Post-Accession Transposition and Implementation between Administrative Coordination and Political Bargaining

Dimitrova, Antoaneta (2009) Post-Accession Transposition and Implementation between Administrative Coordination and Political Bargaining. In: UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between administrative coordination of EU affairs at the national level and compliance with EU law. First, we develop two hypotheses about the impact of coordination: we expect that the strength of the coordination structure (level of centralisation and political support) will improve levels of transposition of EU law, but if and when the EU laws attain political salience and trigger political opposition coordination becomes irrelevant. We test these conjectures by an aggregate country-level analysis of transposition rates and a qualitative comparative analysis of eight cases covering two directives. Both analyses support our expectations that strong administrative coordination of EU affairs leads to smaller transposition deficits in the aggregate. However for highly salient directives that touch upon constitutional issues and trigger opposition from political actors outside the executive, administrative coordination cannot help.

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