The majority of the literature on fiscal decentralization has tended to stress that the greater capacity of decentralized governments to tailor policies to local preferences and to be innovative in the provision of policies and public services, the greater the potential for economic efficiency...

In contrast to the attention devoted to the rejection of the EU Constitutional Treaty at French and Dutch referenda; the Spanish referendum, where this Treaty was ratified, remained under-researched by political scientists. This paper analyses the voting behaviour at the Spanish referendum on the...

This paper empirically examines the regional effects of sharing a single currency on bilateral trade with other European Union partners. It takes advantage of a gravity specification of bilateral trade between 17 Spanish regions and 13 European countries over the period 1997-2004, which in turn...

This paper conducts an ontological inquiry into the identity of the European Union, and seeks to establish whether its core identity is of a cultural or political nature through looking at the debate generated by Turkey’s application for EU membership. The concepts of ‘the other’, the...

Analysts of regional growth differences in the US tend to assume full spatial equilibrium (Glaeser et al, 1995). Flows of people thus indicate changes in the distribution of spatial welfare more effectively than differences in incomes. Research in Europe, however, shows that people tend to be...

The ‘no’ vote in the Irish referendum of June 2008 on the Lisbon Treaty – reversed in October 2009 – threw the European Union into crisis. Yet it reflected a familiar pattern of popular rejection of initiatives on European integration. This article provides an overview of such...