Festschrift für Fritz W. Scharpf - MPIfG

106 II · Politik und Demokratie in Europa
To what extent is this expectation confirmed in the subsequent regulatory
activities in the network industries, and how can this be accounted for?
3 General Argument
In search of a general argument for why market-correcting or redistributive
policies are difficult to achieve in Europe, we find useful insights in the
policy analysis literature linking policy types to the structure of the decision-making
political entity. It was Caputo and Cole (1985), in discussing
revenue-sharing schemes between the federal government and the states in
the US of the 1970s and 80s, who argued that redistributive goals can only
be achieved in a hierarchically structured system (see also Scharpf 1991;
Windhoff-Héritier 1980). The underlying rationale is that decentralized political
units in a confederated political system, which have a voice in the
shaping of policies at the central level, would be unable to agree on redistributive
measures in which one political sub-unit gains at the cost of the
others. Market-correcting redistributive policies can only be adopted in a
hierarchical polity, where the highest governmental level can impose redistributive
decisions and does not depend on the formal acquiescence of decentral
units. Or, as Fritz Scharpf argued in 1991:
As was recognized in the Coase theorem itself, the potential for redistribution is
reduced as one moves from “government” to “contract” and from “hierarchical”
to “unanimous” decisions. While hierarchical authorities or hegemonic powers
are free to disregard any interests and to choose any distributive rule, and while
majoritarian decisions may at least disregard minority, the unanimity rule eliminates
the possibility of involuntary redistribution. (Scharpf 1991: 60)
In further elaboration of this basic argument, conditions have been specified
under which redistributive policy goals can be achieved in a confederate
system, too. One of these conditions was formulated by Coase: If winners
compensated losers, the latter would be willing to support a redistributive
policy. That is, the gains achieved by redistribution have to be large enough
that the losers – at least in theoretical terms – can be compensated. Political
process can, however, also make a difference. If those who are likely to
emerge as winners from a redistributive decision organize collectively and
mobilize to exert pressure on central decision-making (Windhoff-Héritier
1980), the dynamics of a multi-level polity might lead to the incorporation