Liberal Intergovernmentalism

Abstract

The chapter recapitulates the basic assumptions and propositions of liberal intergovernmentalism on national preferences, intergovernmental bargaining, and the establishment of European institutions and applies them to the special context of integration crises. It then reviews how liberal-intergovernmentalist analyses explain the three major recent crises of the EU: the Euro, Schengen, and Brexit crises. The chapter argues that liberal intergovernmentalism offers only a partial account of state crisis preferences. Whereas it accounts convincingly for the variation of national interests in the Euro and Schengen crises, this is not the case in the Brexit crisis. The biggest deficit of liberal intergovernmentalism is its failure to theorize a feedback mechanism of integration that could account for the emergence of integration crises and their outcomes as consequences of earlier integration decisions.