Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

Recently, political science has seen an intense debate about the phenomenon of ‘governance’. The aim of this paper is to clarify the basic concepts that are at the heart of this debate, notably ‘governance’ and ‘modes of governance’. We argue that most contributions share a common concern for the relationship between state intervention and societal autonomy, but different strands of the literature highlight different facets of this continuum. Existing understandings may be classified according to whether they emphasize the politics, polity or policy dimensions of governance. We use these categories to present a structured overview of different dimensions of modes of governance as they may be found in the literature. In this context, we argue that the classification of modes of governance as ‘old’ or ‘new’ is of little analytical value. Moving from single dimensions to systematic classification schemes and typologies of modes of governance, we highlight a number of shortcomings of existing schemes...

Modes of governance: towards a conceptual clarification

The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe. Edited by Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005. 256p. $22.50. The postcommunist transformations in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) have generated a rich body of literature over the past 15 years. Most works on CEE transitions have drawn from the comparative politics literature and treated international factors, at best, as secondary. Yet with the recent eastern expansion of the Council of Europe, NATO, and the European Union, there has been a growing scholarly interest in the impact of international institutions on domestic changes in this region.

The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe

Starting from the findings of an earlier compliance study covering the 15 ‘old’ Member States of the European Union, which identified three ‘worlds of compliance’, this article seeks to establish whether or not the new Member States from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) represent a separate world of compliance. We present empirical findings from a research project on the implementation of three EU Directives from the field of working time and equal treatment in four CEE countries. The evidence suggests that the new Member States display implementation styles that are similar to a few countries in the EU-15. The expectation that the new Member States might behave according to their own specific logic, such as significantly decreasing their compliance efforts after accession in order to take ‘revenge’ for the strong pressure of conditionality, is not supported by our case studies. Instead, all four new Member States appear to fall within a group that could be dubbed the ‘world of dead letters’. It is crucial to highlight, however, that this specific ‘world of compliance’, characterized by politicized transposition processes and systematic application and enforcement problems, also includes two countries from the EU-15.

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Three Worlds of Compliance or Four? The EU-15 Compared to New Member States*

The Europeanisation of candidate countries and new members is a rather recent research area that has grown strongly since the early 2000s. Research in this area has developed primarily in the context of the EU’s eastern enlargement. A small number of theoretically informed book-length studies of the EU’s influence on the Central and Eastern European candidate countries have provided a generalisable conceptual framework for this research area, drawing on the debate between rationalist institutionalist and constructivist institutionalist approaches in International Relations and Comparative Politics. This framework makes these studies highly compatible with analyses of the Europeanisation of member states, with which they also share one key empirical finding, namely that the impact of the EU on candidate countries is differential across countries and issue areas. At the same time, the theoretical implications of these findings appear more clear-cut than in the case of the Europeanisation of member states: rationalist institutionalism, with its focus on the external incentives underpinning EU conditionality and the material costs incurred by domestic veto players, appears well-suited to explaining variation in the patterns of Europeanisation in candidate countries. A very recent development within this research agenda is the focus on the Europeanisation of new member states. While the study of the EU’s impact during the early years of membership was hitherto primarily a subfield of analyses of the Europeanisation of member states, it has now become an extension of studies of candidate countries by analysing the impact of accession on the dynamics of pre-accession Europeanisation and how durable and distinctive the patterns of candidate Europeanisation are in the post-accession stage.

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Europeanisation in new member and candidate states

Preface 1. Introduction: flexible EU governance in domestic practice 2. Theorising the domestic impact of EU law: the state of the art and beyond 3. EU social policy over time: the role of Directive 4. The Employment Contract Information Directive: a small but useful social complement to the internal market 5. The Pregnant Workers Directive: European social policy between protection and employability 6. The Working Time Directive: European standards taken hostage by domestic politics 7. The Young Workers Directive: a safety net with holes 8. The Parental Leave Directive: compulsory policy innovation and voluntary over-implementation 9. The Part-time Work Directive: a facilitator of national reforms 10. Voluntary reforms triggered by the Directives 11. The EU Commission and (non-)compliance in the Member States 12. Beyond policy change: convergence of national public-private relations? 13. Implementation across countries and Directive 14. Why do Member States fail to comply? Testing the hypotheses suggested in the literature 15. Making sense of compliance patterns: a typology 16. Conclusions: myth and reality of 'social Europe' References.

