Sovereign Authority as Assemblage: Processes of Federalism in the EU and the US

• In Event: Comparing Rights and Legitimacy in EU Market Governance to the United States

Abstract

Most comparisons of the EU to the U.S. or other entities are heavily, even rigidly institutional-—striving to relate one coherent characterization of the EU to one coherent characterization of other polities. This paper challenges this sort of attempt to nail down what the EU or the U.S. “is,” and instead emphasizes processes of federalism that look quite similar across these two complicated polities. Federalism raises complex issues about where sovereignty authority lies, the ends to which it is deployed and organized, and how such distributions of authority affect economic and democratic performance. We probe the limits of contrasting EU and US federal governance in terms of institutional structure by drawing on theories of “assemblage” from scholars like Deleuze and Guattari, DeLanda, Bennett, and Connolly. They conceptualize sovereign authority in federal systems as heterogenous, processual, and associative. In response to unexpected challenges, we argue, actors constantly “code” and “re-code” sovereignty at both the federal and state levels. This is not to say that EU and US federalisms are the same, but recent single-market examples from digital platform regulation, energy policy, and other areas show similar assemblage dynamics across them. Assertions of federal or EU authority in these areas only take shape in profound interaction with state-level action and authority.

Authors

• Nicolas Jabko, Johns Hopkins University

• Gerald Berk, University of Oregon