The strength of a weak centre : pandemic politics in the European Union and the United States

ALEXANDER-SHAW, Kate; GANDERSON, Joseph; SCHELKLE, Waltraud

doi:10.1057/s41295-023-00328-6

The strength of a weak centre : pandemic politics in the European Union and the United States

dc.contributor.author	ALEXANDER-SHAW, Kate
dc.contributor.author	GANDERSON, Joseph
dc.contributor.author	SCHELKLE, Waltraud
dc.date.accessioned	2023-10-16T09:43:24Z
dc.date.available	2023-10-16T09:43:24Z
dc.date.issued	2023
dc.description	Published online: 30 March 2023	en
dc.description.abstract	The European Union presents a puzzle to political systems scholars: how can a developing polity, with all its attendant functional weaknesses, be rendered politically stable even through moments of a policy crisis? Building on insights from the literature on fscal federalism, this article challenges much conventional wisdom on Europe’s incompleteness. This is based on the corollary of Jonathan Rodden’s concept of Hamilton’s Paradox: whereas a strong centre cannot resist exploitation by states because it has the means to rescue them, a weak centre’s lack of exploitable capacity may induce states to support, and even empower, it in a crisis. This article argues that in providing a contemporaneous stress-test, Covid-19 serves to expose both the pathologies of a strong-centred federation and the surprising resilience of a weak one. It highlights three polity features—powers, decision-making modes and integrity—and charts their political implications during an acute crisis. The article argues that in the EU these features incentivise cooperative ‘polity maintenance’ between polarised states, a feature absent in an American polity marked by rivalry between polarised parties. The article thus challenges notions that the EU’s incompleteness necessarily leads it to dysfunction or that it should strive to emulate established federations.	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.citation	Comparative European politics, 2023, Vol. 21, pp. 448-469	en
dc.identifier.doi	10.1057/s41295-023-00328-6
dc.identifier.endpage	469	en
dc.identifier.issn	1472-4790
dc.identifier.issn	1740-388X
dc.identifier.startpage	448	en
dc.identifier.uri	https://hdl.handle.net/1814/75955
dc.identifier.volume	21	en
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.orcid.upload	true	*
dc.publisher	Palgrave Macmillan	en
dc.relation.ispartof	Comparative European politics	en
dc.rights	info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess	en
dc.rights.license	Attribution 4.0 International	*
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/	*
dc.title	The strength of a weak centre : pandemic politics in the European Union and the United States	en
dc.type	Article	en
dspace.entity.type	Publication
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