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The European Commission as a Constraint on its own Antitrust Policy

Karagiannis, Yannis (2009) The European Commission as a Constraint on its own Antitrust Policy. In: UNSPECIFIED.

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    Abstract

    Although the legal and the political-scientific literatures on European competition policy (‘ECP’) are vast, there is no work that goes beyond the rationalization of stylized historical and/or legal facts. This approach may be justified on grounds of the political complexity of ECP and/or the heterogeneity of units of analysis. Nevertheless, the failure to come up with a positive device that identifies conditions under which specific policy decisions may or may not be possible has limited our assessments of the policy to value judgments rather than to true explanations. This paper attempts to remedy this situation by offering a logically complete and internally consistent model of ECP decision-making procedures. I show how the dependence of the European antitrust regulator (DG COMP) on a heterogeneous, multi-task and collegial organization (the Commission) severely constrains the feasible policy options of the former, and I argue that the nature and the goals of ECP are a function of (a) the ability of DG COMP to rely on national authorities, and (b) the distance between the ideal policy points of, on the one hand, the pivotal Directorate General in the Commission and, on the other hand, DG COMP and its internal opponents. Empirical work should follow.

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    Item Type: Conference or Workshop Item (UNSPECIFIED)
    Subjects for non-EU documents: EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > competition policy
    EU policies and themes > EU institutions & developments > European Commission
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Conference: European Union Studies Association (EUSA) > Biennial Conference > 2009 (11th), April 23-25, 2009
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 08 Jan 2013 17:08
    Number of Pages: 29
    Last Modified: 08 Jan 2013 17:08
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/33073

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