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The Europeanisation of member states distinguishes between two analytically distinctive approaches – rationalist institutionalism and sociological (or constructivist) institutionalism (see e.g. Börzel 2005; Börzel and Risse 2003; Cowles et al. 2001). Rationalist institutionalism suggests that the EU’s domestic impact follows a ‘logic of consequences’ rather than a ‘logic of appropriateness’ (March and Olsen 1989: 160). Adaptational pressure from the EU changes the opportunity structure for utility-maximising domestic actors. It empowers certain actors by offering legal and political resources to pursue domestic change. Formal domestic institutions are the main factors impeding or facilitating changes in response to EU adjustment pressures. By contrast, sociological institutionalism emphasises that such responses follow a ‘logic of appropriateness’. The EU’s domestic impact results from a process of socialisation in which domestic actors internalise EU norms that they regard as legitimate. Domestic norm entrepreneurs, as well as domestic cultural understandings and informal institutions are key mediating factors for whether domestic actors engage in a social learning process through which EU rules redefine their interests and identities.
Likewise, most theoretically-informed studies of the Europeanisation of candidate countries are generally
set within the framework of institutionalist theory (see e.g. Dimitrova and Steunenberg 2004
;
Epstein 2005a,b, 2006c; Goetz 2002; Grabbe 2006; Jacoby 2004; Kelley 2004; Kubicek 2003b;
Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005b), and in particular the debate between rationalism and
constructivism (or sociological institutionalism) in International Relations theory (see also Schimmelfennig
and Sedelmeier 2006: 4).
Such studies contrast the use of conditionality – as a strategy emphasised by rationalist institutionalist
approaches – with alternative strategies that sociological institutionalism is best suited to analyse. For
example, Kelley (2004) contrasts ‘incentives’ with ‘normative pressure’; Kubicek (2003c) ‘conditionality’
with ‘convergence’, which entails the ‘spread of norms’; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier (2005c) ‘external
incentives’ with ‘social learning’. Most of these studies formulate specific hypotheses according to which
either of the two general approaches would expect the likelihood of the EU’s influence to be
high/low (see Table 2), both with regard to factors relating to the EU’s strategies and domestic
factors.
At the same time, while the two approaches emphasise analytically distinct mechanisms, these are – at
least partly – complementary, and not necessarily mutually exclusive (see also Jacoby 2004:
20-40; Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier 2005c: 25). Indeed, as Kelley (2004) points out, in the issue area of
minority policy, the EU never relied exclusively on conditionality, which was always combined with
normative pressures by international institutions. In such cases, it is impossible to disentangle the relative
importance of either mechanism, but only to contrast the effectiveness of exclusive normative pressure from
normative pressures underpinned by conditionality. Likewise, Epstein (2006b) emphasises the
social context of conditionality, rather than a simple either/or debate; and Johnson (2006)
suggests a ‘two-track’ diffusion model, in which both mechanisms work simultaneously on different
domestic groups within the same issue area. Jacoby (2004) goes one step further to suggests the
concept of ‘embedded rationalism’ as a synthesis between the various strands of institutionalist
theory.
Table 2 depicts the key independent variables analysed in explanatory studies of variations in the effectiveness of the EU’s influence.
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