"Subsidiarity, Federalism and Regulatory Competition: A Political Economy Perspective"

This paper shows different effects implied by the subsidiarity principle as viewed from a rational choice perspective. It is conceived as a survey of ideas and of relevant literature. The article gives an overview of theoretical approaches relevant to the issues which bridge the dichotomy of economics and of political science. A main focus is on the link between institutional features and policy outcomes. In this contribution, three main aspects of subsidiarity are looked at. Firstly, the allocation of decision-making power to lower political levels will have repercussions on the behavior of member states and on actors on the sub-national levels (such as national interest groups). In the absence of decisions by institutions of the Union, many policy areas will basically constitute collective action problems: mutually beneficial outcomes (or public goods) can only be secured if member states have no incentives to free ride and if special interest groups are prevented from obtaining benefits to the detriment of the "public interest". Such aspects are considered in Section II. Secondly, subsidiarity may lead to a redistribution of policy competences between the Union institutions and the member states. This has implications on the degree of centralization within the Union (and on political legitimacy). Very prominently, it may to a certain degree introduce competition between national bureaucracies. These issues are addressed in Section 111. Finally, enhanced legislative power for the member states will by necessity lead to the maintenance of a divergence in the laws and the regulations of member states with respect to several policy areas. From an economic perspective, within a common market framework, this implies that national rules and regulations will be in competition with each other -- an effect also provoked by the introduction of the "new approach" in the framework of the internal market program. Section IV provides an overview of theoretical approaches cornected to regulatory competition and illustrates selected evidence from EU practice

Council Decision Rules and European Union Constitutional Design

In the recent past, the choice of adequate voting weights and decision rules for the Council of the European Union (EU) has been a highly contested issue in EU intergovernmental negotiations. In general terms, the selection of a threshold for qualified majority votes (QMV) in the Council constitutes a trade-off in terms of decreased sovereignty for individual governments versus an increased collective ‘capacity to act’. This paper compares the effects of the proposal tabled by the Convention on the Future of Europe with the Nice Treaty provisions and the Lisbon Treaty, in terms of both the efficiency of decision-making and the distribution of relative voting power within the EU of twenty-seven member states. In addition, the paper shows how with the current size of EU membership, the EU risks being unable to reach intergovernmental agreement. Accordingly, a challenging issue for the future of the EU is to move towards reasonable provisions that allow its own constitution – if ever adopted – to get amended.Council of the European Union, decision rules, constitutional design, capacity to act, power indices

Connected Coalition Formation and Voting Power in the Council of the European Union: An Endogenous Policy Approach. EIPA Working Paper 99/W/05

Resorting to political economy approaches, this paper attempts to associate the industrial structure in the European Union (EU) to the coalition formation process between European member states. Using a well-known measure of relative voting power, the (normalized) Banzhaf power index, we relax the common assumption that coalitions form randomly. Instead, we adopt the standard interest group model and look at the structure of European industry, mainly in terms of industrial concentration in the EU, as an indicator of its lobbying influence on domestic politics and governments’ preferences. This, in turn, influences the political stance, and thus the coalition building process, of the different member states in the Council. We derive estimates on members’ relative influence within the Council for different policy areas in the broader framework of industry and trade, on the basis of both weighted votes and likely patterns of coalition-formation in the Council

The flexibility of constitutional design: enlargement and the Council of the European Union

'Bei der Festlegung von Abstimmungsregeln im Rat der Europäischen Union muss zwischen Souveränitätseinbußen einzelner Regierungen und einer erhöhten kollektiven 'Handlungsfähigkeit' abgewogen werden. Die Regelungen, die im Entwurf zum Europäischen Verfassungsvertrag vorgesehen sind, würden die grundlegende Flexibilität im politischen Alltag der EU wesentlich erhöhen, ohne jedoch die Interessen der Bürger von kleineren und mittleren Mitgliedstaaten angemessen zu schützen. Im Vergleich dazu würden die Regelungen, die im Vertrag von Nizza vorgesehen sind und im wesentlichen auf ein 'Dreifach-Mehrheits-Prinzip' bei Ratsentscheidungen hinauslaufen, die Handlungsfähigkeit des Rates mindern, aber zu einer gemäßigteren 'Gewichtung' zu Gunsten der großen EU-Staaten führen. Am Ende legt der Artikel Hintergrundberechnungen vor, die darlegen, dass in einer EU mit 25 Mitgliedstaaten die Gefahr besteht, keine intergouvernementale Einigungen mehr erzielen zu können. Es wird daher eine Herausforderung für die EU sein, Regelungen in die Verfassung einzubauen, die eine Ergänzung dieser ermöglichen.' (Autorenreferat)'The choice of a decision rule for the Council of the EU constitutes a trade-off in terms of decreased sovereignty for individual governments versus an increased 'capacity to act'. The provisions of the draft constitutional treaty would considerably increase constitutional flexibility regarding day-to-day decision-making in the EU, but without adequately protecting the interests of the citizens of smaller and medium-sized member states. By comparison, provisions foreseen in the Treaty of Nice, which essentially amount to the implementation of a 'triple-majority rule' in Council decision-making, would lower the Council's capacity to act, but would lead to a more moderate 're-balancing' in favor of larger EU states. Finally, the paper provides background calculations indicating that, with twenty-five member states, the EU risks being unable to reach intergovernmental agreement and hence, a challenging issue for the EU is to move towards provisions allowing for its own constitution, once adopted, to be amended.' (author's abstract

