The Eurozone crisis and the refugee crisis are showcases of the problems associated with the EU's shift from market integration to the integration of core state powers. The integration of core state powers responds to similar demand factors as market integration (interdependence, externalities and spillover) but its supply is more tightly constrained by a high propensity for zero-sum conflict, a functional requirement for centralized fiscal, coercive and administrative capacities, and high political salience. We show how these constraints structured the initial design of Economic and Monetary Union and of Schengen, made them vulnerable to crisis, and shaped policy options during the crises: they made horizontal differentiation unattractive, re-regulation ineffective, centralized risk and burden-sharing unfeasible, and the externalization of adjustment burdens to non-EU actors necessary by default. In conclusion, we explore possible escape routes from the trap.

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Most governance is indirect, carried out through intermediaries. Principal-agent theory views indirect governance primarily as a problem of information: the agent has an informational advantage over the principal, which it can exploit to evade principal control. But indirect governance creates a more fundamental problem of power. Competent intermediaries with needed expertise, credibility, legitimacy, and/or operational capacity are inherently difficult to control because the policy benefits they can create (or the trouble they can cause) give them leverage. Conversely, tight governor control constrains intermediaries. The governor thus faces a dilemma: emphasizing control limits intermediary competence and risks policy failure; emphasizing intermediary competence risks control failure. This "governor's dilemma" helps to explain puzzling features of indirect governance: why it is not limited to principal-agent delegation but takes multiple forms; why governors choose forms that appear counterproductive in an informational perspective; and why arrangements are frequently unstable.

We map the pattern and extent of the European integration of core state powers (coercive force, public finance and public administration) and analyse causes and consequences. We highlight two findings: First, in contrast to historical examples of federal state-building, where the nationalization of core state powers precipitated the institutional, territorial and political consolidation of the emerging state, the European integration of core state powers is associated with the institutional, territorial and political fragmentation of the European Union. Second, in contrast to European market integration, state élites and mass publics, not organized business interests, are the prime drivers of integration.