THEORIZING DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE:  
THE IMPACT OF THE EU ON NATIONAL AND SECTORAL POLICYMAKING  
PROCESSES






Vivien A. Schmidt
Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration
Boston University
152 Bay State Road
Boston MA 02215
Tel:  617 358 0192
Fax:  617 3539290
Email:  vschmidt@bu.edu










Paper prepared for delivery to the Biannual Meetings of the European Union Studies Association 
(Austin TX, Mar. 31- April 3, 2005)





THEORIZING DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE:
THE IMPACT OF THE EU ON NATIONAL AND SECTORAL POLICYMAKING  PROCESSES


When the EU Commission in the "White Paper on Governance" in 2000 called for more 
transparency and openness in EU policymaking, with greater participation in EU governance by 
'civil society,' it was seeking to address the self-same democratic deficit in EU level 
policymaking processes that the future Constitutional Convention was to attempt to address 
through institutional redesign.  This initiative was not only unprecedented in its ambition to 
create a more deliberative democracy in the policy sphere.  It was also very necessary, given 
public perceptions of a closed club at the EU level making policy behind closed doors, to the 
detriment of national policies and policymaking prerogatives.  The opaqueness of the 
policymaking process, made worse by the complexity of the EU's institutions, led the public at 
large to hold the EU in a growing suspicion that only greater openness in terms of public 
information and access could hope to alleviate.  But efforts to galvanize societal actors to 
participate in decision-making at the EU level address only part of the problems with regard to 
the democratic deficit.  This is because EU level processes have already, by their very presence, 
affected national policymaking processes, that is, the traditional ways in which state actors make 
policy and societal actors have access to policymaking through national circuits of interest 
consultation.  And this in turn has challenged the procedural bases for national democracy.  

The EU has a 'quasi-pluralist' system of policymaking in which interests have reasonably 
open access and influence in policy formulation but not in implementation, where regulatory and 
legalistic enforcement is the rule.  By laying this 'quasi-pluralist' system on top of the systems of 
its member-states, the EU has effectively 'pluralized' national policy formulation processes by 
moving the locus of interest access and influence from national capitals to Brussels while it has 
'juridified' its member-states' implementation processes by promoting more regulatory and 
legalistic modes of enforcement.  But this has had a differential impact on EU's member-states' 
own policymaking processes, depending upon where their patterns of policymaking sit along a 
continuum from statist to corporatist processes.  

The EU has had a more disruptive impact on countries with statist processes than on 
those with corporatist processes mainly as result of their institutional 'fit' (or lack thereof) with 
the EU.  The EU's pluralist openness to interests in policy formulation and regulatory and 
legalistic approach to implementation does not fit very well with simple polities such as Britain 
and France, where interests have traditionally had little access or influence in statist policy 
formulation but have been accommodated through flexible policy implementation, either by 
making exceptions to the rules as often as not (in France) or limiting the number of rules to allow 
self-governing arrangements (in Britain).  The EU fits better with compound polities like 
Germany, where certain interests have traditionally had access and influence in policy 
formulation and implementation through corporatist processes while enforcement, where not 
corporatist, has been legalistic.  For Italy, the fit is more mixed: better in policy formulation 
when societal interests have had access and influence through corporatist processes but not when 
those processes have been clientelist, worse in all cases of policy implementation, given that Italy 
has traditionally derogated the rules much more than even France.

These general patterns of adaptation to the EU require further differentiation with regard 
to specific policy sectors, however, because EU and/or national policymaking patterns may differ 
from their more general 'macro' pattern.  EU and member-state 'micro' patterns in any given 
policy sector may resemble statist  or pluralist 'issues networks,' pluralist or corporatist 'policy 
communities,' depending upon how dominant the state or societal actors, how loosely or closely 
connected, and how competitive or cooperative they are.  Such patterns in turn determine the 
potential impact of the EU, which may serve to increase or decrease the influence of state and/or 
societal actors depending upon the configuration of EU and national sector.  Further 
complicating matters, however, is the fact that the actual impact of the EU itself may not be the 
expected one.   The EU could have a direct impact, by imposing a particular process on national 
policymaking; an indirect impact, by serving mainly as a learning experience to which a member-
state may be receptive or resistant; a knock-on effect, by instituting a policy that unravels 
traditional policymaking processes; or it could have no impact at all, as national processes 
continue largely unchanged whatever the EU pattern or EU-mandated process.

In this paper, I begin with a consideration of the relationship between institutional 
structures and policymaking processes, then examine the nature of the 'macro' policymaking 
patterns in the EU and its member-states, and finally explore the 'micro' patterns of relations in 
policy sectors.  I illustrate with the cases of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy.

POLICYMAKING PROCESSES IN  INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE 

No adequate theory about policymaking processes in the EU can be developed without 
taking account of the institutional structures in which they operate, just as no full understanding 
of institutional structures can be attained without seeing how they are operationalized by 
policymaking processes.  Universalistic generalizations about the articulation between different 
parts of structural systems—whether by rationalist theories of delegation from principals to 
agents or by functionalist theories about structural complementarities and spillovers—cannot 
sufficiently account for the ways in which different kinds of processes affect how institutions 
actually work.  This is because studies of state structures and functions typically fail to consider 
how they articulate with society.  Similarly, moreover, universalistic generalizations about the 
patterns of societal interest intermediation in policy formulation—whether in terms of policy 
networks, issues networks, policy communities, and so on—do not sufficiently take account of 
how institutions structure the policymaking process.  This is because studies of societal action 
fail to specify adequately the kind of state (and state actors) with which they interact.  What is 
more, neither kinds of studies can sufficiently account for the patterns of cooperation or 
competition within institutional structures and policymaking processes without taking on board 
the impact of politics—whether in majoritarian or proportional representation systems.

To understand fully the institutional embeddedness of policymaking processes, we need 
to put state and societal structures together.  This is best conceptualized by considering the 
configuration of state and societal structures in terms of their levels of concentration or 
fragmentation.  With regard to institutional structures, unitary states tend to be characterized by 
greater concentration of power and authority in the executive, federal and regionalized states with 
a more fragmented power dispersed through multiple authorities.  With regard to societal 
structures, by which I mean the organization of interests, key dividing lines consist of either 
concentration through vertically connected peak associations or fragmentation through more 
horizontally structured, less interconnected interest groups.  Putting these state and societal 
structures together in a four-fold table shows some revealing patterns of policymaking processes 
(see Table 1).  
[Table 1 about here]

In cases where state and societal structures are both concentrated, the result of unitary 
states engaging with highly organized interests, we find the strong form of corporatism typical of 
countries like the Netherlands and Sweden, in which the state acts as a co-equal with certain 
'privileged' interests,' generally business and labor, in policy formulation and implementation.  
In cases where societal structures are concentrated but the state is fragmented, as highly 
organized interests confront federal or regionalized state structures, we get the weaker corporatist 
processes of Germany and Italy (since 1992), although clientelism in the case of Italy is another 
possibility.  Here, societal actors generally play a stronger role than the more fragmented state in 
policy formulation and implementation.  By contrast, where state structures are concentrated but 
societal ones are fragmented, in cases where a unitary state faces disorganized interests, we get 
statist processes, as in France and the UK.  Here, the state generally formulates policy alone, 
without interest involvement, but implements policy flexibly through accommodation with 
interests.  Finally, where both state and societal structures are fragmented, as federal or 
regionalized states engage with disorganized interests, we get pluralism, as in the US and the EU.  
Here, policy formulation is open to a wide range of organized interests but closed in 
implementation, which tends to be regulatory or legalistic in form, as the policies are applied 
without exception (see Table 2).
[Table 2 about here]

This kind of fourfold table, however, does not do justice to the changing degrees of 
concentration or fragmentation of state and society in different countries and sectors at different 
times.  Thus, it may be more useful to consider the same relationship along two axes, one going 
from state concentration to fragmentation, the other from societal concentration to fragmentation.  
This would also allow us to see changes over time as a result of changing structures and 
relationships due to a range of other factors, such as increasing state concentration, decreasing 
societal fragmentation, changes in patterns of state and societal cooperation or competition, and 
the like (see Figure 1).  For example, Italy, which has long been characterized by fragmented 
state and societal structures (putting it on the line between pluralist and weak corporatist 
policymaking processes), experienced an increase in the 1990s in the concentration of its state 
structures in response to electoral reforms and EU-related responsibilities and its societal 
structures as a result of greater internal cohesion and cooperation of business associations and 
organized labor.  By contrast, in Sweden, long characterized by concentrated state and societal 
structures that ensured a strong version of corporatism, the breakdown in cooperative relations 
between employers and unions in national level corporatism in the early 1980s has weakened the 
corporatist relationship, although it still continues at a sectoral level.   The Netherlands, by way 
of comparison, has changed little with regard to state-society relations, as has Germany.  France 
and the UK, however, have both moved toward a bit less state concentration, due to 
devolutionary and deregulatory reforms in both countries, whereas they have moved in differing 
directions in terms of societal organization.  The UK has increased its societal fragmentation as a 
result of Thatcher's crushing of the unions and Blair's devolution in Scotland, Wales, and 
Northern Ireland, although it started from a higher level of interest concentration than in France, 
where societal concentration has been increasing as interests organize more while the state acts 
more to promote corporatist-like negotiations between business and labor 'in the shadow of the 
state'.   The EU itself has also changed, moving from greater state concentration in the early 
years, with comparatively little input from highly fragmented societal actors, to greater state 
fragmentation accompanied by somewhat greater societal concentration, as interests have 
coalesced in the process of gaining access and influence in EU policymaking while more and 
more state actors have entered, the result of successive enlargements.
[Figure 1 about here]

There is yet another level of complication to the interaction of state and societal 
structures, however, which comes from politics.  Majoritarian and proportional representation 
systems also have an influence on state and societal interactions. Majoritarian systems which 
concentrate power in the majority party or coalition of parties, as in Britain and France, tend to 
polarize state actors along political lines as well as to promote greater competition more 
generally among societal actors.  By contrast, proportional systems which tend to diffuse power 
among a wider range of parties, as in Germany and Italy, tend to promote compromise among 
state actors and to depend on cooperation between state and societal actors.  

Both institutional structures and representative politics, then, have an important impact on 
policymaking processes, with institutions affecting the structure of state-society relations and 
politics affecting their tone.   Complicating matters further is that the EU's state-society relations 
have an impact on national state-society relations, which themselves differ from the EU and from 
one another.
THE EU'S 'QUASI-PLURALIST' POLICYMAKING IN PERSPECTIVE

Although European policymaking processes do not fit any national model of 
policymaking, they are closest to a model of "transnational pluralism"  and most comparable to 
the pluralism of the United States.  No traditional, national pattern of state-society relations quite 
describes the complexities of the EU, given the openness of a policymaking process managed by 
Commission officials in an anticipatory and cooperative manner in which interest representation 
is "sectorally structured and linked with a complex and often rather incoherent issue network of 
groups or organizations across Europe and beyond."    The EU is, above all, characterized by 
practices that are generally more flexible, heterogeneous, and issue-specific than in any 
corresponding national context  while the unpredictability of the policy agenda in the EU, the 
result of a "system of uncertain agendas, shifting networks and complex coalitions,"  makes it 
akin to a "garbage can model" of policymaking.   What is more, the EU has several distinct 
policymaking patterns rather than a single, overall one—joint decision-making in most everyday 
decisions, regulatory implementation, intergovernmental decision-making in the European 
Council and Treaties, supranational decision-making in cases such as competition policy and the 
ECJ, and the open method of coordination.    Taken together, for purposes of comparison, these 
patterns make up an overall system which is closer to the pluralism of the US than to either the 
statism of more simple polities like France and Britain or to the corporatism of compound 
polities like Germany and Italy—thus the moniker 'quasi-pluralist' for the EU system as a whole.

