Among the international relations’ subjects there has always been a debate between those who support the intergovernmentalism and those who defend the (neo)functionalist view of the Union. An important hypothesis, that will be the central part of our paper, is that the compromise is the base...

The aim of this essay is to test the hypothesis that the Council has a dual nature, it can be perceived both as an intergovernmental conference and as a supranational institution. To do this, in the first part of the paper we will review the main characteristics and functions of the Council,...

The purpose of government in a democracy is to provide those goods and services to the community that the market fails to provide efficiently. To achieve this goal those in government must not only know what goods and services the community desires, but must also be prevented to choose outcomes...

The purpose of government in a democracy is to provide those goods and services to the community that the market fails to provide efficiently. To achieve this goal those in government must not only know what goods and services the community desires, but must also be prevented to choose outcomes...

Since 1 May 1999, the day when the Treaty of Amsterdam entered into force, we have been able to observe a fundamental change in view of the field of civil procedure law cooperation. In the Treaty of Amsterdam the European Union set as a goal the establishment of the area of freedom, security and...

Institutional change is guided by rules. In the European Union these rules are given by Art. 250-252 of the Treaty of Amsterdam. These articles define the actors and rules that bring about changes in policies in the European Union. We analyze these articles as games in extensive form and...

Models of electoral competition in which candidates can change position at no cost predict the convergence of platforms in a two-candidate election. Such convergence is at odds with empirical observation. In this paper, I undertake a study of candidate positioning in the United States Senate and...

Is Europe becoming the world’s leading knowledge-based economic area of the world, as European leaders planned at their Lisbon meeting in 2000? In this article, we analyze the Lisbon performance of the countries of the European Union from a long-term, structural perspective. We examine...

This paper provides an econometric examination of geographic R&D spillovers among countries by focusing on the issue of cross-sectional dependence, and in particular on the dierent ways { weak and strong { it may aect the model. A preliminary analysis based on the estimation of the exponent of...