TY - JOUR A1 - van den Brink, Martijn A1 - Dawson, Mark A1 - Zglinski, Jan T1 - Revisiting the asymmetry thesis: negative and positive integration in the EU JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - The ‘asymmetry thesis’, articulated by Fritz Scharpf, holds that EU governance is characterised by an asymmetry between positive and negative integration. The EU has well-developed capacities for negative integration but only limited capacities for positive integration. The present paper challenges the orthodoxy that this thesis has become in EU law and political science scholarship. It argues that the asymmetry thesis no longer accurately depicts European integration, revisiting its key legal and institutional assumptions. Taking the internal market as the most likely case to test the thesis, we show that negative integration has become weaker, positive integration has gained in strength, and both developments have had an impact on the substance of EU law and policymaking, which is promoting non-economic concerns and market-correcting policies to a greater extent than it used to. These shifts, so we contend, could be even more pronounced in other areas of European integration. Y1 - 2023 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2023.2296940 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - van den Brink, Martijn T1 - Political, not (just) legal judgement: studying EU institutional balance JF - European Law Open N2 - This article presents two related arguments. First, the limits of doctrinal analysis cut deeper than many EU lawyers realise. Most would probably accept that legal doctrine does not determine every legal dispute, but lawyers studying EU institutional balance often still assume that it can be deduced from the positive law what is good institutional practice. This paper argues instead that the allocation of EU institutional authority cannot be determined by the exercise of legal judgement, but instead requires the exercise of political judgement on the relative merits of different institutions. Second, this means that political and normative discourses and disciplines cannot be assumed to fall outside the domain of legal scholarship. What we need instead is a distinctive kind of legal scholarship that interweaves doctrinal analysis with normative political theory, broadly conceived. I will argue that political theory, in addition to evaluative value, has adjudicative value, provided that our theories are sensitive to the EU’s social and political setting and the constraints this setting imposes on what is realistically feasible. Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1017/elo.2024.26 SN - 2752-6135 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library VL - 3 IS - 2 SP - 389 EP - 401 PB - Cambridge University Press (CUP) ER - TY - JOUR A1 - van den Brink, Martijn T1 - Institutional Choice in the Internal Market JF - The Modern Law Review Y1 - 2024 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2230.12892 SN - 0026-7961 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library VL - 87 IS - 4 SP - 1031 EP - 1053 ER - TY - JOUR A1 - van den Brink, Martijn A1 - Dawson, Mark A1 - Zglinski, Jan T1 - Alive and kicking or barely alive? The asymmetry thesis in the twenty-first century EU JF - Journal of European Public Policy N2 - This paper focuses on the legal and institutional assumptions of Fritz Scharpf's famous thesis of an asymmetry between positive and negative integration in the EU. Taking issue with a number of arguments forwarded in the lead piece for this debate section, it questions the relevance of the thesis to the governance of the contemporary EU, objecting to (i) the limited falsifiability of the asymmetry thesis as established by the distinction between structure and agency; (ii) the emphasis of the thesis on the weakening influence of negative integration and (iii) the way in which asymmetry ignores the increasing centrality of positive integration to defining the EU's legal order. As the paper concludes, while the asymmetry thesis pioneered inter-disciplinary exploration of how the EU's legal and political order inter-relates, it needs serious re-thinking in the Europe of the 2020s. Y1 - 2025 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2025.2527330 N1 - Open Access publication is funded by the Hertie School Library. SP - 1 EP - 12 PB - Informa UK Limited ER -