The New Intergovernmentalism 10 Years On

Introduction

By the beginning of the 2000s, integration theory had fallen out of favour as scholars turned to comparative politics and new governance to understand the European Union (EU) as a polity (Hix, 1998, 1994). This period was, in retrospect, one of relative confidence in the European project. A string of ‘no’ votes in referendums on EU policies and treaties, the rise of Eurosceptic challenger parties and the euro crisis shattered this confidence. As the Union's problems mounted, EU scholars were drawn once more to integration theory, with its concern for the EU's ontology and capacity for forward momentum. New intergovernmentalism was part of this new wave of theorising, along with post-functionalism and the core state powers approach (Genschel and Jachtenfuchs, 2014; Hooghe and Marks, 2009).

In its original form, post-functionalism posited that public disquiet over the European project was discouraging EU policy-makers from taking major integrationist steps (Hooghe and Marks, 2009). The core state powers approach sees such constraints as being overstated; mass publics in many member states do want the EU to play a greater role in defence, macroeconomic policy and public administration, it points out, even though these policies touch upon the primary responsibilities of states (Genschel and Jachtenfuchs, 2018). New intergovernmentalism sees the EU as pursuing deeper integration despite not because of public opinion (Bickerton et al., 2015b). By avoiding the delegation of new powers to the European Commission, member states have sought to reduce the scope for a backlash from voters and Eurosceptics, but only partially so. The EU's principled opponents, thus, have been growing stronger rather than weaker, new intergovernmentalism contends.

Like all attempts at theory building, new intergovernmentalism faced its fair share of criticisms at first (Schimmelfennig, 2015). Over time, however, a growing number of scholars responded to its call for further research on the changing dynamics of post-Maastricht integration. New intergovernmentalism has been applied to a wide range of policies, including asylum policy (Smeets and Zaun, 2021), foreign and security policy (Morillas, 2020), sanctions policy (Szép, 2020), energy (Bocquillon and Maltby, 2020), environmental policy (Catuti, 2022) and competition policy (Bora and Schramm, 2024), the legislative process (Bressanelli and Chelotti, 2016) and the EU's rule of law crisis (Pavone, 2024). New intergovernmentalism has been identified by Verdun (2020) as one of the three strands of intergovernmentalism and by Schmidt (2024) as driving a distinctive phase of integration theory.

This article takes stock of new intergovernmentalism 10 years after this approach was proposed. A great deal has happened to the EU in this time, including a once-in-a-century pandemic, Brexit and Russia's full-scale war against Ukraine. These and other changes, we argue, have been aligned with, and in some cases amplified, the integrationist dynamics and institutional politics theorised by new intergovernmentalism.