The economic and monetary union in construction: tackling fault lines in language

Abstract

In the study we explore the context of the Economic and Monetary Union under a theoretical agenda of sociological institutionalism. We reconstruct the EMU dynamics in three papers that reflect three levels of institutional analysis. The first paper takes a bird's eye view of the EMU and explores its macro-level dynamics. Treating the Eurosystem as a field, we take literally the EU motto ‘united in diversity’ and inquire into the dynamics of the field’s plurality in the last 20 years. We show how the uniformity and diversity coexist in the accounts of the European central banks. In the second paper we explore the microfoundations of the EMU transformation in the banking union. Analyzing two sequential enactments of the key role of the EMU, President of the European Central Bank, we show how the previous embeddedness of the second president affects his role enactment and forms his intention for a particular direction of the EMU development. The third paper studies institutional evolution at the meso-level. Exploring the identity dynamics of the central organization of the EMU, the European Central Bank, we show that it evolves along with the social context around it. With time the organization comes to be defined as accountable and active in words of its leaders and changes its identity from managing to governing.