Politicisation and economic governance design

The functional pressures shaping policy design may be disrupted in salient policies and politicised contexts, according to recent postfunctionalist/new intergovernmentalist theories. We contrast these expectations with those derived from liberal intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism by analysing the reforms of the European Union economic governance. Its Council-centred enforcement, which has been a dominant feature until the euro crisis, despite noncompliance, does not sit comfortably with traditional theories but can be explained by policy salience and implementation uncertainties. Instead, the emphasis that traditional approaches assign to noncompliance, commitment problems, threats of exclusion and veto, issue linkages, path dependencies and supranational decision-making, allows to adequately account for the overall direction of reforms toward more tightening and delegation, notwithstanding the pooled enforcement in recent ancillary measures. Postfunctionalist theories overall fall short in highly politicised contexts, exactly where they should do most of the explaining. We conclude discussing politicisation as a strategic elite response.