Introduction

1 Introduction

The literature on the Europeanisation of domestic political systems has mushroomed over the last decade (see Graziano and Vink 2007

). Where once the topic was the preserve of research journals, it has, by now, become firmly established in textbooks on European integration and comparative European politics and government, to the extent that it has begun to serve as “an overarching theme and persistent concern” (Bale 2005 : xxi). In the process, the study of Europeanisation has matured at three levels:

The empirical level: the maturation of the field is most evident when we consider the breadth of empirical studies that inquire into different aspects of Europeanisation. The number of such studies is now much larger than even a few years back; it is a reflection of the dynamism of the field that most of the contributions reviewed in the following have been published since 2000. There has not only been a proliferation of single-country studies of individual state institutions; we also find increasingly ambitious cross-country comparative efforts (e.g., Schmidt 2005 , 2006 ) and country surveys that span the polity, politics and public policy dimensions (e.g., Bache and Jordan 2006 ; Closa and Heywood 2004 ; Dyson and Goetz 2003 ; Miles 2005 ). The literature on the large West European countries – Germany, France and the UK – is rapidly being complemented by studies of the Europeanisation of Southern Europe and the Nordic countries (see Goetz 2007 with further references). This interest in the domestic effects of Europe shows no sign of abating; at the same time, ‘state of the art’ reviews seek to systematise and assess existing knowledge and take the debate forward (Graziano and Vink 2007 ; Holzhacker and Albæk 2007 ).
The conceptual level: there is no shortage of attempts to turn the notion of Europeanisation from an “attention-directing device” (Olsen 2002 ) into an operationalisable concept capable of guiding empirical investigations (Börzel and Risse 2003 ; for a recent review see Radaelli and Pasquier 2007 ). Opinions continue to differ, e.g., as to whether ‘misfit’ between European and domestic arrangements is a necessary precondition of Europeanisation, and whether Europeanisation necessarily implies change at the domestic level (rather than also being compatible with the continuation of traditional domestic practices) (see Mastenbroek and Kaeding 2006 , with further references). Despite these differences, there is broad agreement that Europeanisation stands for the consequences of European integration as they are observable within the member states of the European Union (and beyond). It is, as such, usually treated as a ‘dependent variable’, with progressive integration in its many guises as the driving force behind it.
The explanatory-theoretical level: as we shall discuss at greater length in Section 3, causal accounts of Europeanisation draw on a broad range of explanatory and theoretical schemes and there is a lively debate on how best to account for domestic responses to the integration process (see Bulmer 2007 for a recent overview). Most studies make reference to both integration-related factors - such as length of membership or capacity to ‘upload’ national preferences to the European level - and domestic variables, including, in particular, institutions, interests, ideas and identities. The relative weight accorded to them and their specifications differ greatly. Rationalist, but especially historical-sociological approaches are influential in the field. They are sometimes combined in ambitious ways, as, e.g., in Schmidt ’s (2006 ) comparative analysis of national trajectories of Europeanisation, which stresses the linkage between the number of domestic veto points and discourse on Europe.

An expanding base of empirical knowledge, conceptual debate and often considerable theoretical ambition have not, as yet, led to the emergence of a ‘conventional wisdom’ as regards substantive domestic responses, beyond a broadly shared consensus on ‘non-convergence’, i.e., the proposition that Europeanisation does not imply that the political systems of the EU member states have become increasingly alike over time. The impact of ‘Europe’, it is argued, is ‘differential’ (Héritier et al. 2001 ): it can take many different forms depending on domestic settings. At least as regards substantive institutional effects, our reading of the debate does more than suggest non-convergence: a comparison of substantive findings supports contradictory conclusions. As will be detailed below, authors have variously found evidence of both

de-parlamentarisation, as national parliaments have ceded powers to the EU and to domestic executives, and the opposite, i.e., re-parlamentarisation, as national legislatures have reasserted themselves in the integration process;
growing bureaucratisation, as national bureaucrats dominate domestic EU-related policy-making, and the opposite, i.e., politicisation, as executive politicians take control of the EU policy process; and
increasing centralisation in national governments, with the emergence of powerful EU core executives, and the opposite, i.e., progressive diffusion of integration effects throughout the political and administrative parts of the executive.

We take these conflicting assessments as the starting point of our Living Review. Section 2 sets out key contributions to the debate, with an emphasis on the topics highlighted above. Section 3 then takes a closer look at the guiding questions and design of the studies under review. We contend that the substantive differences highlighted in Section 2 owe much to differences in the specification of variables, research design and approaches. By way of concluding, we suggest in Section 4 that there is much to be gained from paying systematic attention to the patterning of Europeanisation across domains, countries, regions and time and from paying attention to the ‘methodological nationalism’ of much Europeanisation research.

To keep this first edition of our Living Review within manageable boundaries, we have had to restrict the literature to be considered in several ways. First, we limit ourselves largely to the polity dimension of political systems, although we refer to some works that take a more encompassing view (notably books that examine Europeanisation across several domains in individual countries or regions). Issues pertaining to the Europeanisation of public policies are dealt with in the Living Review in European Governance on implementation (Treib 2006 ). Second, we focus on the EU-15; Europeanisation in the new member states that joined the EU in 2004 and 2007 respectively is the subject of Sedelmeier ’s (2006 ) Living Review, whilst Schimmelfennig (2007 ) deals with Europeanisation beyond the EU’s frontiers. We do, however, take into consideration work that attempts some comparison across the former West-East divide (e.g., Laffan 2003 ; O’Brennan and Raunio 2007 ). We hope that in future updates of this Living Review, such studies will feature more prominently, as they can help to shed light on the assumptions that inform many of the studies on the EU-15, notably the supposed explanatory power of deeply entrenched domestic institutions. Finally, in this first edition, we have limited ourselves to English-language material. Such a restriction is not, of course, without costs, for it inevitably skews this Living Review towards the experience of countries that, for a variety of reasons, are better covered in English than others, notably the North-Western EU core, the UK and the Nordic states. We hope to include references to non-English material in future editions.