What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

'Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony', American Journal of Sociology, 83, pp. 340-63.

Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland; Or Why It's Amazing That Federal Programs Work at All . By Jeffrey L. Pressman and Aaron B. Wildavsky. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Pp. xviii, 182. $7.50.)

The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe.

The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe

Europe undivided: democracy, leverage and integration after Communism

This article analyses the effect of conflict in the Council of the European Union (EU) on delays in the transposition of EU directives. Based on enforcement and management theories, we predict that conflict in the Council speeds up the transposition process. In addition, we control for the instigation of infringement procedures by the Commission and expect a weaker effect of conflict in cases where the Commission disagrees with a directive and if directives grant more discretion to member states. These hypotheses are tested using two indicators of conflict: heterogeneity and polarization. Cox regression analysis is applied with time-dependent effects and with a shared frailty to control for the multilevel structure of the data. The analyses show that, over time, conflict has an increasing negative effect on delays.

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The time-dependent effect of conflict in the council on delays in the transposition of EU directives

Despite the vast literature on policy implementation, systematic cross-national research focusing on implementers’ performance regarding different policy issues is still in its infancy. The European Union policies are conducive to examining this relationship in a comparative setting, as the EU member states need to implement various EU directives both legally and in practice. In this study, a first attempt is made to analyse the relationship between legal conformity and practical implementation and the conditions for practical deviations in 27 member states across issues from four policy areas (Internal Market, Environment, Justice and Home Affairs and Social Policy). In line with existing approaches to EU compliance, it is expected that the policy preferences of domestic political elites (‘enforcement’) affect their incentives to ‘decouple’ practical from legal compliance. Instead, administrative and institutional capacities (‘management’) and societal constraints (‘legitimacy’) are likely to limit the ability of policy makers to exert control over the implementation process. The findings suggest that practical deviations arise from policy makers’ inability to steer the implementation process, regardless of their predispositions towards internationally agreed policies. The results have strong implications for the effective application of international rules in domestic settings, as they illustrate that political support for the implementation of ‘external’ policy does not ensure effective implementation in practice.

Decoupling practical and legal compliance: Analysis of member states’ implementation of EU policy

Europeanization research often neglects that the implementation of European Union (EU) policy results in diverse national outcomes, even if member states comply with EU law. Such fine-grained Europeanization patterns have been explored as ‘gold-plating’ and ‘customization’. This contribution builds and expands on this research to propose a general conceptualization and measurement of customization as the changes that provisions of EU Directives undergo in their regulatory density and restrictiveness during legal transposition. Using unique data on the customization of EU directive provisions from two policy areas in 27 countries, our empirical analysis reveals distinct changes in density and restrictiveness, pronounced policy-specific and state-level customization patterns. The findings illustrate how national customization strategies often follow specific EU regulatory logics in different integration contexts. We outline implications for future research on the causes and consequences of the inherent diversity of EU implementation regarding dimensions of customization, issues of legitimacy and effectiveness.

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Moving beyond (non-)compliance: the customization of European Union policies in 27 countries

The implementation of EU policies has hardly been studied from the perspective of the actual performance of national policy-makers. The present study fills the gap of EU policy implementation research by analysing member states' correct transposition of the provisions of different EU directives. Hypotheses are formulated on the relationship between characteristics of the process and outcome of EU decision-making and the transposition performance of member states. Member states' incentives to deviate, conflict in the Council, as well as characteristics of the adopted EU decisions, such as discretion and complexity, are expected to influence compliance with different EU requirements. Hypotheses are tested on the transposition performance of 15 member states regarding 136 EU provisions. The analyses reveal that member states are likely to act upon their incentives to deviate during the implementation process, and use their freedom of manoeuvre to achieve compliance with the EU requirements.

Complying with EU directives' requirements: the link between EU decision-making and the correct transposition of EU provisions

Originally, studies of Europeanisation have almost exclusively focused on the Central and Eastern European (CEE) candidates, which became member states in 2004 and 2007. It remains to be seen, however, to what extent the conditions that have proven relevant for the CEE countries are also applicable to the candidate states from the Western Balkans. Do existing theoretical approaches on the impact of EU conditionality on candidate states explain the compliance record of the countries from the Western Balkans? Alternatively, is it necessary to adapt these theoretical approaches to the specific circumstances of enlargement in the Western Balkans? In this chapter, we address these questions theoretically by analysing the applicability of existing theoretical models of Europeanisation to rule adoption in the Western Balkans. Our theoretical analysis shows the external incentives model is likely to provide a useful starting point for studying the success of the new candidates in meeting the EU membership requirements. However, the relatively low credibility of membership in all Western Balkan countries (with the exception of Croatia) points towards the relevance of additional factors, such as capacity-building and coalition-building, that could explain and promote continuous processes of rule adoption in new candidate states.

Asya Zhelyazkova

Papers

The time-dependent effect of conflict in the council on delays in the transposition of EU directives

Decoupling practical and legal compliance: Analysis of member states’ implementation of EU policy

Moving beyond (non-)compliance: the customization of European Union policies in 27 countries

Complying with EU directives' requirements: the link between EU decision-making and the correct transposition of EU provisions

European Union Conditionality in the Western Balkans: External Incentives and Europeanisation