Although the EU policy process may be more pluralist than anything else, it exhibits 
significant differences from that of the United States in the kinds of powers, interactions and 
policy style of state actors.  Overall, the EU's societal actors enjoy a pluralism that is more close 
and cooperative than that of the U.S.—as EU 'state' actors (read the Commission) actively 
engage with societal interests in the development of policy rather than keeping an arms' length, 
to arbitrate among them.  However, the process itself is also more controlled by EU state actors 
who can decide which societal actors with whom to talk and who are more insulated from the 
pressures of undue influence or the dangers of agency capture of the kind found in the United 
States.  This is largely because of the plethora of public actors as well as the vast societal 'issues 
networks' which enable EU state actors to choose among a much wider range of ideas and 
proposals than is often available to national governments.   Moreover, the process also avoids 
both the politics of money and to a large extent the politics of party found in the US.  This is 
because apolitical EU civil servants rather than partisan legislators and their staffs are the 
primary drafters of legislation and because the EU parliament, where parties are in any case not 
highly consolidated, plays a lesser role as co-decision maker and consultative body.  

At the same time that the EU may therefore be less politicized in its pluralism than the 
U.S., however, it is also less "pluralistic" in the kinds of interests represented as well as in their 
access and potential influence.  Whereas in the U.S., any interest that organizes itself is regarded 
as legitimate so long as it can make itself heard, in the EU, the EU Commission acts as a 
'gatekeeper' in deciding which interests are legitimately to be allowed in.  In its efforts in recent 
years to increase openness and transparency in response to the perceived problems of the 
'democratic deficit,' however, the EU Commission has been more and more open to any societal 
interests that knock on the door as well as more active in recruiting a representative set of 
interests.  The problem for 'democracy' in the EU policy formulation process is that some 
interests—mainly business—are always knocking at the door and coming in.    This is why 
David Coen has characterized the EU's intermediation process as 'elite pluralism.'    More 
diffuse interests focused on consumers, women, the environment, and human rights issues, by 
contrast, have had difficulty organizing themselves even to find the door, let alone to knock or to 
know how to act effectively once they enter.  And where they do enter, the most influential of 
such interests come not from European associations directly representing national member 
associations but from international non-governmental organizations (INGOs), peopled by 
professionals, which have set up offices in Brussels—especially the case of the environment —
or from European NGOs—the case of immigration policy.   

Thus, the EU system of interest representation is less open than that of the U.S., with the 
overall number and variety of interests represented more restricted and more heavily weighted in 
favor of producer interests.  But it is less subject nonetheless to the abuses of undue influence, 
and the system itself has been generating counter-weights to what might be seen as narrow 
business interest either by creating more avenues for participation or by introducing 
considerations of the "general interest" or the public good, of women's rights, of consumer 
protection, of environmental protection, and so forth, as by-products of EU Commission policy 
initiatives, ECJ decisions, and the generalization of prior member-state legislation.  

But whereas the EU's pluralist policy formulation process may avoid some of the worst 
problems of the U.S., even admitting the EU's own problems with regard to access and 
representation, in the EU's policy implementation process it courts many more than the U.S.  
Although the EU's pluralism greatly resembles that of the U.S. at the implementation stage, given 
a regulatory  approach in which the rules are to apply equally to all, with any exceptions seen as 
illegitimate, there is one significant difference.   In the U.S., federal civil servants for the most 
part implement the rules (albeit sometimes in tandem with or in addition to state-level civil 
servants) according to the same procedures, and therefore ensure great relative uniformity in 
application (except in cases of devolved policies, the most notable example in recent years being 
the new welfare reform of l996).  By contrast, in the EU, the process is more complex, given that 
member-states themselves implement regulations as well as transpose directives into national law 
and then implement them according to national procedures.  This has led to problems that are 
much greater than in the U.S. with respect to enforcing the equal application of the rules.  The 
difficulties here are not only in ensuring that all member-states actually transpose the rules in 
keeping with the spirit of EU legislation but also that they apply the rules uniformly—or even 
apply them at all.  Enforcement is the black hole of the EU, since it depends not only upon the 
Commission to take action in cases of transposition or compliance failure but also upon national 
citizens and courts being aware of the EU rules and willing to bring cases of non-compliance to 
the attention of the authorities.
NATIONAL STATIST AND CORPORATIST POLICYMAKING IN PERSPECTIVE

Although the EU's policymaking processes are most akin to the pluralist and regulatory 
processes of the United States, they nonetheless also bear some resemblance to the statist and 
corporatist processes of its member-states.  Most importantly, the dominance of civil servants as 
gate-keepers in the policy formulation process, with their greater powers of policy initiation and 
their greater control over the interest articulation process, introduces a statist element into the 
system akin to that found in France and the UK.  The EU's more cooperative engagement with 
interests in policy formulation, by contrast, brings it closer to corporatist patterns of interaction 
typical of Germany, as does the fact that the EU explicitly promotes corporatist arrangements in a 
number of areas.  These similarities are minor, however, compared to the differences between 
the EU's policymaking processes and those of its member-states.  
National Patterns of Policymaking and the EU's Differential Impact
In the EU's quasi-pluralist policymaking process, the EU has allowed an ever-expanding 
set of societal actors into the policy formulation (even if business has the most access) while 
keeping them for the most part out of implementation, where regulatory and legalistic approaches 
apply.  By contrast, EU member-states can be situated along a continuum from statist to 
corporatist processes (see Figure 2).  For member-states closer to the statist end of the continuum 
like France, Britain, and Greece, societal interests have traditionally been little involved in policy 
formulation but have generally been accommodated in implementation whereas for member-
states closer to the corporatist end of the continnuum, certain societal interests, mainly business 
and labor, have traditionally had privileged access to both policy formulation and 
implementation.   
[Figure 2 about here]

In simple polities, statist policymaking processes are framed by unitary institutional 
structures in which state actors with greater concentration of power and authority interact with 
more fragmented and horizontally organized societal actors.  But the fact that concentrated state 
actors meet fragmented societal actors does not entail that the state has complete autonomy and 
control over policymaking.  For both France and Britain, the image of an all-powerful state 
supported by unitary structures that centralize authority in the executive, enabling it to formulate 
policies without the counter-balancing of  intermediary societal interests, let alone other branches 
or levels of government, has traditionally been mitigated by flexibility in policy implementation.  

In compound polities, corporatist policymaking processes are framed by institutional 
structures that run the gamut from unitary through regionalized to federal states, in which state 
actors are weaker or stronger depending upon how concentrated or fragmented their power and 
authority while societal actors tend to be highly concentrated and organized.  This leads to 
corporatist policymaking processes in which state actors generally formulate and implement 
policies in tandem with certain 'privileged' societal actors, generally business and labor.  For 
weaker corporatist systems like federal Germany or regionalized Italy, the question is much less 
one of who controls the process as to whether it works cooperatively or not at all, given the 
power of societal actors to block action where they do not agree with state actors.  In stronger 
corporatist systems like unitary Sweden or the Netherlands, blockage may be less of a problem 
because when societal actors cannot agree, the state often has the power and/or capacity to 
proceed.  

It is clear that the EU's pattern of policymaking differs significantly from those of its 
member-states.  To picture these differences, we can usefully think of the differences in state and 
societal interactions between the EU and its member-states not only in terms of who meets with 
whom in the policy process but also in terms of who talks and/or listens to whom in terms of 
what I call the coordinative discourse of policy construction.   In the 'coordinative' discourse, 
the main interlocutors are policy actors—experts, organized interests, civil servants, elected 
officials, and public figures—who coordinate  agreement often using ideas conveyed by policy 
"entrepreneurs" and/or developed in  discursive communities—whether "policy networks" based 
on the exchange of ideas; "epistemic communities" united on the basis of shared ideas; 
"advocacy coalitions" which share both ideas and access to policymaking; or "strong publics" 
that critically deliberate about policies.    In different policymaking systems, the balance of state 
and societal actors in terms of who talks and who listens to whom when tends to differ.  

In both strong and weak corporatist systems, state and societal actors tend to talk and 
listen to one another in both formulation and implementation processes.  In statist systems, state 
actors tend to talk and act, societal actors to listen and react in policy formulation, while in policy 
implementation state actors also talk, but as often as not they listen to and accommodate societal 
interests.  In pluralist systems, by contrast, in policy formulation societal actors tend to talk more 
than state actors, who listen more and accommodate societal views, whereas in regulatory policy 
implementation state actors tend to talk and act more and societal actors to listen (see Figure 3).
[Figure 3 about here]

Given these definitions, it should be clear that the EU' pluralist patterns of policymaking 
and discourse differs from both the statist and corporatist patterns of its member-states.  But 
although it is therefore obvious that national state and societal actors' participation in EU 
processes will have an impact on all national patterns, it stands to reason that where there is a 
closer match between EU and national processes, national state and societal actors' participation 
in EU processes will have less of a disruptive effect on national patterns than where there is little 
match.  Thus, the EU is potentially more disruptive to statist patterns of policymaking, where the 
pattern of state-societal interaction is the reverse of that of the EU, than to corporatist patterns of 
policymaking, where the pattern is closer.  

Very generally speaking, in statist systems, the EU is likely to include societal voices in 
policy formulation processes from which they had long been excluded and to exclude them from 
an implementation process in which they had previously been included.  In corporatist systems, 
by contrast, it is likely only to add societal voices to those already included in policy formulation 
while in policy implementation, it only sometimes excludes societal voices traditionally 
included—because it makes exceptions for corporatist implementation processes. 

More specifically, adaptation to the EU's policy formulation process has arguably been 
harder for state actors in statist systems such as France and Britain because the EU eliminates 
their virtual monopoly on policy formulation by bringing in other state actors as well as other 
societal actors at the EU level.  It has arguably not been quite as difficult for state actors in 
corporatist systems such as Germany or Italy mainly because they never had the same kind of 
monopoly on policy formulation, given consultation processes that brought in other (subnational) 
state actors as well as societal actors.  The EU's pluralist interest intermediation process, 
moreover, clashes with statist intermediation processes, since state actors regard the influence of 
lobbies as illegitimate and traditionally use their formal consultation process with a goal more 
toward informing than incorporating interest views.    By contrast, it tends to complement 
corporatist processes in which state actors, much as in the EU, albeit with a more restricted 
groups of societal actors, actively encourage organized interest representation, listen when they 
consult, and incorporate interest group recommendations in their own.     

Similarly, moreover, the EU's regulatory model that allows no exceptions to the rules 
clashes with statist flexibility in implementation—since derogation of the rules (as in France) has 
become illegal while statutory rules, rather than voluntary arrangements (as in Britain), have 
become the norm.  Adaptation has been less difficult for countries with corporatist policymaking 
processes, mainly because the EU has generally allowed corporatist processes to continue where 
they existed in policy implementation.  In non-corporatist policy areas, however, while Germany 
still benefits from a reasonable 'goodness of fit' since its implementation processes have 
traditionally been regulatory or legalistic, the adaptational problems for Italy are much greater.

The full story in terms of adaptation to the EU is of course a much more textured one than 
that just sketched out.  History, culture, politics, and time play a large role in explaining why, 
within the general lines of the patterns delineated about, there is nonetheless significant variation 
in national patterns of development and adaptation to the EU (see Table 2).
[Table 2 about here]
France  
In France, the traditional vision of 'heroic' policy formulation by a state acting without 
consultation of interests has been balanced out by a policy implementation process that has long 
been characterized by the politics of accommodation in order to avoid confrontation.   In recent 
times, moreover, while the Jacobin vision of state action unsullied by interest interaction has 
remained, the reality has changed.  Societal actors have become more involved in policy 
formulation as associations have grown in importance over time  and social movements in 
strength  while the state has consulted more through mandated associational representation in a 
wide range of policy areas such as the family, urban and regional planning, and the environment; 
through committees of sages gathering public views on controversial subjects such as citizenship 
and the head scarf in schools; and through concertation between business and labor 'in the 
shadow of the state,' as in the case of the 35 hour work week.  But societal actors have also been 
less accommodated through administrative discretion in policy implementation given the turn to 
regulation in an ever-widening number of domains.  

