"Explaining EU Policy Implementation Across Countries: Three Modes of Adaptation"

Abstract

The project group on "New Governance and Social Europe" (http://www.mpifg.de/socialeurope) studied 90 cases of implementation performance, related to six labour law Directives and 15 member states. We derived a large number of hypotheses as to when compliance or non-compliance with EU law should be expected from the different literatures on implementation theory and on "Europeanisation", and we formulated a couple of fresh hypotheses (see Chapters 2 and 14 of our book forthcoming with CUP). However, an untidy overall picture emerged at the end of this exercise: no causal arrow presupposed by existing theories or by our own theoretical considerations seemed either necessary or sufficient in practice across the 90 cases. We then followed the methodological recommendations of the "grounded theory" school to work on the theoretical and empirical levels repeatedly and in turn in order to allow fresh insights from each field to improve our work in the other. We thus went back to the information on each country that we had derived from our interviews and stopped simply testing the prevailing hypotheses against our cases. When re-focussing on the broader knowledge about the countries we had gained in the interviews, we finally discovered three clusters of countries, each showing a specific typical pattern of reacting to EU-induced reform requirements.

In fact, some EU member states displayed quite a regular pattern of compliance or non-compliance, regardless of how the specific provisions actually matched the relevant national policy legacies and governmental ideologies. We discerned three ideal-typical patterns of how member states handle the duty of complying with EU law, three different "worlds of compliance" within the EU15: a "world of law observance", a "world of domestic politics", and a "world of neglect". The specific results of particular examples of (non-)compliance tend to depend on different factors within each of the various worlds: the compliance cultures in the field can explain most cases in the worlds of law observance and neglect, while in the world of domestic politics the specific fit with domestic political preferences in each case plays a much larger role. These "worlds" are not necessarily visible if we only look at the overall implementation performance of member states. In contrast, our argument is that similar implementation records may be due to completely different factors in different groups of countries. We also do not claim that the categorisation of "three worlds of compliance" is able to predict individual cases of implementation in the member states. However, we feel confident that it does cover the typical patterns of how member states deal with their duty to comply with EU Directives – definitely in the area of social policy, but probably even far beyond that.

Full text

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Explaining EU Policy Implementation Across
Countries: Three Modes of Adaptation


by
Gerda Falkner and Oliver Treib
Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna
falkner@ihs.ac.at treib@ihs.ac.at



Presentation at the EUSA Ninth Biennial International Conference,
Austin, Texas, 31 March–2 April 2005


http://www.mpifg.de/socialeurope

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This document contains the summary of a text that will be
published as Chapter 15 of the following co-authored book:



Complying with Europe
EU Harmonisation and Soft Law
in the Member States



by

Gerda Falkner
Oliver Treib
Miriam Hartlapp
Simone Leiber





Draft version, spring 2004

(forthcoming, Cambridge University Press 2005)

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Manuscript Falkner/Treib/Hartlapp/Leiber Chapter 15: Three Worlds of Compliance spring 2004

