Toward a better understanding of implementation performance in the EU multilevel system

Abstract

The results of this collection allow for preliminary conclusions about the nuanced interplay between Europeanization and domestication forces in EU implementation, which await testing in different contexts. Some policies lend themselves more to a strategy allowing for extensive domestication than others; but to be effective, decentralized implementing actors need both power and capabilities. Europeanization dynamics strongly influence the direction of domestication of EU policy, but if EU requirements are incompatible with national political preferences domestication trumps Europeanization. Domestication equally prevails if the relationship between EU and national policy is ambiguous and frontline implementers have high discretion. The trend toward the Europeanization of direct EU enforcement challenges its legitimacy. This has implications for EU researchers and practitioners, and suggests methodological challenges and future research trajectories for a performance perspective on EU implementation. More comparative research is needed about the trade-offs between conformance, diversity, and performance in EU multilevel governance.

Europe at the frontline: analysing street-level motivations for the use of European Union migration law

“…Follow-up studies should add external validity by bringing in a cross-country or cross-sectoral comparative perspective (Thomann and Sager 2017b). That is to say, what role does EU law play for implementers who operate under less discretion?…”

What's the Problem? Multilevel Governance and Problem‐Solving

“…We adopt Sabatier's (: 3) encompassing definition of policy‐making as a process in which “problems are conceptualized and brought to government for solution; governmental institutions formulate alternatives and select policy solutions; and those solutions get implemented, evaluated, and revised.” Problem‐solving can thereby be conceived of either as a process, for example, a specific policy‐making mode, that aims at dealing with pressing policy challenges (Héritier, ; Scharpf, ; Trein et al., 2019b). Or we can think of problem‐solving from an outcome‐oriented, operational perspective, that is, whether and how a policy achieves results that solve the original policy problem at stake (Thomann & Sager, ,b). Accordingly, problem‐solving happens at different stages of the policy cycle such as decision making, instrument choice, and policy implementation.…”

The Differentiated Implementation of European Participation Rules in Energy Infrastructure Planning. Why Does the German Participation Regime Exceed European Requirements?

“…If we had viewed the policy process from “top down,” we would have concluded a problem of compliance. However, if we broaden our perspective to see Europeanization as problem‐solving attempts of domestic governments (Thomann & Sager, ), we see how Germany used a customized implementation of a European directive to solve two domestic policy problems: The lack of legitimacy of grid planning and lack of progress of grid building. However, we are aware of the limitations of our analysis.…”

“…However, we are aware of the limitations of our analysis. Bottom‐up studies of implementation are hard to generalize to other countries or even to other policy fields (Thomann & Sager, ; Thomann & Zhelyazkova, ).…”

“…However, recent scholarship argues that compliance and convergence are too simple to capture the complexities of implementation in EU multilevel governance (Heidbreder, ; Thomann & Sager, ,b). Legal compliance is only one dimension of implementation, which is a complex attempt of member states to “domesticate” (Bugdahn, ) or “customize” (Thomann, ; Thomann & Zhelyazkova, ) EU policies to suit their needs.…”