Harmonisation and convergence? National responses to the common European transport policy.

Extract

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Harmonisation and convergence? National responses to the common European transport policy.

Abstract

Over the past decade, an increasing amount of scholarly attention has been shifted away from processes of institution-building and policy-making at the European level and, instead, has focused on the impact of European integration on national political and administrative institutions, policies and politics. Coined as Europeanisation, this strand of research challenges expectations of far a reaching harmonization and convergence of policies and politics in EU Member States. Rather, it has been shown that European influences are processed differently in the Member States, and, thus, are causing differential responses at the national level. Comparing road haulage and railway policies in five European countries, the article provides evidence for Europe's differential impact. It identifies a spectrum of reforms of national transport markets, with a hard-core, pro-competitive disengagement of the state in Britain at the one end and an Italian-style refusal of reform by private actors at the other, while France, Germany and the Netherlands ranging between these poles.

Introduction (1)

Since its early days, research on European integration has primarily addressed processes of institution-building and policymaking at the European level. In theoretical terms, the debate between neofunctionalism, (liberal) intergovernmentalism, and, more recently, constructivist and multilevel governance approaches helped to cope with the dynamics and particularities of the emerging European polity. In empirical terms, there is a rich body of literature that describes both similarities and differences between policy sectors. Contrasting this rich theoretical and empirical knowledge about the "bottom-up" perspective at the European level, relatively little attention has been paid to the impact of European integration on domestic political and social processes of the Member States. Only over the past decade, an increasing amount of scholarly attention has focused on the consequences of European integration in the framework of the EU for national political and administrative institutions, policies and politics.

The concept of Europeanisation, however, is still subject of controversial debates involving its definition, domains or focus and scope of research. (2) For the present purpose, Europeanisation refers to the question of how European decisions impact upon Member States' political and administrative structures and policies. More specifically, the article is concerned with the extent to which the implementation of European policies implies changes to domestic institutions such as dominant regulatory approaches, decisionmaking structures and patterns of implementation in a particular policy sector. By providing an in-depths analysis of the changes in the road haulage and railway policies in five European countries, that is France, Great ...

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