The idea of an ever-converging outcome of the Europeanization process has long been questioned in the relevant literature. The crisis in the Eurozone periphery (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain) clearly illustrates that even ‘hard’, prescriptive constraints do not necessarily lead to converging political and economic trajectories. Despite intensive, front-loaded pressures to adjust to the Eurozone acquis prior to accession, these four countries have experienced huge economic turmoil, to different degrees, and for different reasons. In this paper, we contribute to the further conceptualization of Europeanization, making a distinction between first-order or nominal and second-order or real adjustment, the former entailing unintended consequences from participation in the integration process that constrain or prohibit the latter. Domestic resistance, path dependence, and structural differentiation between financial and economic core and periphery are used to account for the reasons why first-order adjustment fails to evolve into real reform in these countries.
