"Globalization and Europeanization: Why Extra-European Processes of Integration Affect how EU Environmental Policy is Implemented"

Kollman, Kelly. (2007) "Globalization and Europeanization: Why Extra-European Processes of Integration Affect how EU Environmental Policy is Implemented". In: UNSPECIFIED, Montreal, Canada. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

[From the introduction]. The central argument of this study is that the effects of Europeanization and the impact EU policy has on member states cannot be understood without taking certain international factors related to globalization into account; domestic institutional accounts do not tell the whole story. In particular the nature of EU policies, the embeddedness of EU legislation in wider international policy regimes and international market incentives are all important variables for explaining how individual member states implement European policies. The EU, of course, does not exist in an international vacuum and in an era of economic and political globalization, it would be surprising if these international and transnational forces had no influence on the implementation of EU legislation. Yet despite this fact and the level of scholarly attention paid to processes of globalization in the last decade, these factors are rarely examined in the Europeanization literature. To make this argument I examine the implementation of two prominent EU environmental policies, the Large Combustion Plant Directive (LCP) and the Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) in Germany and the UK. In addition to examining how these policies affect the implementing governments, I also examine how they impact firms—both policies’ ultimate targets—in the two countries. I have chosen the environmental field both because the EU has a well developed and wide ranging set of policies in this area and because the field is strongly influenced by extra-European international forces. Additionally because a number of Europeanization studies have used the UK and/or Germany’s implementation of EU environmental policy (Knill 2001; Duina 1999; Boerzel 2003), this case selection also allows me to clearly illustrate how the incorporation of international variables can serve as a useful alternative/additional explanation of these outcomes.

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