ABSTRACT
Europeanization scholars seem generally uninterested in posing questions about the origins and formation of the European Union (EU). This chapter reviews ontological and epistemological grounds to establish the meta-theoretical framework behind the canon on Europeanization research. It discusses the challenges and highlights what is missing from the research agenda. The chapter provides the foundation for a dialogue between the mainstream literature and more critical scholarship, as a critical reading of Europeanization. The observed shift from Europeanization as a top-down outcome of EU integration towards a problematization of Europeanization as a multidirectional process has relieved some of the initial rigidity of the model. By aligning with neoinstitutionalism, the Europeanization research agenda abandons a holistic reading of Europeanization as a laissez-faire term explaining a range of phenomena linked to Europe, and instead demarcates Europeanization as a domestic reaction to the EU's institutionalization. Sociological institutionalism is categorized within an ideational-structuralist social ontology.
