The Europe Center is jointly housed in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Global Studies Division.
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Blood and Diamonds: Germany’s Imperial Ambitions in Africa
The Dynastic Imagination: Family and Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Time’s Monster: How History Makes History
Global Populisms and Their Challenges
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Filter results CloseSpatial Models, Legislative Gridlock, and Resource Policy Reform
This review evaluates the use of spatial models for the analysis of policymaking. First, we examine spatial theory and its applications in a variety ofinstitutional settings.
Do fiscal rules decrease public investment? Evidence from European panel data
Governance of the global commons: a question of supply and demand, the answer of polycentricism
Edited by Samuel Cogolati and Jan Wouters
Making exit costly but efficient: the political economy of exit clauses and secession
This article presents a political economic analysis of exit from federations. Over time, members’ benefits from being in a federation can fluctuate because of changes in the state of the world. If a member stops benefitting, it may wish to secede i.e. exit the federation. Based on a real options model, we show that state-contingent exit penalties can induce socially efficient exit decisions. In addition to the substantive implications, this represents a methodological contribution to real options theory.
The election of Antonio Tajani as EP President: A backroom deal that creates clarity
On 17 January, Antonio Tajani took over as the new President of the European Parliament. Christophe Crombez argues that while Tajani’s election has been portrayed by some observers as another EU backroom deal, the developments that led to his appointment lay the groundwork for more clearly defined policy choices to be presented to voters at the 2019 European Parliament elections.
Choosing an informative agenda setter: The appointment of the Commission in the European Union
We present a game-theoretical analysis of Commission appointment in the European Union. In the model, the European Parliament and the member states look ahead and consider the outcomes that result from the appointment of alternative Commissions. In contrast to earlier work, we assume the European Parliament and the member states have incomplete information on the consequences of policies, whereas the Commission acquires private information.
The political economy of enforcing fiscal rules
A large literature is focused on governments’ fiscal policy making under the disciplining force of fiscal rules. That literature is devoted to map governments’ incentives for (non)compliance, but widely ignores the role of fiscal rule enforcement. This is remarkable, given the situation in the European Union, where we observe frequent breaches of the fiscal rules in the absence of sanctions. This paper focuses therefore on the incentives of the European Commission as enforcer of the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) and on how individual governments take these incentives into account.
The role of oversight committees in closed rule legislation
The Political Economy of Transatlantic Free Trade
On July 8th, 2013, the United States and the European Union started negotiations on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (T-TIP), which is to create a free trade area. In this working paper, Tim Josling and Christophe Crombez study the prospects for such a transatlantic free trade area, starting with the background behind why the T-TIP is on the agenda now and what areas of trade are being negotiated. They analyze who stands to benefit from such a trade and investment agreement, how long it might take to reach such an agreement, and what factors might influence its acceptab
The European parliament elections in 2014 are about more than protest votes
The European Parliament elections in May 2014 are about more than protest votes. In an opinion piece that appeared in The Guardian newspaper Christophe Crombez (The Europe Center) and Simon Hix (The London School of Economics and Political Science) argue that next year's European Parliament elections are the most important such elections to date. European politics has been dominated by the eurocrisis in recent years, and by the austerity policies European governments have followed to combat it. These policies are largely set at the European level, in particular by the EU Commission.
Institutional Reform and Codecision in the European Union
This paper studies the Treaty of Amsterdam's reform of the codecision procedure in the European Union. The paper presents spatial models of the procedure, and examines whether the Treaty significantly alters it. The theory analyzes the implications of the Treaty for the equilibrium EU policies and the institutions' powers. It characterizes sets of policies the Commission can successfully propose under the old procedure, and sets of policies the Council and the Parliament can successfully propose as joint texts under the new procedure.
Legislative Activity and Gridlock in the European Union
This article develops a game-theoretical model of European Union (EU) policy making that suggests that the amount of legislative activity depends on the size of the gridlock interval. This is consistent with Krehbiel's study of US politics. This interval depends on two factors: (1) the preference configuration of the political actors and (2) the legislative procedures used in a particular period. Actors’ preferences and procedures are not expected to have any effect beyond their impact on the gridlock interval.