3 Empirical findings: EU impact across issue areas

The empirical findings of studies of candidates confirm some key insights of research on member state Europeanisation. First, the EU’s impact is differential across countries and issues (see also Börzel and Risse 2007 ; Goetz 2005 ; Grabbe 2003 : 317). This finding might be somewhat surprising, as there are good reasons to believe that the EU’s impact should be more pervasive and induce greater convergence. The EU’s conditionality and its tight link with progress in accession negotiations induced strong top-down pressures; at the domestic level, post-communist institutions are less firmly entrenched than in the older member states (see also Goetz and Wollmann 2001 ; Grabbe 2003 : 306-308; Héritier 2005 ; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005c ). The EU’s influence on candidates in the context of eastern enlargement was arguably indeed greater than on member states, and induced a certain extent of convergence. Still, the broader patterns suggest that diversity persists, both between eastern and western Europe and within the new member states (see also Bruszt 2002 ). Furthermore, even in certain areas where the EU’s pre-accession influence has been particularly pervasive, it remains to be seen whether this impact remains sustainable after accession, as the applicants had incentives to engage only in shallow institutionalisation which is not difficult to reverse (Goetz 2005 : 262).

On the other hand, some of the theoretical findings are much more clear-cut. Research on the member states does not identify a dominant mechanism of Europeanisation. By contrast, rationalist institutionalism, with its focus on the EU’s use of conditionality and domestic veto players, appears well-suited to explaining the main patterns of candidate country Europeanisation. The sections below illustrate that the factors emphasised by rationalist institutionalism – the credibility of the incentive of membership and the incumbent government’s material power costs of adjustment – generally account better for variation in the EU’s influence on liberal democratic principles and socio-economic policies than the factors emphasised by constructivist institutionalism (see also Kelley 2004 ; Kubicek 2003a ; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005a , 2006 ).

3.1 Impact on the polity
3.1.1 Liberal democratic principles
3.1.2 Executives and administrative structures
3.2 Impact on politics
3.3 Policy Impact