlying system. Meaning is treated as a relational output rather than a primary cause, and social or systemic conflicts are interpreted as consequences of connectivity structures rather than individual preferences. The paper proposes a minimal meta-theoretical model for evaluating explanatory frameworks and suggests that the failure of many theories is not empirical but structural: they operate at an incompatible scale. The framework is formulated in a way that allows for potential falsification through scale transformation and comparative analysis.

This paper develops a structural account of social dynamics based on scale and threshold effects. It argues that many failures of explanation in the social sciences arise from mismatches between the scale at which a framework operates and the scale at which the phenomenon is generated. Thought frameworks are shown to have implicit limits: beyond certain thresholds, they cease to provide reliable descriptions and instead generate systematic distortions. The paper introduces a multi-scale model in which social systems are analyzed as layered structures with distinct thresholds governing transitions between regimes. These transitions explain discontinuities in behavior, perception, and institutional response without appealing to changes in individual intentions. The approach provides a unified explanation for phenomena such as abrupt shifts in public opinion, policy failure, and the persistence of incompatible interpretations within the same system. The central claim is that social dynamics are best understood as emergent outcomes of structural constraints operating across scales, rather than as linear aggregates of individual actions. This framework offers a way to reconcile competing explanations by situating them within different levels of analysis.

This paper defends the thesis that normative systemslaw, morality, and other social rulesare not the result of universal principles or transcendent ideas, but represent emergent phenomena arising from the structure, state, and dynamics of society. We show that normative systems arise as stabilization mechanisms of complex interactions among individuals, groups, and institutions, and that their validity and formal expression are contingent on specic social, economic, and technological conditions. This approach rejects the foundationalist conception of universal law or morality and replaces it with a realistic framework of emergent ordering. Through historical case studies and comparative institutional analysis, we explore how diverse forms of law and morality emerge and transform in response to structural shifts in power, economy, and collective identity. For instance, we compare medieval European legal pluralism with Confucian bureaucratic ethics in imperial China to show how similar functions are fullled by distinct normative architectures. In doing so, we also examine how shifts in transportation, digitalization, and global risk governance challenge traditional normative assumptions. Finally, we distinguish between truly emergent changes arising organically from structural evolution and those ar- ticially introduced through top-down social engineering, particularly by organized minority pressure groups.