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Over the years EU member states favored an intergovernmental approach to policy-making within the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). This approach emphasized the role played by national authorities, as member states' representatives, within a "soft governance" framework. In this framework, national representatives voluntarily participated in various coordinative networks and committees, which relied on interstate negotiations to create policies. However, the Euro area crisis highlighted the shortcomings of the intergovernmental approach to policy-making, such as divergent implementation of policies and regulatory arbitrage, which undermined the EMU's stability. After the crisis, we are witnessing a centralization of policy creation processes and decision-making within the EMU, with apparently limited room for "old intergovernmentalism". New actors such as the European Supervisory Authorities, perfectly embody this development since they require from member states to commonly agree "under the shadow" of non-majoritarian institutions, at times even against their own policy preferences. This raises important questions on the role of "old" conceptual frameworks in explaining current EU integration. Therefore, this paper explores the concept of intergovernmentalism (and also, "liberal intergovernmentalism") as one the key driving forces within EMU's governance, offering further insight into raised questions as well as arguing in favor of its political and integrationist potential in the years to come.

AbstractLiberal Intergovernmentalism has a particular set of assumptions about the relationship between voters and governments. Either voters are content to trust their governments, because issues have low salience, or governments react to voters' preferences. How far is this 'supply side' of the theory still valid in the newly politicized world of EU politics? This article discusses the assumptions about representation in the theory, and looks at the conditions under which the assumptions might still hold and what this means for EU politics today. If the representational assumptions still hold in this highly politicized EU world, then the theory would predict policy gridlock. On the other hand, if there is a growing gap between publics and elites, then the assumptions, and the related propositions about the democratic deficit, no‐longer hold. Either way, the inherent optimism of the theory is undermined.

In general, ESDP (European Security and Defence Policy) and its policy- and decision-making process pose a challenging puzzle for the theoretical research agenda of European integration studies. Even though ESDP is intergovernmentally constructed, classical (neo-) realist approaches seem to be unable to catch the full dynamics of the project. Institutionalist and social constructivist approaches, which underline the importance of norms, values and identity in the complex decision-making process of ESDP, add fruitful insights in many regards. This paper applies an institutionalist approaches based on the notion of socialisation and 'Brusselisation', which are analytically rich for analysing the ESDP decision-making process. The notion of Brusselisation is developed further into a theoretical concept that goes beyond the mere transfer of authority and expertise in the area of security and defence to the decision-making machinery in Brussels. This paper argues that socialisation processes of the involved actors constitute a completely new policy-making method and develops an approach to capture this new method. However, the fact that ESDP is intergovernmentally constructed and that the member states remain the main actors in this policy field is not contested. Particularly in the day-to-day management of ESDP, however, the Brussels-based bodies are increasingly in the driver's seat, gain a sort of de facto initiative power and conduct the European defence policy guided by a logic of appropriateness and a new style of decision-making. This new and 'brusselised' style of decision-making is understood as being situated 'between intergovernmentalism and socialisation processes'.

This paper contributes to a new understanding of the role and influence of the EU institutions in dealing with major EU reforms. Many have argued that, due to successive crises, Eurozone, Refugee and Brexit, EU decision making has become more intergovernmental. The role of the main intergovernmental body, the European Council, has been enhanced. Moreover, at various moments during these crises, the political leaders chose to by-pass the Community framework, and opt for intergovernmental solutions. However, in the literature, intergovernmentalism also refers to a dominance of the member states vis-à-vis the institutions in shaping these agreements. This paper looks at the process-level implications of this increased intergovernmentalism. We analyse and compare the role and influence of the institutions in five major reform negotiations: EFSF/ESM, Fiscal Compact, banking union, EU-Turkey deal and British renegotiation. An exploration of these empirical micro-foundations reveals more institution-driven processes and outcomes than the label intergovernmentalist suggests.

This contribution asks whether a new type of intergovernmentalism has emerged in financial services regulation and Banking Union. Since financial services are a key area of the single market, the chapter concludes by reflecting on whether the governance trends in the financial sector can be generalised to other areas of the single market. It is argued that the single market for financial services, which encompasses financial regulation and the plan for Banking Union, provides an interesting mix of 'old' (community) method and 'new' intergovernmentalism.

The point of this article is to understand how actions directed by a central government can undermine policies, sub-national programs and projects related to local development in the tourism context. In this sense, the main objective is to analyze the interference of a national project of tourism regionalization in the planned actions of subnational governments in the touristic cities (destinations) in Brazil. Theoretically, issues have been addressed related to Tourism Management and Public Policies. We conducted documental and field research in Brazil, specifically 16 Minas Gerais State touristic destinations, whose data were processed using the content analysis technique. It was discovered that the analyzed national project contributed to the destabilization of a current state policy and centered on regionalization, presenting an intergovernmentalism problem, with weaknesses in coordination and planning.

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In the Berlin Perspectives series, the Institut für Europäische Politik (IEP) presents analyses of Germany's European policy to an English-speaking audience. The authors analyse German positions on current debates and provide policy recommendations based on their findings.The latest policy brief by York Albrecht is re-published on this blog in an extended version. You can find the