Drivers behind conditionalities in EU cohesion policy governance

The article presents the institutional development of emergence, continuity, and expansion of EU governance-related conditionalities, the term coined in the article, in EU cohesion policy as of 2013. Even though the development of the EU governance-related conditionalities correlates with the different crises, it is EU institutional drivers of the conversion effect and past policy learning experience creating environment of acceptance, and not the crises which have a decisive impact on shaping the EU governance related conditionalities. Similarly to the crisis literature, the paper adopts historical institutionalism lens by means of its two building categories, critical juncture and path dependence to examine the EU governance related conditionalities in cohesion policy. While the crisis literature offers only a limited interpretation for building EU governance emphasizing contingency, our case study of the governance-related conditionalities in EU cohesion policy shows complexity in EU institutional developments which is not contingent.