Complying with Europe : EU harmonisation and soft law in the member states

To what extent are European rules complied with, and what are the reasons for non-compliance with EU law? According to an intergovernmentalist perspective, implementation problems should occur when member states failed to assert their interests in the European decision-making process. Focusing on 26 infringement procedures from the area of labour law, we show that such ‘opposition through the backdoor’ does occur occasionally. However, we demonstrate that opposition at the end of the EU policy process may also arise without prior opposition at the beginning. Additionally, our findings indicate that non-compliance is often unrelated to opposition, and due to administrative shortcomings, interpretation problems, and issue linkage. This study is based on unique in-depth data stemming from a ground-level analysis of the implementation of six EU Directives in all 15 member states.

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Non-Compliance with EU Directives in the Member States: Opposition through the Backdoor?

Summary Recent studies on the implementation of EU social policy directives in the EU-15 demonstrate a considerable compliance gap. These findings lead to the question: What about the new member states? Will Eastern enlargement contribute to a further widening of this gap? This article provides a systematic comparison of the legal transposition of six selected EU social policy directives in Poland with transposition (problems) of the same directives in the EU-15. The article shows that policy effects of the EU social acquis in Poland were not higher than in the old member states. Extensive EU monitoring has contributed to an extremely high transposition performance of Poland. Recent research on compliance distinguishes three ‘worlds of compliance’ in the EU-15. Analysing the legal transposition of EU social policy directives in Poland shows that, as yet, there are no signs of a particular fourth ‘Eastern world of compliance’.

Transposition of EU social policy in Poland: are there different `worlds of compliance' in East and West?

This article examines the impact of Europeanization on cooperation between major interest groups and the state in national policymaking. Its theoretical innovation centres on two issues: (1) a classification of cooperation by management, labour, and the state in public policy-making and (2) a differentiation of levels of Europeanization in the Member States. The empirical material highlights the implementation of six EU Directives in four smaller states: Austria, Denmark, Luxembourg, and Sweden. A moderate trend towards convergence is discovered, caused mainly by forced adaptation of the most extreme model of corporatism.

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Europeanization of Social Partnership in Smaller European Democracies

Dieses Papier stellt erste Ergebnisse eines Projektverbundes vor, der die rechtliche Umsetzung, administrative Durchfuhrung und praktische Anwendung von sechs arbeitsrechtlichen EG-Richtlinien in allen 15 Mitgliedstaaten untersucht. Anhand der Richtlinie zum Elternurlaub (1996) werden hier die Auswirkungen europaischer Sozialstandards auf der nationalen Ebene behandelt. Fur Praktiker und Arbeitsrechtsexperten gleichermasen interessant durfte unser Befund sein, dass die Richtlinie tatsachlich in allen Mitgliedstaaten Anpassungen notig machte. Obwohl die von der Richtlinie verursachten Kosten insgesamt eher gering waren, musste doch jedes Land seine Regulierungen andern. Wahrend die erforderlichen Reformen in Deutschland, Finnland, Frankreich, Portugal, Spanien und Schweden von eher begrenzter Tragweite waren, sahen sich die ubrigen Mitgliedstaaten mit betrachtlichem Anpassungsbedarf konfrontiert. Theoretisch Interessierte werden feststellen, dass unsere Ergebnisse Zweifel daran erwecken, ob die im Rahmen der Prognose des Anpassungserfolges bislang gangige Orientierung an der Grose des verursachten Anpassungsbedarfes wirklich sinnvoll ist. Wir zeigen, dass sehr kleiner misfit manchmal die erfolgreiche Anpassung sogar behindern kann, und dass hoher Anpassungsbedarf unter bestimmten Bedingungen groseren Erfolg verspricht. Daruber hinaus haben mehrere Mitgliedstaaten im Zuge der Implementation nicht nur die notwendigen Anpassungen vorgenommen, sondern ihre nationalen Standards uber das von der Richtlinie geforderte Mas hinaus verandert.

https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/44306/1/644401257.pdf

Simone Leiber

Papers

Complying with Europe : EU harmonisation and soft law in the member states

Non-Compliance with EU Directives in the Member States: Opposition through the Backdoor?

Transposition of EU social policy in Poland: are there different `worlds of compliance' in East and West?

Europeanization of Social Partnership in Smaller European Democracies

Transforming Social Policy in Europe? The EC’s Parental Leave Directive and Misfit in the 15 Member States