We define the internal market of a regional integration agreement as a legal order that is based on the rule of law. A regional integration agreement is a particular case of market building in that it creates a new market with new rules. The ability to change the participating institutions is essential. A key issue consists in verifying that a constitutional change is possible as well as adapting the local institutions to the new constitution. In comparing the case of the European Union and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, we rely on the assumption that a shared goal can be achieved with different solutions that consider the starting point of participating states. In terms of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, we consider the possible absence of centralized powers. JEL Classifications: F15, F55

The article examines the creation of an internal market in Europe and Southeast Asia from the perspective of constitutional economics. It assesses whether the success or failure of a regional integration process depends on the quality of the economic constitution that is chosen by participating countries, that is, on the set of rules and institutions, which bind the actions and transactions of operators within a jurisdiction and towards the operators of other jurisdictions. The article commences with an overview of the analytical instruments of constitutional economics in order to evaluate the success of a regional agreement on the basis of the ‘quality’ of its economic constitution. It then examines internal market creation in the EU and the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN). The article concludes that it is the commitment to the implementation of a social contract that determines the successful establishment of a single market

The EU’s immigration policy is evaluated from the standpoint of constitutional economics. The main conclusion is that European immigration policy is trapped in a system of constitutional regulations that is too rigid as it is exclusively oriented towards the protection and securitisation of European borders. As such, it is not capable of allowing the development of a problem-solving capacity based on successive trials, and this produces negative outcomes for the whole of the EU. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2007Immigration, Constitutional choice, F22,

No abstract

Il saggio considera due possibili debolezze della politica europea per le imprese. Trascu-rando la dimensione spaziale, rischia di perdere elementi economici ed istituzionali fonda-mentali per il funzionamento delle imprese e per i processi di innovazione. Inoltre, andrebbero considerati i problemi relativi alla natura multilivello della governance della politica europea, facilmente associabili ad una eccessiva attenzione ad armonizzare, semplificare od ottimizzare le regolamentazioni a favore delle imprese, ma, conseguentemente, anche a trascurare il fatto che la forza dell’Europa, in materia di innovazione, è legata alla ricchezza che nasce dalle differenze nazionali e locali. Il saggio intende analizzare questo problema di governance, ed in particolare il conflitto potenziale fra la omogeneità della politica europea e la diversità delle pratiche locali, delle culture e delle tradizioni che sono alla base della capacità inventiva dell’Europa nel suo insieme e di valutare, in questo ambito, l’utilizzazione del metodo aperto di coordinamento