Building efficient models of global governance: The role of the EU regional tier: A case study analysis of compliance with state aid agreements in France, the United Kingdom and Switzerland

States have increasingly engaged in international regulatory agreements in a wide range of issue areas. In game-theory terms, global models of governance reduce uncertainty and can improve policy coordination, bargaining and predictability. However, despite voluntary commitment to such agreements, certain states are tempted to defect and free ride. Failure to comply is particularly damaging for international regulatory regimes that, derive their efficiency and credibility from compliance. In this context, the EU has become a regulatory state (Majone, 1996) and developed an extensive set of functional institutional mechanisms to overcome such temptations to defect. The EU regional tier is based on a model of delegation of enforcement power to supranational institutions, access for private actors to enforcement mechanisms and international law embedded in the rule of the regional organization. This research tests the role of the EU regional tier as an efficient model of governance to improve compliance rates. It provides an empirical investigation of the variables shaping compliance in Europe and bridges the gap between constructivism, enforcement and management schools. Through contrasting case study of the compliance performance of EU states with the compliance performance of comparable non-EU advanced, industrialised democracies it seeks to identify the determinants of compliance. More specifically through process tracing of infringement proceedings in France, the UK and Switzerland in the area of competition policies this qualitative empirical investigation provides an analysis of the causal relationship between the regional tier model of governance and observed compliance rates. The main findings show functional institutional designs can improve compliance. The regional tier model of governance addresses determinants of compliance ranging from constructivism to management and enforcement and locks states into compliance with a whole legislative package they cannot easily opt-out from rather than allowing more flexible patterns of compliance to emerge.