Autonomy by the Rules: The European Commission and the Development of State Aid Policy
Mitchell P. Smith
Journal of Common Market Studies, 1998, vol. 36, issue 1, 55-78
Abstract:
The European Commission has enhanced its autonomy to implement state aid policy with a superstructure of frameworks and guidelines constructed on the base of its Treaty‐derived competence. The Commission’s activism has also mobilized private sector actors whose interest in state aid monitoring reinforces the Commission’s claim to being a neutral enforcement agent. However, these constituencies have also made new demands on Commission resources that may constrain the Commission. This finding has important implications for the scope of historical institutionalist analysis, which typically focuses on how Member State governments are constrained by past decisions. Ultimately the autonomy of supranational institutions may be self‐limiting, with emerging constraints deriving not from the preferences of Member State governments, but from the very structuring of the European polity fostered by the autonomous actions of supranational institutions themselves.
Date: 1998
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)
Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5965.00097
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:jcmkts:v:36:y:1998:i:1:p:55-78
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0021-9886
Access Statistics for this article
Journal of Common Market Studies is currently edited by Jim Rollo and Daniel Wincott
More articles in Journal of Common Market Studies from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().