Public Attention, Governmental Bargaining, and Supranational Activism : Explaining European Integration in Response to Crises

Abstract

Why and how do crises cause European integration? Going beyond case- and policy area-specific analyses, the present paper develops a general, liberal intergovernmentalist model of the crisis-integration link. The empirical process-tracing test of this model is performed on two diverse cases of crises: the BSE Crisis 1996–2002 and the Euro Crisis 2010–13. The original analysis of primary documents and newspaper articles reveals that, as theoretically expected, crises stir high public attention and thus turn policy change in the affected policy areas into a salient issue for governments. This opens a ‘window of opportunity’ for domestic actors to approach their governments with change proposals. Governmental cost–benefit calculations, the distribution of bargaining power at the EU level, as well as supranational activism then explain deeper European integration in response to a crisis. With these findings, the present paper contributes to a broader understanding of the mechanisms of European integration in exceptional times.