There is a tendency in the new institutionalist literature to equate institutional inertia with stasis and no-change. Using case studies from the international telecommunications regime and the German health care system, the paper tries to show that this equation is wrong. Inertia does not...

Is corporate tax competition a threat to democracy in the EU? The answer depends crucially on a positive analysis of the effects of tax competition on national policy autonomy. Most analyses focus on direct effects on corporate tax rates and revenues. We contend that this focus is too narrow. It...

Hat Kommunikation einen positiven Einfluß auf Kooperation? In der Debatte, die die deutsche Theorie internationaler Beziehungen in den letzten Jahren um die Rationalität von Kommunikation geführt hat, wird diese Frage emphatisch bejaht. Es besteht Konsens, daß internationale Verhandlungen...

Tax competition poses two problems for international cooperation: defection and distributive conflict. Multilateral cooperation to stop tax competition may fail because states face incentives to renege on their promises or because they face adverse distributional consequences, either of which...