Restarting convergence to reinvigorate output legitimacy: is the EMU Waiting for Godot, again?

ABSTRACT

Relying on the insights of the Comparative Political Economy (CPE) literature and, mostly, from the structural institutional features implied by Varieties of Capitalism, this article challenges the idea of restarting convergence to have a smoothly functioning Eurozone. In literature, Europeanization and convergence have commonly been conceived as strictly related concepts. This conception persists once the institutional way forward from the crisis – epitomized by the Five Presidents’ Report – is also considered. A close investigation of the interrelation among Europeanization, convergence and output legitimacy reveals that the emphasis on convergence overshadowed the resilience of the domestic political economies structures. A support indicator for EC/EU membership, based on Eurobarometer data, is therefore built to display the functioning of this relationship. Eventually, the institutional heterogeneity characterizing the domestic political economies is individuated to be an important determinant of the cross-country paths of divergence that became visible even before the eruption of the Euro-crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Europeanization
• convergence
• institutional heterogeneity
• varieties of capitalism
• Euro-crisis

ORCID

Francesco Galletti http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9694-6348

Notes

1 The founding members of the Eurozone have been included in this sample since 1991. Finland and Austria were included since 1995 when they joined the EU. The average sample then included Slovenia, Malta, Cyprus, Slovakia and Estonia starting from the year they respectively joined the EMU.