The EU has been a significant factor in these patterns of change, although internal 
dynamics have also played a large role.  Of our four country cases, France has arguably been 
most affected by a misfit in policymaking processes with regard to adaptation to the EU.  In 
policy formulation, French societal actors have had a very steep learning curve, given that 
national level lobbying has traditionally been seen as illegitimate, with only lobbying 'à la 
francaise' acceptable, which entailed taking people out to lunch and relying on political 
arbitration late in the process rather than getting in early with solid technical information.  But 
not only have French businesses in particular learned the EU lessons well, they have also been 
greatly empowered with regard to policymaking input by comparison with their national 
experience.   At the EU level, big firms often now act as partners of the French government in 
lobbying the Commission at the same time that they have developed a certain autonomy that has 
enabled them to forge alliances with other large firms to promote its goals.   All in all, however, 
even though French businesses have surely learned to do better, their continuing national 
experience, where lobbying remains illegitimate, leaves them at a continuing disadvantage at the 
EU level while state actors' lack of regular consultation leaves them increasingly dissatisfied.   In 
consequence, the MEDEF, the employers' association, having been denied a more equal voice in 
the coordinative discourse of policy construction, has become increasing assertive since the late 
1990s, having developed a communicative voice of its own that is sometimes the only strong 
voice to be heard challenging state actors on neo-liberal grounds. 

The EU has had an even greater impact in policy implementation.  The EU's regulatory 
and legalistic approach to policy implementation no longer allows the kinds of exceptions to the 
rules that were the stock in trade of the administrative state, where state civil servants had the 
administrative discretion to 'adjust' the laws to meet individual needs.  This loss of flexibility is 
not much of an issue for businesses which have adapted to the regulatory and legalistic approach 
to implementation stemming from both internal sources and the EU and understand that they 
need to go to Brussels to make their voices heard.  However, for citizens with little direct access 
at the EU level and non-business interests that remain more focused at the national level due to a 
lack of organizational capacity, resources, and proximity, the EU-related loss of flexibility is a 
real problem.  Already denied input at the front end, in policy formulation, and now cut out at the 
back end, in policy implementation, because accommodation is proscribed, they are more likely 
to engage in confrontation—the case of the truck drivers, the farmers, and the public service 
workers.  But they are no longer likely to be able to stop the policy, because French governments 
are no longer as free to bend, or not, in response to confrontation.   

Thus, these EU-related changes in access and enforcement patterns, although arguably 
producing greater equality and predictability in the application of the laws, come at the cost of 
disenfranchising certain groups and at the risk of greater societal instability, since such citizens' 
only way to be heard now is through confrontation when their concerns are not addressed.  There 
could be a procedural remedy to this, however, if French state actors were to allow greater access 
to citizens in policy formulation and to encourage greater citizen interest organization and 
participation in EU policymaking.  This would prove useful not only in ensuring that more 
French societal views are represented at the EU level.  It would also provide the French state with 
partners in the national communicative discourse about policy initiatives in Brussels.  As it is, 
French leaders tend to be alone to inform and legitimate EU policies to the national public 
because in most spheres other than business they don't have strong societal interests able to make 
the bridge between lobbying in Brussels and communicating with their own national members 
about the outcome.  But not only are such possible solutions with regard to the policy process not 
easy to accomplish in a country where, despite the real changes in state-society relations, the state 
still tends to act and society to react.  It would also further reduce executive autonomy and 
control—and thereby challenge traditional notions of structural democracy in which the 
executive, as representative of the French nation, one and indivisible, is expected to be in control 
over decision-making process and solely responsible for its outcome.  
Britain
In Britain, the traditional centralized image of Westminster and Whitehall controlling 
policymaking has been offset by formulation and implementation processes that have long been 
permeated by policy networks and often operated through self-regulation.  Lately, however, those 
policy networks have been breaking up while self-regulation has been replaced by regulatory 
agencies and legalistic controls in an increasing number of domains.   State actors have been 
'steering' more even as they have expanded societal actors' participation through policy 
networks in areas such as regional or education policy  while societal actors have sometimes 
turned to contentious politics so as to be heard—whether outsider groups in roads policy   or 
even traditional insider groups, as in the case of the farmers.   In policy areas now ruled by 
regulatory agencies, moreover, strong regulators have replaced weak government administrators 
and opened up the process to greater public scrutiny and considerations of the public interest, 
although some of the flexibility of the previous system remains, with agency discretion to make 
"deals" with regulated firms, a continued preference for voluntary agreements and codes of 
conduct whenever possible , and an avoidance of the courts to resolve disputes.   Paradoxically, 
therefore, while France has been moving along the continuum toward less statism, Britain has 
been moving toward greater statism from a decidedly less statist past. 

The EU has not played all that significant a role with regard to the changes in Britain with 
regard to policy formulation.  British interests had much less to learn, having honed their 
lobbying skills in their relations with Parliament and their one-on-one negotiation skills with the 
bureaucracy through policy networks, although they also gained in influence as compared to 
national policymaking.   Moreover, Britain's horizontally integrated policy networks tend to be 
better suited to representing domestic interests in the multi-polar, competitive decision-making 
structure of the EU than France's more vertical, state-dominated networks.   Unable to count on 
the same kind of national government support as their French counterparts or on the 
institutionalized routes of their German counterparts, they developed direct lobbying strategies 
which were also quite effective in the EU policy formulation process.

The EU has had a greater impact on policy implementation.  While its preference for 
regulation fits well with British reform initiatives since Thatcher, its insistence on legalistic 
enforcement with statutory laws as opposed to voluntary rules and informal agreements does not.  
For Britain, the dramatic increase in regulations—in particular those emanating from the EU—
which have replaced informal, voluntary arrangements with formal rules and statutory law 
administered by independent regulatory agencies or enforced by the courts, represents a serious 
challenge not only to traditional governing practices but also to procedural ideas about 
democracy.  The problem is not the loss of the ability to bend the law in order to accommodate 
societal interests, as in France, but rather the loss of the ability to have flexible, informal 
arrangements with which to regulate, or self-regulate, society.  The formalization that 
accompanies Brussels directives, and especially its insistence on compulsory rather than 
voluntary rules, only encourages what the British see as the growing rigidification of a public 
domain which will only increase the likelihood of legal conflict as it undermines the traditional, 
informal process of conflict resolution.  And unlike for the French, there is no procedural answer 
to the loss of flexibility for the British on this score, other than perhaps to seek to keep Brussels 
from enacting more rules and regulations.  And this has, in fact, been the focus of much of 
British political leaders' coordinative discourse in the EU and about the EU to national publics in 
their communicative discourse.
Germany
In Germany, unlike in either France or Britain, societal actors are integrated with state 
actors in corporatist policymaking processes which involves "a whole range of intermediary 
interests that partly assume public functions and party represent private interests," including 
chambers of commerce, banks, employers' associations, unions, and non-profit organizations 
active in social service provision.   Such corporatist processes are framed by federal institutions 
and supported by a culture of consensus, as federal state and Laender have to compromise to 
ensure the appropriate application of laws and implementation of policies, and this works best 
when done in concertation with corporate societal actors.  In Germany, moreover, public law is 
an important back-up to these state-society relations, while implementation, where it is not 
corporatist, is often legalistic. This system of state-society interactions has changed little since 
the 1950s, unlike in France and Britain.  It has been a highly effective system when actors agree, 
largely the case from the early postwar years until the mid 1990s, but subject to a 'decision-trap' 
when they disagree —the problem in recent years with regard to welfare reform and reforms of 
the federal system.  

The EU has not greatly affected the overall German patterns in either policy formulation 
or implementation.  In policy formulation, its combination of consensus-oriented state-societal 
relations within federal arrangements and a respect for the rule of law has meant that corporatist 
Germany's decision-making culture comes closer to that of the EU than that of statist France or 
Britain, given decisions that are generally arrived at consensually, are much less clearly political, 
and are rarely arrived at quickly or taken at the top. This has made it easier for German civil 
servants, used to flexible and collegial ways of cooperating, to negotiate the complex circuits of 
power in Brussels  than, say, for French civil servants used to more hierarchical or authoritative 
bureaucratic relations.  Moreover, German business' experience of corporatism has been 
excellent training for exerting influence in the EU's vast range of committees, standard-setting, 
and management bodies   while their organization in peak associations enables them not only to 
act as effectively on their own as the British also to act more and better in concert through 
employers' associations.   Nonetheless, some corporatist processes have been unbalanced as 
business has gained greater access than labor in arenas other than labor and social policy.   And 
the EU may have produced some weakening around the edges of national corporatist 
arrangements, the case of the Transatlantic Business Dialogue in which big firms lobbied 
individually rather than as part of national associations.  

In policy implementation, German state and societal actors also have an easier time of it 
than their French or British counterparts.  Because the Länder and/or the social partners 
participate in policy formulation and implementation at both national and European levels, there 
is much less potential for societal actors to feel disenfranchised by the increasing importance of 
European level decision-making than in statist regimes—with the exception of those who have 
little access at the national level anyway, like consumers, women, or immigrants.  Moreover, the 
German notion of regulation, linked with the concept of 'Rechtsstaat,' of rules embodied in 
public law, is close to that of the EU, since it also assumes universal applicability and no 
exception to the rules.    In fact, because Germany has not only always respected the law as 
much as the British but has also always codified it much more, the increasing legal formalization 
coming from the EU does not cause the kind of consternation that it does in  Britain.  This is not 
to say that Germany does not also experience problems with Europeanization related to the 
increase in regulation and regulatory agencies.  In fact, German regulatory processes, because 
they follow the German pattern of regulation in which the rules are embodied in public law, tend 
to allow for much less flexibility than in the U.K., where agencies have much more discretion 
with regard to setting the rules and making deals with regulated firms.  
Italy
Italy's traditional policymaking processes are easier to describe by what they are not.  
Unlike in France, where the state traditionally acted in a wide sphere and society reacted, or 
Britain, where the state acted in a restricted sphere and society was charged to act on its own, in 
Italy, the state barely acted in a wide sphere and society often acted on its own around the state—
with a pattern of derogation of the rules even greater than in France —or reacted to the state—
with an even greater pattern of contestation.   What is more, where Italy resembled Germany, 
with state and societal actors acting together, they did so in a clientelistic rather than corporatist 
manner.  It is only since the 1990s that this pattern has changed for the better, as the state has 
gained in capacity  and societal actors in cooperativeness, and as clientelism has given way to 
corporatism.  Electoral reforms helped move Italy marginally toward more statism at the same 
time that corporatism in labor relations was strengthened through state-society cooperation in 
labor and pension reform,  although such corporatism has been undermined in the 2000s by 
Berlusconi.  

The EU has had a significant impact on these improved patterns of change.  In policy 
formulation, it has served as the 'rescue of the nation-state,'  reinforcing state capacity in a wide 
range of EU-affected policy areas, including monetary policy  and the structural funds.   Italian 
societal actors, moreover, also had a rather steep learning curve with regard to lobbying the EU.  
Although their long training in clientelism may have meant that they had less to learn than the 
French with regard to the process of lobbying, they had arguably more to learn as to its content, 
to wit, that it is neither a political nor an influence peddling process.  Big Italian firms, at the top 
of Italy's largely vertical lobbying hierarchies, in which they represent smaller and medium-sized 
enterprises (SMEs) as well as consumer interests, seem to have learned this lesson well early 
on.   Their EU level access has also served to reinforce their high level of political autonomy 
from the Italian government—as they pushed for EU economic stabilizing measures even as they 
were benefiting from the large system of state aids.  

