Muscles in Brussels: EU Economic Authority in Comparative Perspective

How do we explain that the European Union gained so much authority, especially in economic areas? Most explanations of the EU start off badly by misdescribing how much authority it exerts over its member-states. Classic IR theorists in realist or liberal traditions describe the EU as a strong international regime, allowing them to explain it simply as a response to especially-strong regional versions of the exogenously-given conditions that ostensibly favor international cooperation elsewhere. Even more endogenously-inclined theorists who explain the EU as an ideational or institutionally path-dependent project tend to describe it as a quasi-federation that still falls well short of a “United States of Europe.” But if the EU certainly lacks some important authority of federal states, in some core areas it has surpassed them. Employing a comparison of the EU to Anglo-Saxon federations (United States, Canada, Australia), we show that today’s EU actively exercises authority over states’ market openness and fiscal discipline than these federations have never claimed. This redescription of the EU outcome displays just how far Europe has departed from the expectations of classic IR theories, and highlights the kind of strongly endogenous ideational and institutional explanation it requires.