THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF OVERLAPPING JURISDICTIONS AND THE FRENCH/DUTCH REJECTION OF THE EU CONSTITUTION

Jean‐Luc Migué

Economic Affairs, 2006, vol. 26, issue 1, 61-64

Abstract: In seeking to protect their failed social model by rejecting the EU constitution, French and Dutch voters ironically contributed to promoting the very ‘liberal’ order they misunderstand and despise. When, as in federalist politics, functions overlap, two levels of government compete for the same votes in the same territory in the supply of similar services. Not unlike the tragedy of the commons in oil extraction, it is in the interest of both political authorities to seek to gain votes in implementing the programme first. The overall equilibrium supply of public services is excessive and both levels of government have a tendency to invade every field. Short of effective constitutional limits on the powers of the central government, a more decentralised EU offers an opportunity to overcome the common‐pool problem of multi‐level government.

Date: 2006
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0270.2006.00613.x

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ecaffa:v:26:y:2006:i:1:p:61-64

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0265-0665

Access Statistics for this article

Economic Affairs is currently edited by Philip Booth

More articles in Economic Affairs from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().