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Judicialized Law‐Making and Opportunistic Enforcement: Explaining the EU's Challenge of National Defence Offsets
Author(s) -
Weiss Moritz,
Blauberger Michael
Publication year - 2016
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.12290
Subject(s) - commission , member state , expansive , enforcement , political science , member states , european union , opposition (politics) , europeanisation , politics , law , european court of justice , law and economics , international trade , european union law , economics , compressive strength , materials science , composite material
This article seeks to explain how the European Union (EU) – by challenging national defence offsets – managed to move into a highly sensitive policy area under formerly exclusive Member State competence. Whereas major accounts of integration depict defence policy as a least likely case, our process‐tracing analysis shows that the EU's recent challenge of defence offsets was a case of supranational self‐empowerment. We theorize two consecutive strategies of judicial politics, which the Commission employed at different policy stages to overcome opposition from Member States and defence firms against domestic policy change: judicialized law‐making and opportunistic enforcement. Both strategies depend on three scope conditions: expansive case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), its fit with policy priorities of the Commission and a credible threat of follow‐up litigation.