Crises, Path Dependency, and the Five Trilemmas of European Integration: Seventy Years of ‘Failing Forward’ From the Common Market to the European Fiscal Union

Abstract

Does integration advance through crises, as hinted by policy-makers such as jean Monnet or Romano Prodi? To what extent failure in responding to crises may lead to disintegration instead? Building on Historical-Institutionalist and Neofunctionalist approaches, as well as on macroeconomics this paper provides a coherent understanding of the path-dependent, economic logic of European integration from the Common Market to today’s challenges, with a specific focus on periods of crisis. In doing so, it links together five trilemmas of international political economy. The article contributes both to the debate on the drivers of European integration, and on the nested logic of the political-economic challenge of managing interdependent and interlinked economies. In particular, the article qualifies — both in theory, and empirically — the view according to which crises are the drivers of supranational integration: the article shows that throughout the last 70 years of integration in Europe, the institutional response on one specific set of problems often resolves one given crisis, but sets the stage for the next set of problems to arise.