Salmon, Pierre --- "Accounting or centralization in the European Union: Niskanen, Monnet or Thatcher?*" [2003] ELECD 72; in Marciano, Alain; Josselin, Jean-Michel (eds), "From Economic to Legal Competition" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2003)

Book Title: From Economic to Legal Competition

Editor(s): Marciano, Alain; Josselin, Jean-Michel

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781843760061

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: Accounting or centralization in the European Union: Niskanen, Monnet or Thatcher?*

Author(s): Salmon, Pierre

Number of pages: 28

Extract:

8. Accounting for centralization in the
European Union: Niskanen, Monnet
or Thatcher?*
Pierre Salmon

INTRODUCTION
Competition among governments, internationally (among national govern-
ments) or in the setting of federations (among subcentral governments), is seen
in a much more favourable light today than even only one or two decades ago
(see Breton, 1996). This applies to the law-making and regulatory activities of
governments as it does to the policy areas that involve public finance. In the
setting of a single governmental system, inasmuch as intergovernmental
competition is deemed beneficial, it provides an additional and powerful argu-
ment in favour of decentralization (see Salmon, 1987). In the case of the
European Union (EU), this suggests that centralization, at least in some areas,
by hampering beneficial competition, may go too far. In fact, a number of
economists argue or feel that it does. This chapter is not primarily concerned
with the normative, or quasi-normative, issue of whether the EU governmen-
tal system is too centralized. Its focus, rather, is on the question of the mech-
anisms that may account for the present state or trend of centralization (of
course, an answer to the second question may affect one's opinion about the
normative issue).
What are these mechanisms? Centralization in the EU is often ascribed (not
only by the famed English tabloids) to the existence, inherent in the present
arrangements, of a bureaucratic bias. Such a claim reflects a conception of
bureaucracies that stress their tendency to expand ­ which evokes the ...