1
15 Making Sense of Compliance Patterns: A Typology
Summary
The
(http://www.mpifg.de/socialeurope) studied 90 cases of implementation perform-
ance, related to six labour law Directives and 15 member states. We derived a
large number of hypotheses as to when compliance or non-compliance with EU
law should be expected from the different literatures on implementation theory
and on “Europeanisation”, and we formulated a couple of fresh hypotheses (see
Chapters 2 and 14 of our book forthcoming with CUP). However, an untidy over-
all picture emerged at the end of this exercise: no causal arrow pre-supposed by
existing theories or by our own theoretical considerations seemed either necessary
or sufficient in practice across the 90 cases.
project group on "New Governance and Social Europe"
We then followed the methodological recommendations of the “grounded theory”
school to work on the theoretical and empirical levels repeatedly and in turn in
order to allow fresh insights from each field to improve our work in the other. We
thus went back to the information on each country that we had derived from our
interviews and stopped simply testing the prevailing hypotheses against our cases.
When re-focussing on the broader knowledge about the countries we had gained
in the interviews, we finally discovered three clusters of countries, each showing a
specific typical pattern of reacting to EU-induced reform requirements.
In fact, some EU member states displayed quite a regular pattern of compliance or
non-compliance, regardless of how the specific provisions actually matched the
relevant national policy legacies and governmental ideologies. We discerned three
ideal-typical patterns of how member states handle the duty of complying with
EU law, three different “worlds of compliance” within the EU15: a “world of law
observance”, a “world of domestic politics”, and a “world of neglect”. The spe-
cific results of particular examples of (non-)compliance tend to depend on differ-
ent factors within each of the various worlds: the compliance cultures in the field
can explain most cases in the worlds of law observance and neglect, while in the
world of domestic politics the specific fit with domestic political preferences in
each case plays a much larger role.
These “worlds” are not necessarily visible if we only look at the overall imple-
mentation performance of member states. In contrast, our argument is that similar
implementation records may be due to completely different factors in different
groups of countries. We also do not claim that the categorisation of “three worlds
of compliance” is able to predict individual cases of implementation in the mem-

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Manuscript Falkner/Treib/Hartlapp/Leiber Chapter 15: Three Worlds of Compliance spring 2004

2
ber states. However, we feel confident that it does cover the typical patterns of
how member states deal with their duty to comply with EU Directives – definitely
in the area of social policy, but probably even far beyond that.
In this context, a crucial question is how a “world of law observance” can persist
next to other worlds that do not take their EU-related duties as seriously. Our re-
search revealed a number of elements that can be combined to form a larger pic-
ture suggesting a “socio-political mechanism” that reinforces tendencies to take
compliance seriously.
This mechanism interrelates cultural and actor-related aspects in stressing that in-
stitutionalised patterns create expectations and cost–benefit calculations that in-
duce actors (here governments) to behave in a certain way. Although this is
deemed to be a probabilistic mechanism rather than an automatism – governments
may at times act against a national culture of good compliance – our cases indi-
cate every bit as much as aggregate statistics that this “good compliance mecha-
nism” produces rather regular effects in some member states.
A number of facilitating factors may support the birth or continuation of a good
compliance culture: consensus orientation, corporatism, a culture of law-
abidingness and an administration that is both reliable and transparent. These
background conditions tend to make good compliance easier to establish and up-
hold if a government prioritises compliance. At the same time, it is not impossible
to improve compliance records in any given member state, even in the absence of
these facilitating factors.

If you are interested in receiving draft chapters for feedback, please contact
(falkner@ihs.ac.at). Related articles on specific sub-topics can be found on
our project homepage: http://www.mpifg.de/socialeurope.

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INSTITUT FÜR HÖHERE STUDIEN
ABTEILUNG POLITIKWISSENSCHAFT
INSTITUTE FOR ADVANCED STUDIES
DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE






Complying with Europe
EU Harmonisation and Soft Law in the Member States

Gerda Falkner
Oliver Treib
Miriam Hartlapp
Simone Leiber

Cambridge University Press 2005

What does EU law truly mean for the member states? Do they abide or
don’t they? This book presents the first encompassing and in-depth em-
pirical study of the effects of ‘voluntaristic’ and partly ‘soft’ EU policies in
the member states. The authors examine 90 case studies across a range
of EU Directives and shed light on burning contemporary issues in politi-
cal science, integration theory, and social policy. They reveal that there
are major implementation failures and that, to date, the European Com-
mission has not been able adequately to perform its control function.
While all countries are occasional non-compliers, some quite frequently
put their domestic political concerns above the requirements of EU law.
Others neglect these EU obligations as a matter of course. This innova-
tive study answers questions of crucial importance for politics in theory
and in practice, and suggests how implementation of EU law can be fos-
tered in the future.

For further information, please consult our website:
http://www.mpifg.de/socialeurope