Despite the vast literature on policy implementation, systematic cross‐national research focusing on implementers’ performance regarding different policy issues is still in its infancy. The European Union policies are conducive to examining this relationship in a comparative setting, as the EU member states need to implement various EU directives both legally and in practice. In this study, a first attempt is made to analyse the relationship between legal conformity and practical implementation and the conditions for practical deviations in 27 member states across issues from four policy areas (Internal Market, Environment, Justice and Home Affairs and Social Policy). In line with existing approaches to EU compliance, it is expected that the policy preferences of domestic political elites (‘enforcement’) affect their incentives to ‘decouple’ practical from legal compliance. Instead, administrative and institutional capacities (‘management’) and societal constraints (‘legitimacy’) are likely to limit the ability of policy makers to exert control over the implementation process. The findings suggest that practical deviations arise from policy makers’ inability to steer the implementation process, regardless of their predispositions towards internationally agreed policies. The results have strong implications for the effective application of international rules in domestic settings, as they illustrate that political support for the implementation of ‘external’ policy does not ensure effective implementation in practice.

Whereas quantitative studies show that the 'new' EU entrants from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are the forerunners in the transposition of EU directives, case studies indicate the existence of a gap between legal and practical compliance. This study aims to reconcile these divergent findings by comparing member states' performance regarding different compliance aspects: delayed transposition; legal and practical conformity. We address the following questions: Do we observe systematic variation in compliance (a) between different EU member states, (b) between different forms of compliance? To what extent do preference-and capacity-based factors explain differences in implementation between the EU-15 and the EU-10 states? Our analysis shows that the CEE member states are generally more efficient in transposing the EU rules than their Western counterparts. In addition and with the exception of social policy directives, the CEE member states do not lag behind the EU-15 countries with respect to practical implementation.

Monitoring the implementation process in domestic settings of multi-level policies like the EU gender directives is dependent on interactions among a diverse set of policy stakeholders. However, there is no clear understanding of which factors determine the structure of these monitoring networks and what benefits effective exchange. Drawing on insights from social network theory, literature on information politics in transnational networks and policy network analysis, this study analyses what drives information exchange among actors in the monitoring network of women’s groups in the Netherlands. Using Exponential Random Graph Models, the analysis reveals distinctive structural features facilitating efficient information exchange and significant brokerage in the monitoring network. Moreover, the results demonstrate that interactions that serve the purpose of monitoring EU policy implementation occur among a diverse set of actors in a multi-level structure. These findings indicate that effective monitoring requires resourceful and broad-based information exchange to increase transparency in the implementation process.