Search results for "intergovernmental"
showing 10 items of 18 documents
Hacia la ley europea del clima: las evaluaciones científicas y el futuro papel de las respuestas jurídicas de los estados miembros
2021
Los problemas climáticos son temas persistentes y omnipresentes dentro de las políticas y legislaciones contemporáneas, que exigen un enfoque interdisciplinario para promover soluciones jurídicas adecuadas para la complejidad del tema. Paradójicamente, las propagandas negacionistas, lejos de bloquear las acciones climáticas, las han propiciado, lo que ha llevado al establecimiento de un organismo científico super partes que reconociese las cuestiones climáticas a través de informes científicos avanzados: el Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático de la ONU (IPCC). Desde entonces, muchos países han usado los hallazgos del IPCC como base científica para desarrollar polí…
Asymmetric decentralisation, economic cycle, regional and local government’s borrowing in Spain
2014
This paper investigates the evolution of sub-central government borrowing in Spain over the period 1996–2011. The arguments and figures provided show that the intense process of political and fiscal decentralisation that took place over the 1990s and 2000s did not lead to higher debt ratios in terms of GDP at these tiers of government until 2007. Although a kind of overspending bias was in effect until the late 2000s, the paper shows that the evolution of GDP and tax revenues provided regional and local governments with enough resources to vigorously pursue their devolved public policy responsibilities and still keep their debt ratios under control. However, since 2008, when the world finan…
Decentralization and growth: what if the cross-jurisdiction approach had met a dead end?
2013
International audience; The relationship between decentralization and economic growth is generally studied from a perspective stressing universal or quasi-universal regularities across jurisdictions. That approach has generated many insights but seems to reach its limits. The paper explains why it allows contrasting positions with regard to the benefits of decentralization even among proponents of free and competitive markets. And it seems from the empirical literature that no robust and economically significant cross-jurisdiction relation between decentralization and economic performance or growth, except perhaps their independence, has been found. The absence of a relation valid across ju…
National Preferences and the European Union Presidency: The Case of German Energy Policy towards Russia*
2011
This article analyses the formation and development of Member State preferences and positions before and during the European Union (EU) Presidency term. The empirical analysis focuses on the Federal Republic of Germany's policy concerning EU–Russian relations, especially regarding energy policy. The extent to which liberal intergovernmentalism (LI) furthers our understanding of state behaviour in the context of the EU Presidency is questioned. The findings suggest that LI adequately explains the formation of German positions prior to assuming office, as its policy objectives are chiefly influenced by domestic producers' interests. However, LI cannot satisfactorily account for German governm…
Horizontal Competition Among Governments
2005
Governments situated on the same level of a multi-level governmental system compete with each other as well as with those placed higher or lower. This paper is concerned with horizontal competition only. It discusses both competition based on the mobility of agents (individuals, business firms, or factors) and competition related to the circulation of information. With regard to the first kind, it focuses on the capacity that governments keep to decide their policies and compete in spite of the mobility of agents. Some attention is also given to the implications of some non-standard assumptions about the underlying political setup. The discussion of information-based competition includes th…
Theoretical Approaches to Crisis: An Introduction
2020
This chapter sums up the key arguments made in this section of the Handbook. The nine chapters discuss essential EU integration and International Relations approaches and how they study, understand, and explain crisis’ putative impact on the EU: Liberal Intergovernmentalism, Classical Realism, Neo-realism, Neofunctionalism, Institutionalism, Organizational Theory, Cleavage Theory, Social constructivism, and Deliberative Theory. For this purpose, each chapter sets out the theory’s basic assumptions before addressing the following questions: (1) How does each theoretical perspective expect crisis to influence EU institutions and policies? What are the causal mechanisms to account for continui…
The assignment of powers in an open-ended European Union
2003
Presented at CESIFO Conference “A Constitution for the EU”, February 2003; International audience; A major characteristic of the European Union is its transitional or evolving nature, in particular with regard to the assignment of powers between the two main levels of government. More precisely, under current constitutional arrangements, this evolving nature takes the form of an integration process which tends to be monotonous, that is, which can only with great difficulty be reversed. The paper is mainly devoted to the explanation of how this comes about and what effects this has on other features of the process. As a concluding remark, however, it suggests that an additional criterion for…
Horizontal competition in multilevel governmental settings
2013
28 pages; Governments situated on the same level of a multi-level governmental system compete with each other as well as with governments placed higher or lower. This paper is concerned with horizontal competition only. It discusses both competition based on the mobility of agents and competition based on comparisons of performance across jurisdictions - i.e., yardstick competition. With regard to the first kind, the focus is on the capacity of governments and voters to decide policies in spite of the mobility of agents. Some attention is also given to non-standard mechanisms in which mobility is manipulated so as to change the structure of the electorate. The paper considers two forms of h…
How significant is yardstick competition among governments? Three reasons to dig deeper
2013
22 pages; The significance of yardstick competition among governments is now confirmed with regard to fiscal variables. This is an important result but the significance of the mechanism must also be sought in a context broader than that of fiscal federalism and without limitation to relations and processes fully observable. Three points are made. Even in the case of governments trying to mimic each other over a single variable, additional variables are involved in an important way. Yardstick competition can be latent without being ineffective. Its major effect, then, is to set bounds to the choices that office-holders could think of making. Finally, the mechanism is a hidden albeit essentia…
The EU, the Nation-State, and the Perennial Challenge to European Integration
2020
This introductory chapter sheds new light on the increasingly complex relationship between the European Union and the nation-state—in its capacity as EU member state—at a time when its fundamental values are being called into question by prominent political currents. The chapter explores the concept of the nation-state in a contemporary European context and shows that tensions between supranationalism and intergovernmentalism are since long a defining feature of European integration. The chapter then introduces the book’s interdisciplinary approach which offers different disciplinary perspectives on how the return of the nation-state impacts the EU’s ability to meet the multifaceted challen…