European Integration and Disintegration As a Dialectical Two-Level Game

Contradictions are shaping the current crisis in the EU: Euro zone reforms to cut public debts in the member states, on the one hand, and new anti-European movements in different member states and debates about the possible exit from the EU of single member states, on the other. The Euro zone reforms can be interpreted as a kind of 'over-integration' (Scharpf) with large-scale, destructive social consequences, especially in the member states of the Southern periphery, where disintegrative tendencies are accompanied by broad pro-European attitudes. Against this background, the paper interprets European disintegration as a constituent element of the integration process, which has to be modelled as a dialectical two-level game (Putnam). For a broader assessment of this assumption, the paper presents a policy-field-oriented model, which shall allow it to take the different dimensions of disintegration into account.