Better to Go it Alone? European Disintegration in the Context of Crises Beyond the Legal-institutionalist Sense

Following a legal-institutionalist understanding of European integration, scholars suggest that European disintegration implies the reduction of the number of member states, of policies exercised together, or of competences of supranational actors. Moving beyond this legal-institutionalist understanding, this article delineates three national strategies, which, in the event of asymmetric interdependence and little incentive for common measures, lead to European disintegration: unilateral action, bilateral cooperation with non-EU countries, and the overreliance on third actors. The empirical analysis of disintegration in the 1973 oil crisis and the 2015 migration crisis has broader implications also for the European Union’s most recent crises.