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The European Court of Justice, State Noncompliance, and the Politics of Override

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2012

ALEC STONE SWEET  and
THOMAS BRUNELL
ALEC STONE SWEET*
Affiliation:
Yale University
THOMAS BRUNELL*
Affiliation:
University of Texas at Dallas
*
Alec Stone Sweet is Leitner Professor of Law, Politics, and International Studies, Yale Law School and Department of Political Science, Yale University, 127 Wall Street, New Haven, CT 06520 ([email protected]).
Thomas Brunell is Professor of Political Science, University of Texas at Dallas, 800 West Campbell Road, Richardson, TX 75080 ([email protected]).
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Abstract

In an article previously published by the APSR, Carrubba, Gabel, and Hankla claim that the decision making of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been constrained—systematically—by the threat of override on the part of member state governments, acting collectively, and by the threat of noncompliance on the part of any single state. They also purport to have found strong evidence in favor of intergovernmentalist, but not neofunctionalist, integration theory. On the basis of analysis of the same data, we demonstrate that the threat of override is not credible and that the legal system is activated, rather than paralyzed, by noncompliance. Moreover, when member state governments did move to nullify the effects of controversial ECJ rulings, they failed to constrain the court, which continued down paths cleared by the prior rulings. Finally, in a head-to-head showdown between intergovernmentalism and neofunctionalism, the latter wins in a landslide.

Type
Forum
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 106 , Issue 1 , February 2012 , pp. 204 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2012

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