Moving Towards More Cumulative Knowledge Through the Use of Meso‐Level Theories to Understand How the EU Manages Crisis

This article investigates the EU‐managed crises since 2009. While there have been numerous academic work on how the EU has managed crisis, we contend that existing research is bifurcated into studies that either apply abstract and broad “grand theories” or detailed within‐case analysis of individual cases. We argue that what is now needed is more research at the “meso‐level” that sheds light on stable patterns of crisis management as they have developed in the past decade—what can be termed an EU crisis management modus operandi. This article contributes to case study research on EU crises by providing a methodological framework for moving to the meso‐level, enabling the identification of similarities in the causal structure of processes. We illustrate the framework on a set of case studies of crises that we have conducted over the past decade, identifying four shared phases of crisis management and the causal roles played by actors within these phases. Overall, the meso‐level theory shows that EU crisis management involves the interplay between the European Council, Commission and Council, in which they could build upon each other's input.