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It's Not Always about Winning: Domestic Politics and Legal Success in EU Annulment Litigation
Author(s) -
Adam Christian,
Bauer Michael W.,
Hartlapp Miriam
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
jcms: journal of common market studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.54
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1468-5965
pISSN - 0021-9886
DOI - 10.1111/jcms.12191
Subject(s) - annulment , argument (complex analysis) , politics , government (linguistics) , normative , constraint (computer aided design) , political science , affect (linguistics) , law , law and economics , business , economics , sociology , mechanical engineering , biochemistry , chemistry , linguistics , philosophy , communication , engineering
Abstract Why do EU M ember S tate governments have such varying degrees of success when they initiate annulment actions against the E uropean C ommission? Usually litigant success is associated with arguments about judicial constraint or litigants' capacity. This article sheds light on domestic politics as an additional factor that can affect governments' success record in court. It is argued that governmental annulment actions are often part of a two‐level game in which the value of the legal conflict for a national government can be independent of, or even negatively related to, legal success in court as governments may reap immediate benefits from communicating the initiation of annulment actions to voters. In addition, negative rulings can be used as normative levers in domestic reform processes. The statistical analysis indicates that the latter argument systematically affects governments' success records.