For other societal actors, in particular those traditionally left out of the policy formulation 
process but used to accommodation or confrontation at the implementation stage, the problems 
have been as great as for the French societal actors similarly cut out by EU level policy 
formulation and more regulatory or legalistic implementation.  It should come as no surprise that 
Italian truck drivers were blocking highways along with their French counterparts to protest 
deregulatory measures into which they had had no input.  Moreover, organized labor, which had 
been so cooperative in the 1990s with regard to labor and pension reforms in response to the 
vincolo esterno, have been much less so under the Berlusconi government.  What is more, given 
Italy's poor record of implementation of directives, the worst is surely yet to come, when the loss 
of flexibility through making exceptions to the rules is likely to be a source of as much if not 
more citizen disenfranchisement than in France.  Although Italy has been better able to bank on 
the general national enthusiasm for European integration, its permissive consensus may 
nevertheless be on the wane, as economic Europeanization no longer looks so benign with regard 
to the economy while administrative Europeanization cuts down on Italy's flexible approach to 
implementation.
VARIETIES OF  SECTORAL POLICYMAKING AND THE EU'S POTENTIAL IMPACT
These general, 'macro' national patterns of adaptation can only be a starting point for our 
analysis, though, because we cannot take either the EU processes or the national for granted in 
any given sector.  Although the EU is quasi-pluralist in a macro sense of policymaking as well as 
in a micro sense in many sectors of policymaking, in some sectors it can take on more statist 
characteristics, especially in cases of delegative authority, as in competition policy and monetary 
policy.  In other sectors, by contrast, it may appear more corporatist, as in environmental 
initiatives, structural funds, and employment and social policy.  Equally significantly, even EU 
patterns that are largely pluralist may themselves exhibit differences related to the roles and 
policy styles of 'state' actors (i.e., EU officials) and societal actors, depending upon whether state 
actors lead societal actors or engage in joint-decision and whether their interactions are 
competitive or more cooperative.  

National policymaking processes can be similarly varied, even though 'macro' patterns 
may be primarily statist or corporatist.  This is not only because certain sectors may never have 
conformed to the overall national patterns, as in the case of the quasi-corporatist agriculture 
sector in France,  but also because in recent years policymaking processes, regardless of the 
national pattern, have often opened up to greater pluralism—the result of internal dynamics and 
not only EU pressures.  In fact, the 'macro-corporatism' often described in the literature on 
countries like Austria no longer describes the reality, although sectoral corporatism remains in a 
number of core areas.   My discussion of 'macro' national patterns here is thus not intended to 
deny the increasing differences in sectoral policymaking within countries but rather more to point 
to general overall patterns of state leadership and societal involvement that are themselves 
evolving.  But this is why it is necessary to complement the macro analysis with more micro 
analysis of sectors.
Potential Impact of Europeanization on Policy Sectors
To capture the complexity of policymaking within different policy arenas, the more 
sectorally-focused policy literature has long since moved away from discussions of statist, 
corporatist, and pluralist patterns to discussions of issues and policy networks and 
communities.    This literature has tended to identify a continuum in interactions among state 
and societal actors from closed policy communities with stable membership and cooperative 
participation in joint decision-making  to more open, more loosely constituted policy 
communities with members involved in cooperative decision-shaping to even looser and more 
open issues networks with more unstable membership, competition among interests, and 
consultation through lobbying.   For our purposes, rather than using these categories as a 
substitute for the 'macro' national patterns discussed in the earlier literature, I add them to our 
'macro' national patterns, as a helpful, added level of detail.   Thus, I call the closed policy 
communities 'corporatist policy communities, the more open ones 'pluralist policy 
communities', the open issues networks 'pluralist issues networks,' and I add a category of less 
open issues networks more controlled by state actors as 'statist issues networks.'

To theorize about what impact EU policymaking processes might have on national 
processes, I build upon an insightful analysis by Gerda Falkner, who put these two literatures 
together by examining societal actors' patterns of interest intermediation along a continuum 
going from statist clusters to issues networks, policy communities, and corporatist policy 
communities.   To this I add state actors, label the patterns in term of the macro identifiers,  and 
place the possible patterns on a continuum from statist issues networks to pluralist issues 
networks to pluralist policy communities to corporatist policy communities.  The differentiating 
factors here are related to 1) the role of state actors—whether leading with less or more 
consultation (in statist or pluralist issues networks) or following with more or less societal sway 
through decision-shaping or joint decision-making (in pluralist or corporatist policy 
communities)—and 2) the role of societal actors—whether participating less or more through 
lobbying with unstable membership and competitive interactions (in statist or pluralist issues 
networks) or participating with maximal or restricted but stable membership in cooperative 
interactions (in pluralist policy communities or corporatist policy communities) (see Table 3).
[Table 3 about here]

Statist issues networks are ones in which the state actors lead policymaking with a low 
level of consultation, which is generally formal and used to inform more than to listen or gather 
information.   Societal participation is naturally low as a result, membership in the network is 
unstable, and relations competitive as different groups lobby in order to be heard.    Pluralist 
issues networks are ones in which state actors also lead policymaking, but with a much higher 
degree of consultation as they listen as well as inform, and generally arbitrate among the high 
level of competing interests lobbying for attention, with membership in the network unstable to 
the extent that interests come and go as their concerns are met or frustrated.  Pluralist policy 
communities are ones in which state actors' decisions are more open to being shaped by societal 
actors, with membership in the community stable, cooperative, and open to all concerned.  
Finally, corporatist policy communities are ones in which state actors make decisions jointly with 
societal actors, who may even take the lead in decision-making, and who constitute an equally 
stable and cooperative but more restricted or 'privileged' group of interests over the long-term.

This range of patterns can be found at both the EU and national levels.  The question is: 
how does any one pattern at the EU level potentially affect another pattern at the national level?  
Here, I hypothesize (following Falkner) that when there is stronger EU 'state' leadership, less 
interest participation, and more interest competition, then national joint decision processes, 
societal participation and cooperation are at risk whereas when there are strong EU joint decision 
processes, much participation and cooperation, national state leadership and societal competition 
are likely to be reduced.  Finally, where the EU pattern matches the national pattern, there will be 
no significant change.  More specifically, where the EU follows a statist or pluralist issues 
network pattern, stronger 'state' leadership tends to reduce or destroy joint decision-making for 
pluralist or corporatist policy communities at the same time that it reduces societal consultation 
and participation while increasing the competitiveness and instability of the membership.  By 
contrast, where the EU follows a pluralist or corporatist policy community pattern, stronger joint 
decision processes tend to decrease or eliminate state leadership while substituting cooperation 
and encouraging more stable membership with either a more restricted or open set of interests.  It 
is perhaps easist to gain a sense of this by plotting out potential responses in terms of pluses and 
minuses related to increasing or decreasing state leadership and societal participation, with 0 for 
no change (see Table 4).   What becomes clear is that where the EU is more pluralist or 
corporatist in policymaking, it is potentially more empowering to interests in national statist 
policymaking while where it is more pluralist or statist, it can be disruptive of national 
corporatist policymaking.
[Table 4]
Actual Impact of EU Sectoral Processes on National Processes
We are speaking of potential impact here, which means that an EU process may affect the 
national in the ways hypothesized.  But do they?  Whether they do or not may depend upon 
whether the EU process has a direct, primary effect by mandating changes in policymaking 
processes at the national level; an indirect, secondary effect because it results from policy 
'learning' or mimesis, as national policy actors learn another way of interacting that they then 
bring back to the national processes; a tertiary, 'knock-on' effect because even where the EU's 
policies neither demand change nor inspire it, the implementation of such policies nonetheless 
brings about radical change in the policymaking processes; or no effect at all, because national 
policymaking resists the EU-mandated practices or is not influenced by EU patterns (Table 5).  
Whether the EU has a primary, secondary, tertiary, or no effect depends upon national responses, 
that is, on whether national policymaking is receptive or resistant to such pressures for change.
[Table 5 about here]
Direct Effect
The EU has a direct, primary effect on policymaking processes in areas where it requires 
instituting certain kinds of processes in conjunction with new policies.  This has been the case of 
regional policy regarding the structural funds, environmental policy, competition policy, or 
arguably the open method of coordination (OMC) regarding employment and social policy.  Such 
policymaking processes could demand that new actors be included in policymaking, as when the 
economic and social actors have to be invited to participate in the planning process for structural 
funds through the equivalent of pluralist issues networks; when the social partners are expected 
to participate in the open method of coordination to come up with national action plans in what 
could be seen as corporatist policy communities; or when the social partners and other groups are 
brought into some areas of environmental policy through pluralist issues networks.  However, 
equally significantly, the EU could demand a closing of access by insisting that arms-length 
regulatory or legalistic relationships substitute for self-regulation or joint-regulation processes, 
with statist issues networks in place of corporatist policy communities—as in cases of 
competition policy or other areas of environmental policy.   What the EU demands and what 
actually happens, however, can be highly differentiated depending upon the existing pattern—
both in terms of interest intermediation processes and administrative practices—and the 
receptivity or resistance of national actors to changes in policy content or practices.  And even 
where the EU does have a clear, direct effect, national policymaking processes do not necessarily 
change as expected.  I use the cases of regional policy and environmental policy to illustrate.

In regional policy, for example, while EU-mandated "partnership" with civil society 
sought to create pluralist policy communities around the structural funds process,  in French 
regions as well as in German regions it managed to do little more than create statist issues 
networks.   In France in three highly diverse regions—Alsace, Aquitaine, and Corsica—regional 
officials controlled the process, organizing consultation with a 'civil society' that consisted of 
weak economic interests (the strong ones went directly to Paris) that were only minimally 
involved.  In Germany, despite a tradition of joint decision-making, regional officials were 
similarly intent on maintaining their monopoly on representation—with the exception of Bavaria.  
But although Bavaria did in fact seek to establish a corporatist policy community with the social 
partners, it found it so administratively complicated and time-consuming that it gave up in 
frustration and sent in its own document, thus effectively also constituting a statist issues 
network.    A similar pattern seems to have been the case for the UK as well, even if statist 
issues networks which tended to be entirely dominated by the central government prior to the 
mid 1990s became more collaborative in some regions by the late 1990s, as in the case of 
Yorkshire and Humber. 

In environmental policy, EU-mandated practices have had a greater direct impact on 
national policymaking processes, but in different ways depending upon country, mandated 
practices, and time period.   Among our four country cases, the UK arguably had to change its 
policymaking processes the most.  British state actors—both the core executive and the 
Department of Environment—resisted change up until the 1990s largely because the policies and 
practices under consideration clashed with its own traditionally more decentralized and voluntary 
approach.   Only in the 1990s did state actors, in particular the Department of the Environment, 
begin to change, becoming more proactive, more transparent, more focused on prevention, and 
more 'statist' as the EU forced it to intervene in areas that it had traditionally devolved to front-
line agencies and to move to more regulatory or legalistic enforcement. 

In the early years, however, Britain was not alone in resisting environmental policies 
because of a clash with past practices.  For example, in the case of the EU's l980 Water 
Directive, which prescribed uniform standards and formal, legalistic patterns of interest 
intermediation largely modeled on Germany's approach, both France and Britain (initially) 
resisted.  France resisted because the new EU rules went against higher level civil servants' 
administrative discretion in implementation; Britain, because it went against its traditional 
practices of industry self-regulation—until the British government transformed its regulatory 
system to follow the EU model and the principles of 'new public management' as it privatized 
the water industry.  Germany, by contrast, readily accepted the Water Directive, since it fit with 
its own patterns; but even so, the EU's demand for higher water quality standards meant that it 
took government a long time to negotiate.   

