The Road Ahead - The Political Geography of Inequality - page 57

TABLE 3.1. Case Selection and Empirical Strategy

Research Design Conditions

Representation in Natural Endogenous

Status Quo Experiments Processes

Centrifugal US and Canada's responses

to the Great Depression

The European Union

Centripetal Germany's response to

Reunification

Contentions over fiscal
structures in Spain

important fact, namely there is variation in the organization of political rep-
resentation within both groups of cases. In the rest of this section, I introduce
the systems of representation in the cases within each group and discuss how
comparison across the different cases helps the empirical evaluation of the
argument.

Endogenous Processes

The European Economic Community (1957) was born a highly centrifugal
political union (Dinan 1999 ; Moravcsik 1998 ; Rosato 2011 ). And it remains
today a union in which decision making powers remain largely under the
control of its constituent members, the national states. Undoubtedly, the Com-
mission as an agenda setter (Garrett and Tsebelis 1996 ; Tsebelis and Garrett
2001 ), and the Parliament as a co-decider in a wider range of policy areas
(Rittberger 2005 ), have increased their relative power over time. Yet, despite
all these advances, Delors' dream of a “federation of nation states” remains
an unrealized aspiration (European Parliament, Minutes of the Committee on
Constitutional Affairs, Brussels, September 18, 2000).
Even after the relative empowering of the Parliament in the Treaty of Ams-
terdam, the legislative process in the EU remains as follows 5 : the Commission,
after a long process of canvassing and consultation with both the Council
and the Parliament, proposes legislation. This proposal is then evaluated and
decided upon by the Council, either by qualified majority voting or by una-
nimity. This essentially gives any member or small group of members effective
veto power on any proposal (Tsebelis 2002 ). Once the Council has decided, the
proposal is either consulted or co-decided with the Parliament. In the first case,
the Parliament lacks veto power but issues a nonbinding position on the pro-
posal. In the latter case, approval of the Parliament is required for the proposal
to become law. In case of disagreement, both parts resort to the Conciliation
Committee. In the absence of an agreement in this committee, the proposal is
moot. Overall, the balance of power between local and “federal” elites in the

5

For a more detailed description of this process, see Hix ( 2005 ); and Thomson and Holsi ( 2006 ).