The Early European “FederalismFederalism ”: Ambiguities of Talks About How to Walk Toward a Political UnionPolitical Union

Jean-Michel Josselin () and Alain Marciano
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Jean-Michel Josselin: Faculté des sciences économiques, Université de Rennes 1 and CREM-CNRS

Chapter Chapter 14 in Do They Walk Like They Talk?, 2009, pp 241-255 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The European institutions constitute an incomplete – as incomplete as any constitutional contract – agency contract. Incompleteness means that the agents, the European institutions, benefit from important asymmetries of information and therefore behave as their own principal. They do not behave as they are told to but choose their own objectives and means of action. In this chapter, we analyze the historical origins of such incompleteness. We show that it results from, and as a consequence, is reinforced by the hesitations of the founders of the European institutions about the nature of a European federationfederation . These ambiguities are crucial for a double reason: not only do they influence the nature of the tasks delegated to the European institutions but they also impact the way they can be controlled. We analyze a set ofdiscoursesdiscourse and official texts and show that the term “federal” bears various meanings, ranging from centralized federalismfederalism to decentralized confederalismconfederalism .

Keywords: Member State; European Institution; European Nation; Agency Relationship; Political Integration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:stpchp:978-0-387-89672-4_14

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DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-89672-4_14

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