In another case, the l993 Environmental Management and Auditing Systems Regulation 
(EAMS), which demanded a self-regulatory process largely modeled on the British approach, the 
EU-mandated practice had little effect on British practices.   By contrast, EAMS went against 
Germany's legalistic and interventionist practices in the area, although adaptation was 
nevertheless quite easy given the country's tradition of corporatist policy communities through 
joint regulation by the social partners.    In yet another case, the Waste Packaging Directive, 
where the EU also prescribed relatively high, uniform environmental protection objectives and 
formal, legalistic patterns of interest intermediation, the "misfit" with British preferences for self-
regulation and low standards as well opposition from industry did not stop the government from 
transforming the sector.  In Germany, by contrast, compliance was delayed, despite the fact that 
the EU model fit better with its corporatist regulatory style and legalistic practices, because of 
opposition by the Laender in the Bundesrat to the watering-down of the higher German 
environmental protection targets.   

In air pollution, the contrast between Britain and Italy—both of which delayed 
implementing the EU Sulphur Dioxide and Suspended Particulate directive of 1981—is revealing 
of differences not only in national practices but also of national administrative capacity.  Britain 
resisted transposing the EU directive because it challenged its century-long tradition of 
controlling emissions without imposing uniform ambient air standards through a decentralized 
process of informal co-operation between local inspectors and industry and voluntary compliance 
that was the equivalent of a local corporatist policy community.   It had to scupper all of this 
when it transposed the EU directive by centralizing administrative functions, creating statutory 
laws with significant legal sanctions—and turning the policy sector into the equivalent of a statist 
issues network.   Italy, by comparison, had nothing to scupper, since it had almost no laws, and 
what it had was barely enforced, given a lack of administrative capacity.  But whereas delay in 
implementing was initially due to the lack of strong political constituencies pushing for general 
pollution control and many against, later, once grassroots movements suddenly emerged in the 
mid to late 1980s, inspired by the EU and movements in other member-states, implementation 
was still stymied, largely because of a continued lack of Italian administrative capacity by state 
actors at both central and regional levels. 

Indirect Effect
The EU has an indirect, secondary effect in many areas as a result of institutional 
learning, mimesis and imitation,  or  'polydiffusion,'  when national actors schooled in any 
given set of national processes gain from their close cooperative experiences of the EU or one 
another, and alter their behavior accordingly.  The neofunctionalists' theoretical approach to 
integration is itself predicated upon such institutional learning, which is seen to promote shared 
values and ideas as well as common approaches to problem-solving.   But participation in the 
EU can result in much more specific kinds of learning, as interest groups gain organizational and 
grant-getting skills—as well as funding—which they then bring back to their national 
organizational efforts—especially the case for women's interest groups, as discussed earlier with 
regard to the Amsterdam Treaty ratification.  But national policy learning may come not just 
from participation in certain kinds of practices at the EU level but more simply from the 
circulation of ideas about best practices in the member-states.  The open method of coordination 
is predicated on this kind of mimesis.   Gender-mainstreaming, moreover, is about how to infuse 
national practices related to all aspects of work-life with EU jointly-constructed ideas about 
gender equality.   Even in tax policy, despite the failure as yet to institute common EU fiscal 
policies, the ideas discussed in the Council of Ministers group dedicated to the peer review of 
harmful tax practices led a number of member-states to shelve certain bad practices already in the 
pipeline. 

The most important test for an indirect effect of the EU on national policymaking 
processes is whether national interests change their practices as a result of EU level policymaking 
either in terms of their EU or national level practices.  And for this, business organizations 
present the best examples.  French business, which was notoriously bad initially in the EU policy 
formulation process got a lot better, although British and German business, which were already 
good from the start—British business for its lobbying capabilities, German business for its 
institutional predominance—may have gotten even better.  However, this pattern did not hold 
across business sectors.  In certain sectors, such as banking, French bankers who in the early 
1990s set up shop to lobby in Brussels by the late 1990s had closed up shop, leaving lobbying to 
the national government because they decided that this it was more effective than doing it 
themselves.  British and German bankers, by contrast, went to Brussels and stayed, with the 
Germans, true to form, relying more on associative power, the British more on individualized 
lobbying.   Moreover, as we have already seen in the cases of French and German businesses 
generally, their EU level activism may alter their national level interrelationships with either the 
state or other societal interests.

Indirect effects are hard to establish, take time, and are often clear only in retrospect.  In 
cases of soft methods of policymaking in particular, as in the cases of the open method of 
coordination, where voluntary compliance is the rule and there are no real sanctions other than 
'naming and shaming,' it is difficult to establish any direct kind of causality.  Moreover, the same 
events can be interpreted in any number of ways, depending upon individual perceptions and 
positions.  What does one do with the case of the French Minister of Labor who, when asked 
whether European ideas connected to the OMC had an influence on French unemployment 
initiatives, responds in the negative even though the following week, the newly announced 
program's main objectives are identical with those outlined by the EU?    Is it just because this 
is France, and therefore one keeps credit for policy initiatives for oneself?  Or because France 
(among others) helped dictate the terms to be used by the EU, which it then applies.  There can 
be little doubt that, at the very least, the Lisbon and Luxembourg strategies for reforms in 
employment and social policy via the open method of coordination—with the demand for 
national action plans and the like—have led to the use of the same words and similar concepts.  
But these mostly reflect different programmatic philosophies and policies.   Moreover, there is 
evidence to suggest that these strategies remain largely government-centered exercises at both the 
EU level, with interest-based bargaining by state actors concerned to control the EU's guidelines, 
and at the national, where national planning exercises produce statist issues networks at best, and 
where restricted coordinative discourses ensure little real deliberation with societal actors and 
minimal public awareness. 

Knock-On Effect
The EU has a knock-on, tertiary effect in areas where it introduces policies that unravel 
the traditional policymaking processes in the sector.  This may be because the policy, once 
implemented, radically transforms the market or the economic environment in which national 
state and societal actors interact, creating new economic incentives which encourage new 
coalitions to form or old ones to dissolve.  This has been the case of competition policies that 
open up the market and introduce so much uncertainty and/or new players that the old players can 
no longer play by the old rules.  Or it may be because national actors—state or societal—for 
whatever reason no longer agree to play by the old rules in implementing the policy.  This may 
actually be more of a problem for corporatist systems when state and societal actors do not agree 
on their preferences than for statist systems, where the state has greater capacity to impose.  But 
where corporatist actors can agree, the outcome is likely to be even more in the interest of the 
societal actors, whether to go forward in the negotiation of change or to block it.

In agricultural policy, for example, the EU's decisions on the Common Agricultural 
Policy (CAP) over the years have had a profound knock-on effect on French farming interests' 
organizational capacity and interactions with the state, both through lobbying and protest.  
Whereas before the 1970s, the national government was largely in control of agricultural 
priorities and national farming interests were highly fragmented, after this the EU was 
increasingly the driver of national policies and processes.    Between the 1970s and the late 
1980s, the EU set priorities and, by instituting a price support regime, encouraged the 
consolidation of a corporatist policy community in which a couple of large agricultural 
associations—the Fédération Nationale des Syndicats d'Exploitants Agricoles (FNSEA)  and the 
Centre National des Jeunes Agriculteurs (CNJA)—dominated the national scene.   Beginning in 
the late 1980s, however, CAP reform focused on cutting prices while the Commission opened up 
policymaking processes to other farming groups.  This created a more pluralist policy community 
at the EU level and thereby weakened corporatist relations at the national level even as it 
encouraged more contestation from the established farmers' unions—opposed to cuts—and from 
newer, anti-corporatist groups such as the Confédération Paysanne, sometimes in coordination 
with other national social movements such as ATTAC.   Similar processes were at work in 
British agriculture, where the traditional corporatist policy community was greatly loosened as a 
result of the reform of CAP.    But in the UK, it was the mad cow crisis that had the greatest 
knock-on effect, forcing a reorganization of state structures underpinning the old corporatist 
policy community which in all likelihood will bring with it a statist issues network. 

Knock-on effects can also be seen across the public utilities and transport sectors, as EU 
policy decisions changed the relations of state and societal actors in some cases but not in others.  
In the electricity sector, for example, Britain experienced no knock-on effects at all because it 
had already completly deregulated and privatized its industry as of 1989.  France experienced 
minimal knock-on effects as it opened up its market to competition because the state remained in 
control of the policymaking process.  In France, where statist issues networks have 
predominated, state actors, consisting of the government and the state-owned utility monopoly, 
EDF, largely decided among themselves on the national policy preferences to project at the EU 
level, with societal actors outside the loop.   This was fine for the large consumers of electricity, 
happy to leave such decisions to the state, but not the public sector unions—which engaged in 
escalating numbers of protests.   This pattern, of course, is little different from the past.  In 
Germany, by contrast, the knock-on effects from electricity liberalization were significant.  This 
is because the corporatist policy community which went into the negotiations with a consensus 
on policy preferences for minimal liberalization split apart halfway through the process when 
federal state actors together with some of the bigger electricity providers changed their minds in 
favor of extensive liberalization while the municipal and other smaller providers continued to 
oppose it.   The result has been a radical deregulation of the German electricity market and an 
end to the old corporatist policy community, or any patterned policymaking process at all, given 
that the state also lacks the capacity to lead. 

In the case of road haulage, too, some countries experienced knock-on effects while 
others not.  The cabotage directive which introduced the right of non-resident transport haulers to 
operate in foreign markets but allowed quantitative restrictions and price controls to remain had 
little direct effect on national regulatory policies or policymaking practices.   But it did have a 
knock-on effect in countries where domestic coalitions were able to use the new EU rules to 
challenge the existing equilibria.  Thus, although it had no effect in the cases of the already 
liberalized markets of Britain and France, in Germany the EU rule acted as a spur to the 
formation of new domestic coalitions for reform which then promoted liberalization while in 
Italy it acted as a spur to the old domestic coalitions to create greater protectionism in the 
sector. 

In competition policy as well, the EU can have knock-on effects.  With regard to state aid 
in particular, traditional national patterns of cooperation can be undermined by the opportunities 
presented to private actors disadvantaged by state subsidies to other firms.  This quite clearly 
occurred in France, where private banks complained to the Commission about the preferential 
treatment given Crédit Lyonnais by the state bailout.  But one could expect this, given national 
patterns in which statist issues networks are the rule, with competitive relations among firms co-
existing alongside the close ties among CEOs based on state schooling and service as well as on 
inter-locking directorships.   However, less to be expected was the fact that competition policy 
also had a knock-on effect on Germany's corporatist policy community in banking and its 
characteristic cooperative interfirm relations.  First, cooperation between private and public 
banks broke down when private banks complained to the Competition Directorate that the 
Landesbanken, the regional public banks, along with the regional savings and loans banks, had 
an unfair competitive advantage because of regional state guarantees on their loans; and second, 
cooperation among the public banks themselves broke down when the two biggest regional banks 
reorganized their activities in response to the complaint way ahead of the others, thus destroying 
the united front among public banks.   Not surprisingly, there have been few such knock-on 
effects in the UK, first, because the competitive relations among firms would only have been 
reinforced by EU competition policy on state aid and, second, because state had in any case been 
reduced by the Thatcher government to such low levels that it was not much of an issue anyway.   

