AbstractThe 1987 Single European Act (SEA) is frequently identified as a momentous landmark for European integration because it altered voting procedures in the Council of Ministers - substituting widespread qualified majority voting for the unanimity which had prevailed since the famous...

AbstractThe paper begins with a welfare-theoretic proposition: Systems competition is likely to weaken the territorially limited power of the state vis-à-vis internationally mobile capital, firms and consumers. Even if these changes should unambiguously benefit consumer interests, interests...

Abstract Recent scholarship on the process of European integration emphasizes the struc-tural limits of positive integration. Against this background, the analysis of international environmental regimes promises to be illuminating. A closer look at three environmental regimes reveals that these...

Abstract Is communication conducive to cooperation? German students of international relations generally agree that the former is a crucial prerequisite of the latter. The aim of this paper is to show that this assumption is not universally valid. The effects of communication are more ambiguous...

Attempts to explain the "rise of East Asia" often neglect transnational and regional aspects. After analyzing transnational political and economic processes in and beyond the region, the paper concludes that East Asia, in comparison with other conceptualizations of regions (Southeast Asia,...

AbstractTax competition poses two problems for international cooperation: defection and distributive conflict. Multilateral cooperation to stop tax competition may fail because states face incentives to renege on their promises or because they face adverse distributional consequences, either of...

AbstractThis paper contributes to the ongoing discussion about the scope for autonomous action of supranational organizations in the European Union, focussing on the European Commission. In the literature, the independence of the Commission is frequently questioned, while the relative autonomy...