Comparative Federalism meets the European Union

In the current debate on the future European order, the European Union is often described as an emerging federation. The paper claims that federalism is not only useful in deliberating about the future of the European Union. It provides a better understanding of the current structure and functioning of the European system of multilevel governance than most theories of European integration. We combine political and economic perspectives of federalism to analyze the balancing act between effective political representation and efficient policy-making in the European Union. Drawing on the examples of Germany and Switzerland in particular, we argue that the increasing delegation of powers to the central EU level needs to be paralleled by either strengthened patterns of fiscal federalism or an empowered representation of functional interests at the European level. Without such "re-balancing", the current legitimacy problems of EU are likely to get worse.federalism; multilevel governance; multilevel governance; political representation; interest representation; democracy

Instances and connectors : issues for a second generation process language

This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants GR/L34433 and GR/L32699Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can effectively support business processes, and that they have not received sufficient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.Postprin

Power, Connected Coalitions, and Efficiency: Challenges to the Council of the European Union

This article is concerned with challenges to reforming the voting procedures of the Council of the European Union (EU). The next major waves of EU enlargement will cause the Union to increase to a membership of first twenty-one, and then twenty-six or possibly even more states. How does enlargement affect the Council's inherent "capacity to act" under the currently used qualified majority voting rule? It is demon strated here that the expected increase in EU membership will most likely induce a larger "status quo bias" as compared to the present situation in the Council if the crucial majority decision quota is not lowered. In addition, the article is responding to some criticism that has been applied against assessing the leverage of EU governments in one of the EU's most important institutions: the Council of the EU. By resorting to techniques that capture the influence of a priori coalitions on the one hand and "connected coalitions" among EU governments on the other—applying n- person cooperative game theory—the piece illustrates how the assessment of relative voting leverage in the framework of weighted voting systems may be extended and applied to situations in which the specific distribu tion of members' preferences is known. These calculations are again relevant in the face of the upcoming rounds of EU enlargement and projects for institutional reform.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68064/2/10.1177_019251219902000404.pd

The Flexibility of Constitutional Design. Enlargement and the Council of the European Union. IHS Political Science Series: No. 97, June 2004

The choice of a decision rule for the Council of the EU constitutes a trade-off in terms of decreased sovereignty for individual governments versus an increased ‘capacity to act’. The provisions of the draft constitutional treaty would considerably increase constitutional flexibility regarding day-to-day decision-making in the EU, but without adequately protecting the interests of the citizens of smaller and medium-sized member states. By comparison, provisions foreseen in the Treaty of Nice, which essentially amount to the implementation of a ‘triple-majority rule’ in Council decision-making, would lower the Council's capacity to act, but would lead to a more moderate ‘re-balancing’ in favor of larger EU states. Finally, the paper provides background calculations indicating that, with twenty-five member states, the EU risks being unable to reach intergovernmental agreement and hence, a challenging issue for the EU is to move towards provisions allowing for its own constitution, once adopted, to be amended

Voting Behavior in the Council of the European Union after the 2004 Enlargement

This paper explores voting patterns in the Council of the European Union (EU) between May 2004 and the end of December 2006, studying the full set of voting records for this institution. It analyzes government vote choices in the Council on the basis of ordered logistic regression analysis, explaining the propensity of EU member states to vote ‘yes’, abstain from voting, or vote ‘no’. The paper explains voting behavior in the Council on the basis of selected independent variables, notably governments' absolute and relative positions on the left-right policy dimension, support for European integration among domestic audiences, member states’ population size and their positions as either net beneficiaries or net payers into the EU budget. Our empirical analysis reveals that voting behavior is markedly different for the group of the EU’s older as compared to its newer member states, with some of our explanatory variables even displaying opposite signs for these two groups in our statistical analyses