Good breakups: a brief recap of the case for institutional competition, from a public law and economics perspective

The centrifugal drive currently being experienced in many jurisdictions and at different levels of government is typically perceived as a problem. In my paper, I would like to make a different case, if rather not the opposite, based on law and economics considerations: state fragmentation and dis-unity is, on the other way round a great opportunity for freedom and fundamental rights to thrive, and for Europe to live up to its glorious past. Overcoming the Westphalian model of state, and even the fictional notion of sovereignty as we have come to know it, is the only path that can offer a safe anchoring to democracy. Not embracing this view and continuing to argue in favour of “more of the same”, bears instead a huge risk that democracy twists up, and ingloriously loses the ongoing, epical battle to wall builders and closed-borders advocates.