The paper examines the impact of the European economic crisis on the IMF and the EU. Its aim is to investigate how institutions respond to a crisis that compels them to initiate institutional changes. The emphasis is on the institutional development that ensued particularly with respect to the modes of enforcement concerned and their actors’ interactions. The analysis draws upon the ‘turbulence model’ of Rosenau and that of the ‘actors’ centered institutionalism’ of Scharpf and compares the cases of the EU and the IMF. The analysis argues that the divergent aims of the EU and the IMF, the different stages in their institutional development and the often incongruent actors involved in each institution have led the European economic crisis to have a considerably divergent if not opposing impact on them. As the analysis shows both the EU and the IMF has been affected by the current crisis though in different directions. The EU, while hard hit by the crisis, appears more akin to handle change compared to the IMF. The latter, though due to the crisis, has acquired renewed influence it is more vulnerable to the effects of change in its institutional patterns.
