ABSTRACT
Introduction: Continuity and Discontinuity in Political and Legal Organizations
The last fifty and particularly the last twenty years have seen remarkable, unexpected and significant changes in the political and legal institutions in the developed countries in general and in Europe in particular. More or less stabilized democratic, executive and judicial institutions in the nation-states have been supplemented and changed by the emergence of regional, supra-and international institutions with more comprehensive and effective political and legal power than previously. The new international and regional organizations increasingly have supra-and international competences overlapping and even competing with nation-states’ own material competences, with direct or indirect effect for their territories and citizens.1 Their core legal competences have been on the regulation of free movement, trade and competition law rather than on social and protective regulation.
