The Politics of Supranational Legal Integration

随着国际裁决机构，如人权法院、世界贸易组织和其他机构的增多，我们想了解这些机构在多大程度上提供和维持了一种独立于国家政府并上级国家政府的法律的秩序。 欧洲联盟（欧盟）法律的发展为探讨这些国际法和国家主权问题提供了一个宝贵的论坛。 在过去的四十年里，欧洲法院（ECJ）建立了一个超国家的法律的秩序，它上级于国家法律，国家政府必须服从。 这种超国家的法律的一体化引发了一场激烈的学术辩论，争论的焦点是欧洲法院是成员国的工具还是真正独立的司法机构。 这个问题是我们提案的重点。现存的关于欧盟法律的一体化政治的文献基本上分为两类。 支持最高法院的阵营认为，欧洲法院可以强制执行其判决，其裁决约束各国政府，并推动欧洲一体化超出各国政府的预期。 政府间主义阵营假设欧洲法院对成员国负有责任，因此得出结论认为成员国限制了法律的一体化。 这两个阵营之间的争论主要是基于对政府与欧洲法院关系的非正式争论，这模糊了理论争论的基础。 此外，经验证据主要包括两个阵营提供相互矛盾的解释的案例研究。 因此，为了解决这一争论，拟议的项目提供：（a）对理论争论进行更明确的理论阐述，以确定区分两个阵营的可检验假设，（B）对这些假设进行严格的实证分析。首先，该项目产生的直觉背后，和的影响，两个正式的政府-欧洲法院的互动模式，其中每一个都是为了正式化的两个程度的非正式参数，除了两个传统的阵营，正式的模式也整合到正式的模型最近的公共合法性的参数。 结果表明，现有的经验证据并不区分竞争的理论。 这些正式的模型还产生了一组可检验的假设，区分这两个位置。然后，拟议的项目提供了一个数据收集和统计分析的战略，以测试这些假设。 政府间主义模型预测，遵守欧盟法律的政治成本应该通过以下五种方式影响欧洲法院的行为：（1）政府是否被判有罪;（2）政府被审判的频率;（3）欧洲法院是否努力将一个案件与可能形成先例的先前案件区分开来;（4）欧洲法院裁决小组中有多少法官;（5）欧洲法院是否有足够的证据来证明这一点。（5）法官审理案件需要多长时间。 政治成本是通过两个系统性的组成部分来衡量的，例如距离必须举行选举的年数和执政党控制的席位数，以及随机的政治冲击，例如政府在补选中失败或政治丑闻。 前两个测试的详细介绍，包括数据的描述，他们的来源，以及有关实际回归的统计问题。 剩下的三个测试是简单的。这一分析有助于进一步推进关于欧洲法院在欧盟法律的一体化中的作用的已经富有成效的辩论。 分析不仅澄清和区分两个现存的阵营，但数据收集也有利于未来的理论发展的测试。 此外，分析结果对跨国机构总体上约束国家政府的条件产生了影响，从而为我们对超国家裁决的更广泛理解提供了信息。

As international adjudicating institutions, such as the Court of Human Rights, the World Trade Organization, and others, multiply, we want to understand to what degree these institutions provide and maintain a legal order independent of, and superior to, national governments. The development of European Union (EU) law provides a valuable forum in which to explore these issues of international laws and national sovereignty. Over the past forty years, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has established a supranational legal order superior to national law and to which national governments are subject. This supranational legal integration has generated a vigorous scholarly debate concerning whether the ECJ is a tool of the member states or a truly independent judiciary. This question is the focus of our proposal. The extant literature on the politics of EU legal integration divides essentially into two groups. The pro-Court camp assumes that the ECJ can enforce its judgments and that its rulings constrain national governments and push European integration beyond that intended by national governments. The Intergovernmentalist camp assumes that the ECJ is beholden to the member states and, thus, concludes that member states constrain legal integration. The debate between these two camps is based largely on informal arguments about government-ECJ relations, which obscure the basis of the theoretical debate. Also, the empirical evident consists largely of case studies over which the two camps offer conflicting interpretations. Thus, to resolve this debate, the proposed project provides: (a) a clearer theoretical exposition of the theoretical debate so as to identify testable hypotheses that discriminate between the two camps, and (b) a rigorous empirical analysis of these hypotheses. First, the project generates the intuition behind, and the implications of, two formal models of government-ECJ interaction, each of which is designed to formalize the two extent informal arguments, Beyond the two traditional camps, the formal models also integrate recent arguments about public legitimacy into the formal model. The results demonstrate that the extant empirical evidence does not discriminate between the competing theories. These formal models also generate a set of testable hypotheses that discriminate between the two positions. The proposed project then provides a strategy for data collection and statistical analysis to test these hypotheses. The Intergovernmentalist model predicts that the political costs of compliance with EU law should affect ECJ behavior in the following five ways: (1) whether a government is ruled against; (2) how frequently a government is taken to trial; (3) whether the ECJ makes an effort to distinguish a case from potentially precedence-forming previous cases; (4) how many judges sit on an ECJ-adjudicating panel; and (5) how long the judges take to decide a case. Political costs are measured through both systematic components, such as the number of years until an election must be called and the number of seats that the ruling party controls, and random political shocks, such as a government defeat in a by-election or a political scandal. The first two of these tests are presented in detail, including descriptions of the data, their sources, and statistical issues regarding the actual regressions. The remaining three tests are mentioned briefly. This analysis helps to further an already fruitful debate about the role of the ECJ in EU legal integration. Not only does the analysis clarify and discriminate between the two extant camps, but the data collections also facilitates tests of future theoretical developments. In addition, the results of the analysis have implications for the conditions under which transnational institutions in general constrain national governments and, thus, inform our broader understanding of supranational adjudication.