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Abstract:
This article seeks to explain how the European Union (EU) – by challenging national defence offsets – managed to move into a highly sensitive policy area under formerly exclusive Member State competence. Whereas major accounts of integration depict defence policy as a least likely case, our process-tracing analysis shows that the EU's recent challenge of defence offsets was a case of supranational self-empowerment.
We theorize two consecutive strategies of judicial politics, which the Commission employed at different policy stages to overcome opposition from Member States and defence firms against domestic policy change: judicialized law-making and opportunistic enforcement. Both strategies depend on three scope conditions: expansive case law of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), its fit with policy priorities of the Commission and a credible threat of follow-up litigation.
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