The National Impact of EU Regulatory Policy : three Europeanization Mechanisms

Abstract

While much has been written about the European Union (EU), most of the scholarly work is concerned with the developments at the European level. It is only recently, that we observe increasing attempts to address this research deficit. Notwithstanding a growing number of studies explicitly concerned with the Europeanization of domestic institutions, we still lack consistent and systematic concepts to account for the varying patterns of institutional adjustment across countries and policy sectors. It is the aim of this paper to provide a more comprehensive framework for explaining the domestic impact of European policy-making. We make an analytical distinction between three mechanisms of Europeanization, namely institutional compliance, changing domestic opportunity structures, and framing domestic beliefs and expectations, each of which requires a distinctive approach in order to explain its domestic impact. We argue that it is this specific Europeanization mechanism rather than the nominal category of the policy area that is the most important factor to be considered when investigating the domestic impact of varying European policies.