6. Evaluating Leadership: The Hard Case of the Eurozone

The first section in this chapter presents the comparative results of the analysis. It demonstrates that actors supplied leadership only if they expected individual benefits from doing so. The interplay of power resources, preference distribution, and institutional constraint accounts for the impact of leadership. The second section in this chapter argues that member states or institutions only in rare cases provided leadership. Powerful actors such as Germany or the European Central Bank often lack the incentives to provide leadership, whereas those motivated to take the lead, such as the “debtor states” or the European Parliament, lack the necessary resources. The limited impact of leadership can be explained by diverging preferences and high institutional hurdles for reform. Finally, the model predicts a pessimistic scenario regarding future emergence of leadership in EMU.