ABSTRACT
This chapter accounts for the complex causation of judicial behavior. The Qualitative Comparitive Analysis (QCA) techniques helped to understand the interactions among explanatory conditions. The analysis demonstrated that diverse dimensions of judicial behaviour combine to produce the outcomes: judicial decisions were the result of interactions among legal, political and institutional conditions. In the analysis of declarations of Kompetenz-Kompetenz, the most salient aspects were the inner dynamics of the judicial field and the process of imitation between courts. The solution confirmed the intuition by Dyevre regarding the importance of courts powers of review, but also showed that other factors were relevant. It also underlined the importance of following integrative approaches where legal and political explanatory conditions are combined. The Maastricht-Urteil ruling has to be understood in the context of the exceptional institutional and constitutional circumstances of the German court, in particular Article 23 of the Basic Law.
