National Adaptation to European Integration: The Importance of Institutional Veto Points

By M. Haverland. Journal of Public Policy, 2000

327 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The repercussions of European integration on national policymaking have increasingly drawn scholarly attention, yet, the determinants of national adaptation to the European Union are still poorly understood. This article takes issue with evolving arguments which grant crucial importance to the “goodness of fit” between European provisions and national rules and practices for explaining the degree of national adjustment to European requirements. In the case of the implementation of the Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, the country with the greatest misfit, the United Kingdom, adapted more successfully than the country which only needed incremental adjustments, Germany. The German record was also worse than the Dutch, despite the higher adaptation pressure of the latter. The case study suggests that the number of institutional veto points that central governments has to face when imposing European provisions on their constituencies, ultimately tend to shape the pace and quality of implementation, regardless of differential degrees in the goodness of fit.

Subfields: Political Science and International Relations, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e70f53303da7fcc9322dcf3af39f0f7ea0b7fc2a

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Citations in the corpus

Conceptualizing the Domestic Impact of Europe (2009, background): “1) Multiple veto points in a country’s institutional structure can empower actors with diverse inter- ests to avoid constraints emanating from Europeanization pressures and, thus, effectively inhibit domestic adaptation (Tsebelis 1995; Haverland 2000; Héritier et al. 2001).”
When Europe Hits Home: Europeanization and Domestic Change (2000, methodology): “The existence of multiple veto points in a country's institutional structure can empower actors with diverse interests to avoid constraints and, thus, effectively inhibit domestic adaptation (Tsebelis 1995; Haverland 2000; Héritier et al. forthcoming).”
EU compliance: Still a ‘black hole’? (2005, background): “Similarly disappointing results were generated by Haverland (2000), who analysed the speed and correctness of implementation of a directive on packaging waste in the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK.”
Three Worlds of Compliance or Four? The EU15 Compared to New Member States. IHS Political Science Series Paper, No. 112, March 2007 (2007, background): “It follows that EU countries with higher numbers of veto players should have more problems with enacting transposition legislation in order to incorporate EU standards than systems with low numbers of veto players (see e.g. Haverland, 2000).”