ABSTRACT
In a special collection that investigates the development of European (economic) integration (in times of crisis) from different theoretical perspectives, neofunctionalism is arguably one of the more obvious choices for analysis. First, as pointed out in the introduction to this collection (Ioannou et al. 2015), we have witnessed quite a number of integrative steps in the area of Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) over the past few years relating to crisis management mechanisms such as the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) and European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the streamlining and tightening of fiscal and economic policy co-ordination such as the Two-Pack, or the creation of the banking union with single supervision and resolution. Neofunctionalism, with its particular focus on explaining policy-making outcomes (Wiener and Diez 2009) and its core competence with regard to the dynamics of European integration, should be apt to account for these changes. Second, and closely related, many observers agree that one of the insights gained from the crisis is that the introduction of the euro cannot be taken as the endpoint in the process of economic integration. Although EMU solved some of the economic dilemmas of an integrated single market with liberalized capital movements, variable exchange rates and national monetary policies, it also laid the ground for new ones, for example
stemming from the mismatch between centralized monetary and decentralized fiscal and financial policies. This seems to be a fertile breeding ground for neofunctionalist spillover pressures. Third, although neofunctionalism is one of the most widely criticized theories of European integration, it has remained relevant in the academic discourse over the years (Niemann and Schmitter 2009). In view of these aspects, it appears rather astonishing that there is relatively
little research on the crisis that (explicitly) draws on neofunctionalism. Interestingly, economic integration during the crisis arguably constitutes a crucial (hard) case for neofunctionalism, mainly because it is an area of ‘high politics’ – i.e., close to the heart of national sovereignty and substantially politicized (Hobolt and Wratil 2015) – while it has often been assumed that the neofunctionalist logic only works in a depoliticized environment (Hoffmann 1966). This contribution tries to address this gap by posing the following research question: to what extent is neofunctionalism (still) relevant for explaining the management of the crisis and the drive towards a more complete EMU; i.e., to what degree are neofunctionalist propositions supported by empirical findings? We proceed as follows: Section 2 specifies the neofunctionalist tenets and the
concept of spillover. In Section 3, we briefly elaborate our dependent variable (the degree of European economic integration in response to the crisis). Sections 4, 5 and 6 analyse the extent to which the concepts of functional, political and cultivated spillover contribute to explaining the integrative steps taken to resolve the crisis. Finally, we draw some conclusions from our analysis.