Minimal Effect
It is important to remember that policymaking can always operate in one way at the EU 
level and, schizophrenically, in another way at the national.  There is often a very real 
disconnection between the EU level processes and the national, with the national continuing 
separately from the EU processes with their own dynamics of interaction, even where there may 
be some feedback or spillover from policy actors' EU level learning experiences.  In fact, in a 
wide array of sectors, EU and national level processes remained largely separate, whether we are 
speaking of immigration, the environment, labor, or even business, as national interest groups 
interact with national governments in traditional ways while they may participate in EU 
policymaking in different ways as part of EU or even global networks, or not at all, leaving the 
field entirely to EU and global groups.  Environmental policy is a case in point, as international 
NGOs tend to operate at the EU level while national NGOs remain nationally focused, and where 
even national branches of INGOs have little say over the EU level actions of their Brussels 
branches, which either decide on their own or take orders from the international headquarters.   
Banking interests in France are similarly nationally focused, as we have already seen, with little 
presence at the EU level.  But even in areas where the EU mandated liberalization and demanded 
that regulatory agencies be set up—or at least that oversight be separated from administration—
the resulting regulatory patterns of interaction suggest that national differences remain significant 
even if the EU may have indirect effects on the content of policies. 

Immigration is an especially interesting case, since the EU and national levels operate 
very differently, with very different sets of actors and often different goals and objectives.  At the 
EU level, immigration control policy early on became the concern of law enforcement and 
immigration officials who, in the context of the Schengen agreements, saw an opportunity to 
"venue-shop" in order to institute more restrictive policies through EU level policymaking that 
would normally have been stopped by the courts at the national level.   Moreover, although the 
provisions agreed had the knock-on effect of shifting the distribution of power among various 
domestic advocacy coalitions, strengthening those state actors favoring restrictive policies to the 
detriment of other state actors (primarily the courts) and pro-immigration societal groups, it had 
no effect on the patterns of national policymaking.   The EU level process at the time was 
something of a lopsided corporatist policy community consisting of EU and national law 
enforcement and immigration officials, although subsequently the process has become more of a 
pluralist policy community, as EU-level immigration groups made up of professionals and 
activists have gained access and influence.  But nationally-based interest groups remain largely 
separate from this process, tending to organize around national issues and to focus their efforts 
on national governments—generally as part of statist issues networks.   

Even an area like telecommunications, where liberalization mandated by the EU opened 
up the market, has had little effect on the regulatory agencies' basic mode of operation or on their 
relations with business.  The regulatory authorities were all set up by national governments 
following national patterns and predilections rather than any overarching model.   Moreover, 
they all operated differently.  In Britain, for example, the telecoms regulator established the rules 
of the game itself, gained credibility with business as an independent regulator in a first phase 
without recourse to the courts, and in a second developed a relationship of trust that enabled it to 
exercise discretion while ensuring compliance.  This was not the case in Germany, which was 
more rule-based from the start, and where multiple authorities—in this case the regulatory 
agency, the competition authority, and the ministry—all had some say.  This made the 
development of an independent and credible regulatory agency able to establish the rules of the 
game difficult if not impossible, and encouraged business litigation through recourse to the 
courts to resolve disputes.    Thus, while in Britain deregulation produced a central regulatory 
authority that was stronger than the civil servant of the past, but also had discretion, in Germany 
deregulation reproduced the traditionally fragmented patterns of administration by setting up a 
weak regulator which could not exercise leadership. 
CONCLUSION

"Micro" patterns of sectoral policymaking show that all countries are increasingly 
differentiated in their specific policymaking processes.  Countries with traditionally corporatist 
policymaking processes find themselves with statist issues networks, pluralist issues networks, or 
pluralist policy communities in some areas while those with traditionally statist policymaking 
processes often move to pluralist issues networks under EU direction or even to seemingly 
corporatist policy community patterns.  And yet, "macro" patterns still seem to hold true.  The 
UK on the whole seems to have taken on an even more statist pattern, as voluntary rules and self-
regulation have given way to statutory law and the regulatory state, although it has also become 
more open to societal representation in policy formulation—all of this the result of internal 
dynamics as well as much as of the EU.  France, by contrast, has moderated its traditionally more 
statist pattern, becoming a bit more pluralist with regard to formally introducing more societal 
input into policy formulation in some sectors while in policy implementation, it is more 
regulatory and legalistic and, thereby, still statist but by way of more independent public actors.  
Germany has remained largely corporatist, but it has seen some sectors becoming increasingly 
statist where regulatory and legalistic enforcement has been mandated by the EU, other sectors 
more pluralist where indirect or knock-on effects have destroyed traditionally corporatist patterns 
of interaction.  Italy, finally, remains a mix, arguably more corporatist than clientelist today, but 
with some sectors more statist, others more corporatist—with state capacity the real problem.





Table 1:  Policymaking processes related to state and societal structures


Concentrated
Societal Structures
Fragmented
Societal Structures

Concentrated
State Structures


Strong corporatist
(Sweden/Netherlands)

Statist
(France/UK)

Fragmented
State Structures



Weaker corporatist 
(Germany/Italy ) 
or 
clientelist (Italy)


Pluralist
(US/EU)





Table 2:  Definitions of the Four Combinations of State-Societal Relations

Strong 
corporatism
concentrated 
state, 
concentrated 
society
Unitary states w highly organized interests—
state co-equal w 'privileged' interests' 
policy formulation/implementation.  

E.g., Netherlands and Sweden 

Weak 
corporatism
fragmented 
state, 
concentrated 
society
Federal/regionalized w highly organized interests-- state 
weaker role than society 
policy formulation/implementation 

E.g.,  Germany and Italy (since 1992)

Statism
concentrated 
state, 
fragmented 
society
Unitary states w disorganized interests—
state stronger role than society 
formulates alone, implements flexibly thru accommodation 
w society. 

E.g., France and UK

Pluralism
fragmented 
state, 
fragmented 
society 
Federal/regional states w disorganized interests—state and 
society weak roles 
formulation open to organized interests
closed in regulatory/legalistic implementation

E.g., US and EU








				State Concentration

		Sweden1		    UK1			France1
Strong		   NL
corporatism          Sweden2			UK2				Statism 
						    France2

Societal								Societal
Concentration							Fragmentation
								
		      Germany			US
Weak 								EU1
Corporatism     	            Italy2						Pluralism

        Italy1		     EU2


State Fragmentation


Figure 1:  Changing patterns of state-society relations



           


Fr1        Fr2         UK2          UK1           It2       It1      Ger     Sw     NL    
 
								          		 
											
        Statist   	  		           			     	     Corporatist






Figure 2:  Member-States along a Continuum from Statist to Corporatist Processes  
(Fr1, Uk1  stand for processes in the 1980s, Fr2, Uk2 in the 2000s; It1 in the 1990s, It2 in the 
2000s).











State		Societal				State		Societal
Actors		Actors 					Actors		Actors






WEAK CORPORATIST					STRONG CORPORATIST 
formulation/implementation 				formulation/implementation			
		


State		Societal				State		Societal
Actors		Actors 					Actors		Actors






STATIST formulation					STATIST implementation



State		Societal				State		Societal
Actors		Actors 					Actors		Actors






PLURALIST formulation				PLURALIST (regulatory) implementation


Figure 3:  Different patterns of the coordinative discourse of policy formulation and 
implementation in corporatist, statist, and pluralist discursive interactions



Table 2:  National patterns of policymaking and the impact of the EU
Policy 
Process
Policy Formulation 

Policy 
Implementation

EU impact on 
Policy Formulation
EU impact on Policy 
Implementation
Statist 



France



UK

Low Access



State acts in wide 
sphere, society 
reacts

State acts in 
limited sphere, 
society acts on 
own

Flexible  
application


Derogation 



Self-regulation 
Opens up interest 
access  at EU level


More EU level 
societal input, little 
change at nat'l level

more EU level 
societal input, little 
change at nat'l level
Reduces nat'l 
flexibility via 
legalism/regulation

eliminates derogation, 
less accommodation, 
more confrontation

eliminates self-
regulation, more 
public 'steering'
Corporatist  




Germany




Italy

Moderate Access




State and society 
act together
(corporatism) 

State barely acts in 
wide sphere, 
society reacts, acts 
on own, or acts 
together w state
(clientelism) 
Flexible or Rigid 
application of rules



Corporatism or 
Legalism (Ger))

 
 
Corporatism, 
Clientelism,
 Derogation


Adds to interest 
access at EU level



Adds to corporatist 
input at EU level,
little change at nat'l 


Adds to corporatist 
input EU level, 
denies clientelism
flexibility where 
corporatism or
adds to rigidity

Maintains corporatist 
flexibility, reinforces 
legal / regulatory 
rigidity

Maintains corporatist 
flexibility, eliminates 
derogation, more 
confrontation
Quasi- 
Pluralist 

European 
Union

High Access


Open access to 
societal groups (w 
gatekeeping)

Rigid application 
of rules

Regulatory and 
legalistic (except 
when corporatism)









Table 3:  State and Societal Actors in Statist, Pluralist, and Corporatist Policymaking

Statist
Issues
Networks
Pluralist
Issues
Networks
Pluralist
Policy Communities
Corporatist
Policy 
Communities
State 
Actors
State leadership w 
low societal 
consultation

State leadership w 
high societal 
consultation
State's decisions 
shaped by high 
societal consultation
Joint decision-mkg w 
equal or greater societal 
leadership 
Societal 
Actors
Unstable, 
competitive 
membership w 
low participation 
thru lobbying

Unstable, 
competitive 
membership w 
high participation 
thru lobbying
Stable, 
cooperative 
membership w 
maximal participation 
in decision-shaping
Stable, 
cooperative 
membership w 
restricted participation in 
joint decision-mkg








Table 4:  Potential Impact of EU Sectoral Processes on National Sectoral Processes in terms of 
State Leadership and Societal Participation


EU Statist
Issues 
Network

EU Pluralist
Issues
Network
EU Pluralist
Policy 
Community
EU 
Corporatist
Policy 
Community
Statist  
Issues 
Networks
State 
leadership
0
-
- -
- - -

Societal 
participation
0
+
+ + +
+ +
Pluralist
Issues
Network
State
leadership
+
0
-
- -

Societal 
participation
-
0
+
+
Pluralist
Policy 
Community
State 
leadership
+ +
+
0
0

Societal 
participation
- - -
- -
0
-
Corporatist
Policy 
Community
State 
leadership
+ + +
+ +
0
0

Societal 
participation
- -
-
+
0

0 equals no change; - equals change on the decrease; + equals change on the increase.




