ABSTRACT
This chapter critically analyses whether sociological approaches to European integration (for overviews see Delanty and Rumford 2005; Favell 2007; Favell and Guiraudon 2011; Saurugger and Mérand 2010; Saurugger 2016b) can help us better understand the EU’s reaction to crisis situations. This question is of particular relevance for sociological approaches: contrary to theoretical frameworks such as neo-functionalism, intergovernmentalism, liberal, or new intergovernmentalism, these have not emerged to uncover the reasons for a specific change in, or challenge to, the integration process, but to study European integration from a different ontological angle: that of society and of social actors in the broadest sense. Sociological approaches have helped deepen our understanding of the day-to-day workings of the EU political system and its impact on the domestic level and societies. However, by concentrating on how actors frame different problems as well as the solutions to make them acceptable, thus acting strategically on different levels, do they also help us make sense of how the EU as a polity evolves through crisis situations? This chapter argues that while sociological approaches are among the most agency-centred approaches, thus permitting the study of the interaction and power games between individual and collective actors during the crisis and allowing us to understand the day-to-day politics of the unfolding crisis, it is precisely this concentration on the micro-level that makes it so difficult for these approaches both to understand and to explain the reasons behind the current crises. Although these difficulties remain, sociological approaches can offer tools to understand specific developments and decisions in times of turmoil as they introduce agency into structural analyses. They must however strive for broader explanations beyond the narrow case studies they are often applied to.
