Opening the Black Box of ‘Convergence’ in the European Monetary Union: A Discursive Analysis

Abstract

‘Convergence’ stands out as a prominent signifier in discourse about the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), recently also gaining prominence in debates within Comparative Political Economy (CPE) studies on the Eurozone crisis. However, these studies neglect the concept's endogenous deployment in EMU discourse and, therefore, how it influences capitalist restructuring efforts within it. This article tackles the latter by providing a critical policy discourse analysis of key texts throughout the Union's history, linking the use of the term to the institutional development of the EMU. By doing so, not only does it identify the concept's constitutive discursive role as a frame and problem of monetary integration, but it also showcases its limitations from a CPE perspective, specifically by combining insights from the aforementioned studies with those of Europeanisation research and by subsequently criticising the neoclassical and neofunctionalist assumptions guiding ‘convergence’ efforts in EMU.