| With a view to better understanding why the ?Maastricht EMU? ? contrary to various proposals for Economic and Monetary Union from early history of European monetary integration ? gives priority to ?sound money and finances? and central bank independence over other macro-economic objectives, it is suggested that the EMU be considered as being the very last stage of an ?ideational life-cycle? that took off at the end of the 1970s. Contrary to approaches which focus on the strategic negotiations during the Intergovernmental Conference at the beginning of the 1990s, it is argued that EMU ideas can be better understood if the major areas of agreement, consensus, shared knowledge structures, or simply causal ideas, are studied rather than areas of conflict and disagreement. It is argued that the ideational life-cycle helps us to grasp why there was in fact so little controversy among European elites by the end of the 1980s about such basic issues as central bank independence, price stability, and sound finance convergence criteria. EMU ideas are results of uncontroversial and transnational agreement at the elite level rather than strategic bargaining. |