The strength of a weak centre: pandemic politics in the European Union and the United States

Abstract The European Union presents a puzzle to political systems scholars: how can developing polity, with all its attendant functional weaknesses, be rendered politically stable even through moments of policy crisis? Building on insights from the literature fiscal federalism, this article challenges much conventional wisdom Europe’s incompleteness. This is based corollary Jonathan Rodden’s concept Hamilton’s Paradox : whereas strong centre cannot resist exploitation by states because it has means rescue them, weak centre’s lack exploitable capacity may induce support, and empower, in crisis. argues that providing contemporaneous stress-test, Covid-19 serves expose both pathologies strong-centred federation surprising resilience one. It highlights three polity features—powers, decision-making modes integrity—and charts their implications during an acute EU these features incentivise cooperative ‘polity maintenance’ between polarised states, feature absent American marked rivalry parties. thus notions EU’s incompleteness necessarily leads dysfunction or should strive emulate established federations.