Judicialized Law-Making and Opportunistic Enforcement

Weiss, Moritz und Blauberger, Michael (März 2016): Judicialized Law-Making and Opportunistic Enforcement. Explaining the EU's Challenge of National Defence Offsets. In: Jcms-Journal of Common Market Studies, Bd. 54, Nr. 2: S. 444-462

Abstract

This article seeks to explain how the European Union (EU) - by challenging national defence offsets - managed to move into a highly sensitive policy area under formerly exclusive Member State competence. Whereas major accounts of integration depict defence policy as a least likely case, our process-tracing analysis shows that the EU's recent challenge of defence offsets was a case of supranational self-empowerment. We theorize two consecutive strategies of judicial politics, which the Commission employed at different policy stages to overcome opposition from Member States and defence firms against domestic policy change: judicialized law-making and opportunistic enforcement. Both strategies depend on three scope conditions: expansive case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), its fit with policy priorities of the Commission and a credible threat of follow-up litigation.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Keywords: compliance; defence procurement; European Commission; European Court of Justice; judicial politics; Europeanization
• Fakultät: Sozialwissenschaften > Geschwister-Scholl-Institut für Politikwissenschaft
• Themengebiete: 300 Sozialwissenschaften > 320 Politik
• ISSN: 0021-9886
• Sprache: Englisch