2 Research questions

In line with most definitions of ‘Europeanisation’ in the literature (see e.g. Börzel 2005 ; Börzel and Risse 2003 , 2007 ; Cowles et al. 2001 ; Falkner 2003 ; Featherstone and Radaelli 2003 ; Mair 2004 ; Radaelli 2003 ), studies of the Europeanisation of candidate countries are primarily concerned with analysing the EU’s impact on the domestic level in the candidates. Specifically, the key question that guides these studies is to what extent and how the EU influences domestic political change in these countries.

Concrete questions in particular theoretically informed studies display some variation. For example, such questions include:

‘do we see convergence in [the CEECs’ political reform] trajectories and, if so, how much of this convergence was caused by the leverage of the EU?’ (Vachudová 2005 : 2);
‘how much have EU … external pressures or incentives shaped [CEE elites’ institutional and policy] choices?’ (Jacoby 2004 : 2);
‘under what conditions do non-member states adopt EU rules’ (Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005c : 8)? or
‘when and how [has] … the EU influenced governments to pass certain legislation’ (Kelley 2004 : 2)?

Yet in essence, these guiding questions all boil down to one main question: under what conditions is the EU’s influence effective? Or, in other words: what factors explain variation in the EU’s influence across countries and issue areas? This question contains two parts. First, studies assess the extent to which the EU has a domestic impact, and second, they ask what factors account for this (lack of) impact, focusing on different EU strategies and mediating domestic factors.

The following two subsections review respectively the main questions that guide the literature with regard to the whether and how of the EU’s impact. They provide some indicative examples of studies that are guided by such questions but only review the different answers to these questions (with a more comprehensive indication of the relevant literature) in the Section 3 on ‘empirical findings’.

2.1 Extent and nature of the EU’s impact
2.2 Conditions for the EU’s impact: mediating factors
2.3 Theoretical framework: alternative institutionalist approaches to the EU’s impact
2.4 Rationalist institutionalism
  2.4.1 EU strategy: conditional incentives
  2.4.2 Domestic politics: differential empowerment and costs
2.5 Constructivist institutionalism
  2.5.1 EU strategy: socialisation and persuasion
  2.5.2 Domestic politics: normative resonance