The main objective of this chapter is to show, in accordance with the edited volume’s conceptual framework, how the economic and financial crisis has produced institutional change in the EU and how this change had impacted the theoretical debate. It is structured in three sections.
In section 1, I will map the main features of supranationalism and intergovernmentalism as institutional methods (and not theories) to demonstrate that, in the long term, the EU polity can be explained as a recurrent balancing act between the two methods.
In section 2, I will show how the economic and financial crisis between 2008 and 2012 has produced change in the power of the EU member states, reinforcing the power of some and decreasing the power of others. The fluctuated power of the member states is one dimension of what Sabine Saurugger and Fabien Terpan name institutional density, conceived as ‘a dynamic concept, implying fluidity and movement’.
In section 3, I will show how the economic and financial crisis forces the EU scholars to reassess their theoretical approaches. The emergence of de novo institutions created by the member states to respond and manage the crisis makes the argument of a new intergovernmentalist theory valid. In this case, the substantive intergovernmentalism is not used to describe an institutional method, but is a theoretical account to explain the EU institutional change.