How the court made a federation of the EU

We analyze the European institutional integration that took place in the 1950s and 1960s as a two-stage process. Firstly, an explicitly political project aims at establishing a European political community. The project is abandoned in the mid-1950s and political integration stops. At that time, the institutions of the Union take the form of a confederation. In a second stage, because of the failure of the European political community, a legal process of integration driven by the European Court of Justice takes place. This second stage of unification is more centralizing and in effect leads to a federalization of the European institutional structure. The transformation of the political structure of the European Union thus appears to result from the actions and decisions of a legal entity, the European Court of Justice.      

Displacing your Principal. Two Historical Case Studies of Some Interest for the Constitutional Future of Europe

The framework of public decisions, and particularly the provision of law, is seen here as an agency contract. What distinguishes this contract is the nature of the right delegated to the agent: The capacity to make law gives the opportunity to take advantage of the incompleteness of the constitutional contract. The agency relationship may be loosened or even reversed. This article tries to draw some lessons from the English and American history in that matter and applies them to the making of the future European State.     

The Making of the French Civil Code: An Economic Interpretation

The code Napoleon has been one of the first (on such a scale), the most important and the most pervasive processes of codification that ever took place. The purpose of our paper is to provide an economic analysis of the making of this codification. We compare customary codification and contractual codification: while the former amounts to the crystallisation of socially accepted practices, the latter consists in a creation of rules through a writing process. These theoretical differences are less clear-cut when history mixes practices and reasoned arguments. We then show that the making of the code Napoleon reflects it since it borrows from the social contract and the spontaneous order traditions.     

Trade unions for EMU: Sectoral preferences and political opportunities

Surveys conducted on the political economy of Europe's Economic and Monetary Union have seldom considered the response of domestic interest groups, notably trade unions. This article contrasts and explains the positions on EMU adopted by major British, French and German trade unions, in the process reassessing the so‐called interest group approach to preference formulation. It is argued that while the impact of sectoral orientation appears significant, it is mitigated by the intervention of ideological and institutional factors. On a substantive level, unions turned out to be broadly supportive of what many had labelled a ‘monetarist’ project. If as is often argued, social and political cohesion is needed for monetary union to endure, this represents an important development.     

The Paradox of Leviathan: How to Develop and Contain the Future European State?

Using a constitutional political economy perspective, we study the paradox of government (how a limited government can stay limited) and the different ways in which systems of law try to solve it. We then provide a tentative application to a possible European state and assess the relevance of some member countries' constitutional and administrative law, if they were both to develop and to contain this European state.     

The role of aggregation technologies in the provision of supranational public goods: A reconsideration of NATO??s strategies

Voluntary contributions to the provision of public goods do not necessarily follow a summation aggregation technology. The article investigates the alternative best-shot aggregation process and provides the corresponding Nash equilibrium conditions for allies in the context of joint products in a supranational alliance. The application deals with NATO over the period 1955–2006 and evidences new breakpoints and aggregation technology assessments, which leads to a reconsideration of the alliance’s strategy. We find that a best-shot technology prevails from 1955 to 1970. Afterwards, summation of contributions becomes the aggregation technology of the alliance, with increased strategic behavior after 1990.     

Constitutionalism and common knowledge: Assessment and application to a future European constitution

The purpose of the paper is to advocate that constitutions should be established through a contractarian process, rather than through conventions. To achieve it, they are studied from the perspective of the concept of common knowledge. We refer to its political philosophy and game theory dimensions. The making of common knowledge relates to communication and induction problems. The argument is applied to European constitutional integration, with a particular focus on administrative law.     

Unitary states and peripheral regions: a model of heterogeneous spatial clubs

Efficiency explanations of the wealth and size of nations provide useful insights into the history and current makeup of nations. We focus here on two related issues that matter, for instance, in large areas such as Western or Eastern Europe, or Canada. We develop an analytical framework for understanding the limits of constitutional unity. This microeconomic model of unitary states deals with two kinds of heterogeneity. First, preference distance or physical distance account for decreasing net benefits from expansion. Second, heterogeneity may involve a discontinuity in the spatial pattern of preferences: “peripheral behaviors” threaten unity. We integrate such behaviors into the model and draw some lessons as to the nature of an optimal constitutional area, discussing in particular the status of peripheral regions.