"'Europeanization' of national policies: Linking the multi-level-governance approach with theories of policy learning and policy change"

Conzelmann, Thomas. (1997) "'Europeanization' of national policies: Linking the multi-level-governance approach with theories of policy learning and policy change". In: UNSPECIFIED, Seattle, WA. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

"Multilevel governance" (MLG) has become an increasingly important concept for describing the institutional development of the European Union and the political processes between its different territorial levels. Yet, while much attention has been paid to the implications of MLG for the constitutional and political order of the European nation state (i.e., questions of polity and politics), there is still very little discussion regarding the possible transformation of member states' public policies through MLG. This paper tries to establish a link between the MLG literature and contributions of a policy analytical nature in order to fill this gap. The hypothesis is that EC policies may trigger domestic policy reforms through several transmission belts, namely 1) the mushrooming of transgovernmental networks which provide the arenas within which policy learning may take place, 2) changing preferences of important actors within the national policy networks, and 3) changes in the domestic policy networks themselves, in particular with respect to the upgrading of hitherto underrepresented actors. To test this explanatory model, the paper takes the EC's regional policies and their impact on the regional policy domain in Germany as an example. It is demonstrated that in some instances a clear effect of EC policies on the development of the corresponding national policy seems to exist, and that the transmission belts identified above provide a useful way of thinking about these changes. Among the important limitations of this effort are the impossibility to demonstrate unambiguous causal links between the presence of the EC's regional policy and transformations in the national policy domain. Furthermore, empirical evidence from other countries and/or other policy domains is needed in order to specify the conditions under which "learning" or "power" is more important.

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