Contesting Europeanisation: Agents, institutions and narratives in British monetary policy

Abstract:

This article investigates how Europeanisation can sometimes generate controversy at the domestic level by exploring British policy towards ERM in the 1980s and 1990s. It argues that existing approaches which point to the occurrence of ‘misfit’ between domestic and European institutions/policies only go part of the way to explaining the contentious nature of this process. Europeanisation was disputed in this instance because it produced competing narratives as the question of fit/misfit (as well as adaptational pressure) was discursively constructed in different ways by different groups with different normative positions. The article concludes by briefly considering the implications of this case study for future theories of Europeanisation.