Table 5  The Sectoral Effects of EU Policies and Processes on National Processes

EU Effect

Potential Impact
Actual Impact/Cases
Direct 
EU-mandated sectoral process could 
increase or decrease state and societal 
actor involvement depending upon 
whether the EU mandates more or less 
state or societal actor involvement 

Competition policy, OMC, 
environmental policy, regional policy

Uncertain—depends upon member-
state receptivity or resistance

Direct effects in environmental 
policy process on UK; in water 
pollution and waste packaging for 
UK, less for Ger; environmental 
auditing for Ger, little for UK; air 
pollution for UK, less for It; 
regional policy some Ger,
Indirect
Learning experiences from EU level 
processes could affect national actors' 
approach to policymaking 

OMC, Gender mainstreaming, taxes, rail 
transport, EU lobbying

Uncertain—depends upon member-
state receptivity or resistance

Indirect effects for OMC,  lobbying 
of Fr bus, but not banking
Knock-on
Unintended consequences of EU policy 
that serve to unravel national processes 

Competition policy, transport policy, 
agricultural policy, utilities
Corporatist process may break apart 
where societal actors cannot agree; 
less problematic for statist polities, 
where state controls the process

Knock-on effects in electricity for 
Ger; road haulage for Ger, It; banks 
for Ger, Fr; agriculture for  Fr

Minimal

No EU-mandated processes to spur 
change and no interaction effects 
expected, whether indirect or knock-on

Any area where EU and national 
processes don't interact, including 
environmental lobbying, immigration, 
banking, regulatory agencies

National processes continue without 
direct, indirect, or knock-on effects 
from the EU because member-states 
not receptive and/or resistant to EU 
processes 

Immigration control policy 
generally, telecoms in UK and Ger
 



REFERENCES

Bache, Ian (2000)  "Government within Governance:  Steering Economic Regeneration Policy 
Networks in Yorkshire and Humberside,´ Public Administration  vol. 78, no. 3:  575-92.
Bache, Ian (2003) "Governing through Governance:  Education Policy Control under New 
Labour," Political Studies vol. 51:  300-314.
Barbier, J. C. (1998). 'Aspects Cognitifs et Normatifs de la Construction des Politiques de 
l'Emploi entre Niveaux Nationaux et Communautaire'. Paper presented at the workshop Les 
Outils Analytiques de l'Apprentissage Institutionnel, Association Française de Science 
Politique, RECO-ARASSH Program, Grenoble, 14–15 December.
Bauby, Pierre and Toledo, Alain (2002) "L'Interaction acteurs-règles dan le secteur électrique" in 
Politiques Publiques Européennes eds. J.P. Faugère, S, Ferrand-Nagel, M.-A. Barthe, F. 
Rochelandet, and F. Legros.   Paris:  Economica.
Benz, Arthur and Goetz, K. H. (l996) A New German Public Sector?  Reform, Adaptation and 
Stability  Aldershot:  Dartmouth.
Börzel, Tanja (2002b)  "Pace-setting, Foot-Dragging, and Fence-Sitting:  Member State 
Responses to Europeanizaton" Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 40, no. 2: 193-214.
Burnham, J. and Maor, M. (1995)  "Converging Administrative Systems:  Recruitment, Training 
and Role Perceptions," Journal of European Public Policy vol. 2, no. 2:  185-204.
Coen, David (1998). The European Business Interest and the Nation-state: Large-firm Lobbying 
in the European Union and Member States. Journal of Public Policy, 18 (1), pp. 75-100.
Coen, David (2005)  "Managing the Political Life Cycle of Regulation in the UK and German 
Telecommunication Sectors, Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics vol. 76, no. 1: 59-
84.
Coen, David (l997) "The Evolution of the Large Firm as a Political Actor in the European 
Union," Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 4, no. 1:  91-108. 
Cohen, Michael D. March, James D.  and Olsen, Johan P. (l972) "A Garbage Can Model of 
Organizational Choice,"  Administrative Science Quarterly  vol. 17:  1-25.
Cowles, Maria Green (1995). Setting the Agenda for a New Europe: The ERT and EC 1992. 
Journal of Common Market Studies, 33 (4), pp. 501-526.
Cowles, Maria Green, (2001)  "The TransAtlantic Business Dialogue" in Transforming Europe  
eds., Maria Green Cowles, James Caporaso, and Thomas Risse.  Ithaca:  Cornell University 
Press.
Cram, Laura (l998) "The EU Institutions and Collective Action:  Constructing a European 
Interest?" in Greenwood, J. and Aspinwall, M. eds. (1998). Collective action in the European 
Union: interests and the new politics of associability. London: Routledge.
De la Porte, C. and Pochet, P. eds., (2002)  Building Social Europe through the Open Method of 
Coordination  Brusselfs:  P.I.E.—Peter Lang.
Dente, Bruno and Regonini, Gloria (l989) "Politics and Policies in Italy," in State, Market, and 
Social Regulation:  New Perspectives on Italy  ed. Peter Lange and Marino Regini  
Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.
DiPalma, G. (l977) Surviving without Governing:  Italian Parties in Parliament  Berkeley:  
University of California Press. 
Dudley, Geoffrey and Richardson, Jeremy (1998)  "Arenas without Rules and the Policy Change 
Process:  Outsider Groups and British Roads Policy," Political Studies  46: 727-747.
Duina, Francesco and Blithe, Frank (1999)  "Nation-States and Common Markets:  The 
Institutional Conditions for Acceptance," Review of International Political Economy  vol. 6, 
no. 4: 494-530.
Dupoirier, Elisabeth (2004)  "Les Groupes d'Intéret Économiques comme Acteurs des Politiques 
Régionales de Développement Territorial Financées par les Fond Structurels Européens."  
Paper prepared for the conference "Les Groupes d'Intéret au XXIeme Siècle" (Sciences Po, 
Paris, Sept. 24-25).
Dyson, Kenneth (l992) "Theories of Regulation and the Case of Germany:  A Model of 
Regulatory Change," in The Politics of German Regulation ed. Kenneth Dyson.   Dartmouth: 
Aldershot/Brookfield , pp. 1-28.
Egan, Michelle (2001). Constructing a European Market: Trade Barriers, Regulatory Strategies 
and Corporate Responses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Eising Rainer and Jabko, Nicolas (2001)  "Moving Targets:  Institutional Embeddedness and 
Domestic Politics in the Liberalization of EU Electricity Markets," Comparative Political 
Studies 34, 7: 742-767.
Eising, Rainer (2003)  "Interest Groups:  Opportunity Structures and Governance Capacity" in 
Kenneth Dyson and Klaus Goetz Germany, Europe and the Politics of Constraint Oxford: 
Oxford University Press.
Eriksen, E. O. and Fossum, J. E. (2002) 'Democracy through Strong Publics in the European 
Union'?  Journal of Common Market Studies 40, 3:  401-24.
Falkner, Gerda (1998)  EU Social Policy in the 1990s:  towards a Corporatist Policy Community  
London:  Routledge.
Falkner, Gerda (2001)  "Policy Networks in a Multi-Level System:  Convergence towards 
Moderate Diversity?" in eds. Klaus H. Goetz and Simon Hix  Europeanised Politics? 
European Integration and National Political Systems  London:  Frank Cass.
Falkner, Gerda, Wolfgang, C. M., Eder, M., Hiller, K., Steiner, G., and Trattnigg, R. (1999)  
"The Impact of EU Membersjhip on Policy Networks in Austria:  Creeping Change Beneath 
the Surface," Journal of European Public Policy vol. 6, no. 3:  496-516.
Ferrera, Maurizio, and Gualmini, Elisabetta. (2000)  'Italy:  Rescue from Without?'  in Fritz W. 
Scharpf and Vivien A. Schmidt (Eds.)  Welfare and Work in the Open Economy. Vol. II. 
Diverse Responses to Common Challenges.   Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ferrera, Maurizio, and Gualmini, Elisabetta. (2004) 
Forbes, Ian (2004)  "Making a Crisis out of a Drama:  The Political Analysis of BSE Policy-
Making in the UK," Political Studies vol. 53: 342-357.
Grande, Edgar (l996) "The State and Interest Groups in a Framework of Multi-Level Decision-
Making:  The Case of the European Union," Journal of European Public Policy  vol. 3, no. 3: 
318-38.
Grant, Wyn   (2001) "Pressure Politics:  From 'Insider Politics to Direct Action?" Parliamentary 
Affairs vol. 54:  337-348.
Greenwood, Justin (2003) Interest Representation in the European Union  Basingstoke: 
Palgrave/Macmillan.
Grossman, Emiliano (2003) "Les Groupes d'intéret économiques face à l'Intégration 
Européenne:  le cas du secteur bancaire," Revue Francaise de Science Politique vol. 53, no. 
5.
Gualini, Enrico (2003) "Challenges to Multi-Level Governance:  Contradictions and Conflicts in 
the Europeanization of Italian Regional Policy," Journal of European Public Policy vol. 10, 
no. 4: 616-636.
Guiraudon, Virginie   (2001)  "Weak Weapons of the Weak? Transnational mobilization around 
Migration in the European Union" in Doug Imig and Sidney Tarrow, eds., Contentious 
European:  Protest and Politics in an Emerging Polity  Lanham, Maryland:  Rowman and 
Littlefield.
Guiraudon, Viriginie (2000) 'European Integration and Migration Policy:  Vertical Policy-
Making as Venue Shopping', Journal of Common Market Studies, 38: 249-69.
Haas, Ernst (1958) The Uniting of Europe  Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Haas, Peter M. (1992). 'Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy 
Coordination'. International Organization, 46: 1–35.
Haverland, Markus (l999 ) "National Adaptation to European Integration:  The Importance of 
Institutional Veto Points."  Journal of Public Policy vol. 20, no. 1: 83-103.
Hayward, Jack (l995) "Organized Interests and Public Policies" in Governing the New Europe  
eds., Jack Hayward and Edward C. Page.  Cambridge:  Polity Press.
Héritier, Adrienne, Knill, Christoph and Mingers, S. (1996) Ringing the Changes: Regulatory 
Competition and the Transformation of the State  Berlin:  De Gruyter.
Jacobsson, K. (2004), 'The Methodology of the European Employment Strategy: Achievement 
and Problems', SCORE, Stockholm University, mimeo.
Jordan, A. G. and Richardson, J.J.  (1983) "Policy Communities:  The British and European 
Policy Style," Policy Studies Journal 11.
Jordan, Andrew (2002) The Europeanization of British Environmental Policy—A Departmental 
Perspective  Basingstoke:  Palgrave. 
Josselin, Daphné (l996) "Domestic Policy Networks and European Negotiations:  Evidence from 
British and French Financial Services," Journal of European Public Policy  vol. 3, no. 3:  
297-317.  
Keeler, John (1987) The Politics of Neocorporatism in France:  Farmers, the State, and 
Agricultural Policymaking in the Fifth Republic  New York:  Oxford University Press.
Knill Christoph and Lenschow, Andrea  (l998) "Coping with Europe:  The Impact of British and 
German Administrations on the Implementation of EU Environmental Policy," Journal of 
European Public Policy  vol. 5, no. 4: 595-514
Knill, Christoph  (l998) "European Policies:  The Impact of National Administrative Traditions," 
Journal of Public Policy  no. 18: 1-28
Knill, Christoph (2001) The Europeanization of National Administrations  Cambridge:  
Cambridge University Press.
Knill, Christoph and Lehmkuhl, D. (1999). 'How Europe Matters: Different Mechanisms of 
Europeanization'. European Integration Online Papers, EIOP  3, 7. 
http://eiop.or.at/eiop/texte/1999
Kohler-Koch, Beate  (2002)  'European Networks and Ideas: Changing National Policies?' 
European Integration Online Papers, (2002), Nr. 6, S.
Majone, Giandomenico, ed. (1996) Regulating Europe. London and New York: Routledge.
Marin, B. and Mayntz, R., eds. (1991) Policy Networks.  Empirical Evidence and Theoretical 
Considerations  Frankfurt am Main:  Campus Verlag and Westview Press.
Marsh, David and Rhodes, R.A.W., eds. (1992) Policy Networks in British Government  Oxford:  
Clarendon Press.
Marsh, David and Smith, Martin (2000) "Understanding Policy Networks:  Towards a Dialectical 
Approach,"  Political Studies  vol. 48: 4-21.
Mazey, Sonia and Richardson, Jeremy (l996) "EU Policymaking:  A Garbage Can or an 
Anticipatory and Consensual Policy Style?" in Adjusting to Europe:  The Impact of the 
European Union on National Institutions and Policies  eds. Yves Mény, Pierre Muller, and 
Jean-Louis Quermonne.  London:  Routledge.
Mazey, Sonia and Richardson, Jeremy, eds. (1993a)  Lobbying in the European Community  
Oxford:  Oxford University Press.
McCormick, J. (2001)  Environmental Policy in the European Union  New York:  Palgrave.
Mosher, James and  Trubek, David M. (2003).  'EU Social Policy and the European Employment 
Strategy' Journal of Common Market Studies  vol. 41, no. 1:  63-88.
Page, Edward C.  (l995) "Administering Europe"  in Governing the New Europe  eds., Jack 
Hayward and Edward C. Page.  Cambridge:  Polity Press.
Pasquino, Gianfranco (l989)  "Unregulated Regulators:  Parties and Party Government," in State, 
Market, and Social Regulation:  New Perspectives on Italy  ed. Peter Lange and Marino 
Regini.  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press. 
Pollack, Mark and Emilie Hafner-Burton  (2000) "Mainstreaming Gender in European Union 
Policymaking," Journal of European Public Policy, special issue on "Women, Power and 
Public Policy," Vol. 7, No. 1. 
Radaelli, Claudio (1999)  Technocracy in the European Union  London and New York:  
Longman.
Radaelli, Claudio M. (1998). Networks of expertise and policy change in Italy, South European 
Society and Politics, vol.3 (2) Autumn: 1-22.
Rhodes Martin and Caroline de la Porte  (2004)  "EU Employment Policy:  Between 
Experimentalism and Effectiveness," Paper prepared for presentation to the American 
Political Science Association Meetings (Chicago, Ill:  Sept 2-5).  
Rhodes, R.A.W. and Marsh, David (1992) "New Directions in the Study of Policy Networks," 
European Journal of Policy Research vol. 21.
Roederer-Rynning, Christilla (2002) "Farm Conflict in France and the Europeanization of 
Agricultural Policy," West European Politics vol. 25, no. 3: 105-124. 
Rosanvallon 2004.
Rose, Chris (1992)  The Dirty Man of Europe:  The Great British Pollution Scandal London:  
Simon & Schuster.
Sabatier, Paul A. (1998). 'The Advocacy Coalition Framework: Revisions and Relevance for 
Europe'. Journal of European Public Policy, 5/1: 98–130.
Sbragia, Alberta (2001) "Italy" in Cowles, Maria Green, Caporaso, James, and Risse, Thomas, 
eds., Transforming Europe:  Europeanization and Domestic Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell 
University Press
Scharpf, Fritz (l988)"The Joint Decision Trap:  Lessons from German Federalism and European 
Integration," Public Administration  vol. 66, no. 3:  239-78; 
Schmidt, Susanne habilitation.
Schmidt, Vivien  A.  ( 2004)  "The European Union:  Democratic Legitimacy in a Regional 
State?"  Journal of Common Market Studies vol. 42, no. 4 (2004): 975-999.
Schmidt, Vivien  A. (1996)  From State to Market?  The Transformation of Business and 
Government in France  Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press.
Schmidt, Vivien  A. (1997) "Discourse and (Dis)Integration in Europe:  The Cases of France, 
Great Britain, and Germany,"  Daedalus  vol. 126, no. 3 (summer l997):  167-198.
Schmidt, Vivien  A. (1999). 'National Patterns of Governance under Siege: The Impact of 
European Integration', in Beate Kohler-Koch and Rainer Eising (eds), The Transformation of 
Governance in the European Union. London: Routledge.
Schmidt, Vivien  A. (2001) "Federalism and State Governance in the EU and the US:  An 
Institutional Perspective" in The Federal Vision:  Legitimacy and Levels of Governance in 
the US and the EU  eds. Kalypso Nicholaides and Robert Howse.  London:  Oxford 
University Press.
Schmidt, Vivien  A. (2002)   The Futures of European Capitalism  Oxford:  Oxford University 
Press.
Schmidt, Vivien A. (2005)  "Democracy in Europe:  The Impact of European Integration."  
Perspectives on Politics (forthcoming 2005). 
Schmitter, Philippe (l996) "Some Alternative Futures for the European Polity and their 
Implications for European Public Policy," in Adjusting to Europe:  The Impact of the 
European Union on National Institutions and Policies  eds. Yves Mény, Pierre Muller, and 
Jean-Louis Quermonne (London:  Routledge).
Smismans, Stijn (2003). "Representation through interest committees: the case of the tripartite 
Advisory Committee for Safety, Hygiene and Health Protection at Work" in Les modes de 
représentation dans l'Union européenne. Eds. Sabine Saurugger and Bastien Irondelle.  Paris: 
L'Harmattan.
Sommier, Isabelle (2003)  Le Renouveau des Mouvements Contestataires à l'heure de la 
mondialisation  Paris:  Flammarion.
Stefanizzi, Sonia and Tarrow, Sidney (l989) "Protest and Regulation:  The Interaction of State 
and Society in the Cycle of l965-74," in State, Market, and Social Regulation:  New 
Perspectives on Italy  ed. Peter Lange and Marino Regini.  Cambridge:  Cambridge 
University Press.
Streeck, Wolfgang and Schmitter, Philippe (1991) "From National Corporatism to Transnational 
Pluralism:  Organized Interests in a Single European Market," Politics and Society vol. 19, 
no. 2.
Tarrow, Sidney (l988) Democracy and Disorder:   Protest and Politics in Italy, l965-l975  
Oxford:  Oxford Unversity Press. 
Thatcher, Mark (1999). Politics of Telecommunications. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Thatcher, Mark (2002)  "Analyzing Regulatory Reform in Europe," Journal of European Public 
Policy vol. 9, no. 6: 859-872.
Thatcher, Mark (2004) "Winners and Losers in Europeanisation:  Reforming the National 
Regulation of Telecommunications," West European Politics vol. 27, no. 2:  284-309.
Thatcher, Mark (2005) "The Third Force?  Independent Regulatory Agencies and Elected 
Politicians in Europe," Governance (forthcoming).
Thielemann, Eiko R. (2002)  "The Soft Europeanisation of Migration Policy:  European 
Integration and Domestic Policy Change."  Paper presented at the 2002 ECPR joint session of 
workshops, Turin (March 22-27).
Vogel, David (1986)  National Styles of Regulation:  Environmental Policy in Great Britain and 
the United States  Ithaca, NY:  Cornell University Press.
Webster, R. (1998). Environmental Collective action: Stable Patterns of Cooperation and Issue 
Alliances at the European level. In: Greenwood, J. and Aspinwall, M. eds. (1998). Collective 
action in the European Union: interests and the new politics of associability. London: 
Routledge.
Wessels, Wolfgang and Dietrich Rometsch, "German Administrative Interaction and European 
Union:  The Fusion of Public Policies" in Adjusting to Europe:  The Impact of the European 
Union on National Institutions and Policies  eds. Yves Mény, Pierre Muller, and Jean-Louis 
Quermonne (London:  Routledge, l996).
Woodward, Alison  (2003) "European Gender Mainstreaming:  Promises and Pitfalls of 
Transformative Policy," Review of Policy Research vol. 20, no. 1:  65-88



