IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v106y2012i01p204-213_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • STONE SWEET, ALEC
  • BRUNELL, THOMAS

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Stone Sweet, Alec & Brunell, Thomas, 2012. "The European Court of Justice, State Noncompliance, and the Politics of Override," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 106(1), pages 204-213, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:106:y:2012:i:01:p:204-213_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055412000019/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Carsten Hefeker & Michael Neugart, 2016. "Policy deviations, uncertainty, and the European Court of Justice," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 42(3), pages 547-567, December.
    2. Christophe Crombez & Pieterjan Vangerven, 2014. "Procedural models of European Union politics: Contributions and suggestions for improvement," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(2), pages 289-308, June.
    3. Christian Adam & Michael W. Bauer & Miriam Hartlapp, 2015. "It's Not Always about Winning: Domestic Politics and Legal Success in EU Annulment Litigation," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 53(2), pages 185-200, March.
    4. José Luis Castro-Montero & Edwin Alblas & Arthur Dyevre & Nicolas Lampach, 2018. "The Court of Justice and treaty revision: A case of strategic leniency?," European Union Politics, , vol. 19(4), pages 570-596, December.
    5. Benjamin Werner, 2016. "Why is the Court of Justice of the European Union not more Contested? Three Mechanisms of Opposition Abatement," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(6), pages 1449-1464, November.
    6. Nicolas Lampach & Arthur Dyevre, 2020. "Choosing for Europe: judicial incentives and legal integration in the European Union," European Journal of Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 50(1), pages 65-86, August.
    7. Denise Carolin Hübner, 2016. "The ‘National Decisions’ database (Dec.Nat): Introducing a database on national courts’ interactions with European Law," European Union Politics, , vol. 17(2), pages 324-339, June.
    8. Michal Ovádek, 2021. "Supranationalism, constrained? Locating the Court of Justice on the EU integration dimension," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(1), pages 46-69, March.
    9. Christina Davis, 2015. "The political logic of dispute settlement: Introduction to the special issue," The Review of International Organizations, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 107-117, June.
    10. Dederke, Julian, 2014. "Bahnliberalisierung in der Europäischen Union: Die Rolle des EuGH als politischer und politisch restringierter Akteur bei der Transformation staatsnaher Sektoren," PIPE - Papers on International Political Economy 20/2014, Free University Berlin, Center for International Political Economy, revised 2014.
    11. Höpner, Martin & Schäfer, Armin, 2012. "Integration among unequals: How the heterogeneity of European varieties of capitalism shapes the social and democratic potential of the EU," MPIfG Discussion Paper 12/5, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    12. Lauren Peritz, 2018. "Obstructing integration: Domestic politics and the European Court of Justice," European Union Politics, , vol. 19(3), pages 427-457, September.
    13. Gareth Davies, 2016. "The European Union Legislature as an Agent of the European Court of Justice," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(4), pages 846-861, July.
    14. Wessel Wijtvliet & Arthur Dyevre, 2021. "Judicial ideology in economic cases: Evidence from the General Court of the European Union," European Union Politics, , vol. 22(1), pages 25-45, March.
    15. Alves, Amanda M. & Brousseau, Eric & Yeung, Timothy Yu-Cheong, 2021. "The dynamics of institution building: State aids, the European commission, and the court of justice of the European Union," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 836-859.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:106:y:2012:i:01:p:204-213_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.