Christoph Knill

Causes and conditions of cross-national policy convergence

Abstract It is the objective of this article to review the existing literature and to address theoretical deficits in the study of policy convergence. First, we briefly present the central indicators we apply for the assessment of policy convergence. In a second step, we identify and compare different causal mechanisms of cross-national policy convergence. Having elaborated on the major causes of policy convergence, however, we still know little about the conditions under which these factors actually lead to convergence. This is the central objective of the third part of our analysis, in which we develop theoretical expectations on different indicators of cross-national policy convergence.

Introduction: Cross-national policy convergence: concepts, approaches and explanatory factors

Abstract Although there is an increasing number of studies on policy convergence (in recent years especially in the context of Europeanization and globalization research), we still have a rather limited understanding of this phenomenon. This deficit can be not only traced back to a lack of empirical findings, but is also the result of the heterogeneous and partially inconsistent theoretical literature on policy convergence. Although policy convergence constitutes a central concept in comparative public policy, it is not always consistently used and mixed up with related but not equivalent concepts. It is thus a basic objective of this paper to clarify the analytical relationship between policy convergence and related concepts used in the literature. Moreover, different approaches for the assessment and measurement of policy convergence will be presented. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of causes of policy convergence.

Coping with Europe: the impact of British and German administrations on the implementation of EU environmental policy

ABSTRACT A central problem for improving the implementation effectiveness of European legislation lies in the impact of national administrative traditions. The dependence on national administrations for implementing European policies implies that the formal transposition and practical application of supranational policies are crucially influenced by administrative traditions prevalent in a certain policy field, which may differ substantially from country to country. Focusing on the implementation of EU environmental policy in Britain and Germany, it is the objective of this article to investigate the interplay of national administrative traditions and European policy implementation in closer detail. The main argument is that the extent to which administrative traditions affect implementation effectiveness is less dependent on the ‘real’ costs of adaptation than on the level of embeddedness of existing structures.

Private Actors and the State : Internationalization and Changing Patterns of Governance

This article investigates the implications of political and economic internationalization on patterns of governance from a statecentric perspective. The actual patterns of governance in internationalized environments can be related to the respective governance capacity of public and private actors, which hinges in turn on the strategic constellation underlying the provision of a public good. The specific strategic constellation varies in three dimensions: the congruence between the scope of the underlying problem and the organizational structures of the related actors, the type of problem, and the institutional context, all of which involve a number of factors. With this concept in mind, we identify four ideal-typed patterns of governance, enabled by different configurations of public and private capacities to formally or factually influence in various ways the social, economic, and political processes by which certain goods are provided.

Environmental Policy Convergence: The Impact of International Harmonization, Transnational Communication, and Regulatory Competition

In recent years, there is growing interest in the study of cross-national policy convergence. Yet we still have a limited understanding of the phenomenon: Do we observe convergence of policies at all? Under which conditions can we expect that domestic policies converge or rather develop further apart? In this article, we address this research deficit. From a theoretical perspective, we concentrate on the explanatory power of three factors, namely international harmonization, transnational communication, and regulatory competition. In empirical terms, we analyze if and to what extent we can observe convergence of environmental policies across twenty-four industrialized countries between 1970 and 2000. We find an impressive degree of environmental policy convergence between the countries under investigation. This development is mainly caused by international harmonization and, to a considerable degree, also by transnational communication, whereas regulatory competition does not seem to play a role.

Higher Education Policies in Central and Eastern Europe: Convergence toward a Common Model?

Contrary to many other areas, international and, in particular, European influences on national policymaking in higher education (HE) have remained limited. This picture, however, changed fundamentally from the late 1990s onward. In 1999, 29 countries signed the Bologna Declaration, denoting the start of the so-called Bologna Process. Thus, a collective supranational platform was developed to confront problem pressure, which has in turn fostered considerable domestic reforms. However, we still have limited knowledge on whether the Bologna Process has actually led to the convergence of national HE policies toward a common model. This article analyzes these questions by focusing on Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries. Because of its tumultuous and inconsistent path of development and the sheer magnitude of the current reform processes, CEE HE stands out as a particularly worthwhile object of analysis for scholars interested in policy convergence as well as policy legacies and path dependencies.

Explaining Cross-National Variance in Administrative Reform: Autonomous versus Instrumental Bureaucracies

Notwithstanding an ever-growing body of literature on administrative reforms, the studies either focus on single countries or emphasize common tendencies in all countries; hence providing little systematic insight for the evaluation and explanation of administrative change from a comparative perspective. In the light of this deficit, it is the aim of this article to develop an analytical concept for explaining cross-national variances in patterns of administrative development. For this purpose, the concept of national administrative reform capacity is developed, arguing that the potential for reforming different administrative systems is basically dependent on the general institutional context in which these systems are embedded. On this basis, two ideal type constellations of administrative reform capacity and corresponding patterns of administrative development are identified and illustrated by a systematic comparison of administrative reform capacities and administrative changes in Germany and Britain.

'It’s the Bureaucracy, Stupid' : The implementation of the acquis communautaire in EU candidate countries, 1999-2003

The Central and East European (CEE) countries that had applied for membership in the European Union were confronted with far-reaching requirements in order to bring domestic policies in line with EU standards. Notwithstanding these rather uniform pressures emerging from conditionality, there is considerable variety in alignment performance across the candidate countries and over time. To account for this, we use time series cross-sectional data on the implementation performance of 13 EU candidate countries between 1999 and 2003. Our results indicate that the bureaucratic strength and effectiveness of a country positively influence its ability to adjust domestic arrangements to EU requirements. By contrast, we find no support for veto-player theories of political constraints on legislative change. We hence conclude that the implementation of the acquis communautaire in candidate countries prior to accession has been a question of bureaucratic problems rather than of political veto-manoeuvres.

Differential Europeanization in Eastern Europe: The Impact of Diverse EU Regulatory Governance Patterns

Abstract When analysing processes of domestic institutional and political change in Central and Eastern Europe, political scientists frequently refer to the concept of Europeanization. This article focuses the policy‐analytical framework as one central Europeanization approach and addresses the question of whether this approach is applicable to explain domestic change beyond the core of EU member states. The policy‐analytical approach systematically analyses the impact of different modes of EU governance on process and outcome of national institutional and policy change. The article demonstrates that in distinguishing the different potential of compliance, competition and communication to trigger domestic adjustments, the policy‐analytical approach proves to be a useful tool for predicting domestic change in states outside the EU. It helps generate differentiated hypotheses about the potential impacts of EU policies in Central and Eastern European candidate countries that are likely to join the EU in the foreseeable future and in non‐member states with only minimal or no accession prospects.

Modes of Regulation in the Governance of the European Union: Towards a Comprehensive Evaluation

This book suggests that the scope and breadth of regulatory reforms since the mid-1980s and particularly during the 1990s, are so striking that they necessitate a reappraisal of current approaches to the study of the politics of regulation. The authors call for the adoption of different and fresh perspectives to examine this area.