FOOTNOTES
  See Scharpf and Schmidt 2000.
  See Schmidt 2002, Chapter 2.
  Putting the politics together with structures and processes yields what I call 'simple' polities when 
majoritarian representation systems combine with statist policymaking processes and unitary states to 
channel governing activity through a single authority and 'compound' polities when proportional 
representation systems combine with corporatist policymaking processes and federal or regionalized 
states to disperse power through multiple authorities.  The policymaking process discussed in this paper 
thus represents one component of a larger set of institutional considerations.  For more on these, see 
Schmidt 2004, 2005.
   Streeck and Schmitter
   Mazey and Richardson l996, p. 53.
   Schmitter l996.
   Mazey and Richardson l996, p. 42.
   Cohen, March, and Olsen l972.
   Mazey and Richardson l993; Grande 1996; Majone 1996, pp. 74-75.
  Schmidt 1999b; 2001
  Greenwood 2003.
   Coen l997.
   Mazey and Richardson 1993b; Webster 1998; McCormick 2001; Jordan 2002a; Greenwood 2003.
  Guiraudon 2001.
  See Falkner 1998.
    While the coordinative discourse predominates in the policy sphere, in the political sphere, it is the 
'communicative' discourse between political leaders and the public.  See Schmidt 2002a, Chs. 5, 6.
   Kohler Koch 2002; Haas 1992; Sabatier 1998; Eriksen and Fossum 2002.
   Page 1995; Hayward 1995; Schmidt 1996. 
   See Schmidt 1996.
  See Rosanvallon 2004.
  Sommier 2003.
  Schmidt 1996; Cowles 2001.
  Coen 1998.
  Schmidt 2002, Ch. 6.
  Schmidt 1997b.
  Jordan 2002; Bache 2000.
  Bache 2000, 2003.
  Dudley and Richardson 1998.
  Grant 2001.
  See Coen 2005; and discussion below.
   Greenwood 2003.
   Josselin l996.  
  Benz and Goetz 1996b, p. 17; see also Knill 2001, p. 64.
   Scharpf l988.
   Wessels and Rometsch l996.
   Egan 2001, pp. 144-45.
  Coen 1998.
   Falkner 1998.
  Cowles 2001.  Note, however, that rather than a paradigm change, this may follow from long-standing 
patterns with regard to foreign trade policies--Eising 2003.
  See  Dyson l992.
  Dyson l992.
    DiPalma l977; Pasquino l989; Dente and Regonini l989.
   Tarrow l988; Stefanizzi and Tarrow l989.
  See Radaelli 1998.
  See Ferrera and Gualmini 2000, 2004.
  Ferrera and Gualmini 2000, 2004.
  Sbragia 2001.
  Gualini 2003.
  Cowles 1995
  Coen 1998.
   See Keeler 1987.  I call this 'quasi-corporatist' because the 'state' is more in control here than in 
traditional corporatist relations.  See Schmidt 1996.
  Falkner 2001, pp. 99-100.
  See the discussion in Schmidt 1996.
  See, for example, Jordan and Richardson 1983; Marsh and Rhodes 1992; Rhodes and Marsh 1992; 
Marin and Mayntz 1991; and the discussion in Falkner 2001.
  Falkner 2001.
  Although Falkner also has a category of 'statist cluster', in which state actors do not consult, I prefer to 
subsume this under statist issues networks, since the state generally engages in formal consultation by 
informing  societal actors of its plans, even when it doesn't listen to their responses or allow lobbying. 
  The EU process calls for 'horizontal cooperation' between public institutions and civic associations, 
economic and social, which come from civil society.
  Dupoirier 2004.
  Dupoirier 2004.
  Bache 2000.
  Héritier et al. 1996; Boerzel 2002b.
  Jordan 2002.
  Jordan 2002, pp. 41, 198-200.
  Knill and Lenschow l998;  Knill l998; Knill 2001; Knill and Lehmkul 1999.
  Héritier et al. 1996, pp. 207-65.
  Benz and Goetz l996; Knill and Lenschow 1998; and Knill and Lehmkul 1999; Knill 2001.
  Haverland l999.
  Vogel 1986; Rose 1992; Duina and Blithe 1999.
  Duina and Blithe 1999.
  Falkner et al. 1999, p. 512.
  Burnham and Maor 1995.
  Haas 1958; Cram 1998.
  See de la Porte and Pochet 2002; Mosher and Trubek 2003.
  Woodward 2003; Pollack and Hafner-Burton 2000.
  Radaelli l999.
  Grossman 2003, 2002.
  Conversation with Bruno Palier, June 2004.
  Barbier 1998.
  Smismans 2003; Jacobssen 2004; Rhodes and de la Porte 2005.
  Roederer-Rynning 2002.
  Roederer-Rynning 2002, pp. 110-114.
  Roederer-Rynning 2002, pp. 114-119; see also Coleman and Chiasson 2002; Saurugger 2002.
   Marsh and Smith 2000.
   Forbes 2004.
  Eising and Jabko 2002.
  Bauby and Toledo 2002, p. 116.
  Eising and Jabko 2002.
  See Susanne Schmidt, habilitation.
  Héritier et al., 1996; Knill and Lehmkuhl 1999.
  Schmidt 1996; Grossman 2003.
  Grossman 2003, pp. 754-5.
  Webster 1998.
  Coen 2005; Thatcher 2005.
  Guiraudon 2000.
  Thielemann 2002.
  Guiraudon 2001.
  See Thatcher 1999, 2002, 2004.
  Coen 2005a; see also Thatcher 1999, 2002, 2004.


41