The concluding chapter summarizes the empirical comparative study in light of the theoretical propositions generated by my Institution Dependency Model. I argue that the findings challenge dominant approaches in the field of European studies, which cannot explain the differential effect of Europeanization on the territorial institutions of Germany and Spain. I then discuss the scope of my model. Drawing on other empirical studies, I maintain that the Institution Dependency Model is generalizable enough to analyze the domestic impact of Europe across different policy areas, member states, and institutions. I also propose areas for future research where the model could provide new insights. I conclude by considering implications of my theoretical argument and empirical findings for the European system of governance. The Institution Dependency Model should lead us to expect some “clustered convergence” among member states that face similar pressure for adaptation. If these expectations hold, the prospects of a “Europe of the regions” are rather gloomy. Moreover, the participation of the regions in European policy-making will increase rather than decrease the democratic deficit of the European Union.

The domestic impact of Europe: Transformation versus reinforcement

The book started with an empirical puzzle. Europeanization has caused some considerable changes in the territorial institutions of Germany and Spain. These changes converge around the participation of the Spanish Comunidades Autónomas and the German Länder in European policy-making through cooperation with the central state rather than through direct relations with European institutions.

This chapter demonstrates how, over a period of more than 40 years, the Länder have pulled together in pursuing a compensation-through-participation strategy in responding to the challenges of Europeanization. Their cooperative strategy facilitated a sharing of adaptational costs, which allowed for a flexible redressing of the territorial balance of power and resulted in a reinforcement and certain revival (rinascimento) of German cooperative federalism.

The double loss of competencies and the uneven distribution of “say and pay”

Europeanization is, alongside German unification, the most important challenge that cooperative federalism has been faced with so far. After the constitutional amendments in the 1960s and 1970s, the transfer of domestic competencies to the European caused the second major push toward territorial centralization. Unlike joint tasks and mixed financing, however, Europeanization entails a gradual erosion of regional autonomy, which increases as European integration proceeds. Moreover, Europeanization entails a twofold logic of centralization: the Länder lose competencies both at the regional and the federal level, which fundamentally alters the territorial balance of power in favor of the central state.

Like all institutionally well-entrenched regions, the Länder lose policy competencies in the area of their exclusive responsibilities as a consequence of Europeanization. Unlike in domestic policy-making, the Länder do not receive any compensation for such losses. Once their competencies are transferred to the European level, the Länder do not have any direct input on decisions taken in these areas. The number of exclusive Länder competencies is, however, rather small (culture, media, education, justice and home affairs).

The selection of EU environmental policy as an empirical case is of particular analytical advantage for the purpose of this study. On the one hand, environmental policy reflects an area where supranational policy competencies are broadly developed; there exists a comprehensive framework of European regulations confronting the member states with considerable requirements for administrative adjustment. On the other hand, comprehensiveness coincides with regulatory variety. EU environmental policy reflects no single coherent and consistent regulatory concept and approach, but reveals a regulatory patchwork of different instruments, principles and strategies. This allows for the selection of varying cases which are characterised by differing requirements with respect to administrative styles and structures.

The nature of EU environmental policy

The basic aspects characterising EU environmental policy, namely its comprehensive development as well as its considerable regulatory variety can only be understood in the light of the particular factors which shape the decision-making context at the supranational level.

Comprehensiveness and regulatory variety

From the institutional and legal perspectives, EU environmental policy differs from other policy fields such as trade, agriculture or transport primarily in that it is not explicitly mentioned in the 1957 Treaty of Rome that established the Community. This was certainly due to the lack of awareness of the issue at the time, likely to have been particularly extreme in the case of a community like the EU designed primarily to promote economic co-operation (Johnson and Corcelle 1989: 1).

The German implementation record of the five policies under study reveals that administrative transformation in the context of European policy demands can only be expected if two conditions are fulfilled. First, the adaptational pressures emerging from European policies must remain at a moderate level; European policies require substantive sectoral changes which, however, can still be achieved within the general core of national administrative traditions. In Germany, this condition was only fulfilled in two cases (EMAS and Drinking Water). The Directives on Access to Information and EIA required far-reaching adaptations in existing practices and structures which were in contradiction with German administrative traditions, while the LCP Directive fully confirmed domestic arrangements, hence implying no demand for change. Second, the actual occurrence of moderate transformations requires the support of domestic actor coalitions which, in view of their institutional opportunities and constraints, are able to successfully challenge existing arrangements. As we shall see, the specific actor constellation at the domestic level resulted in differing patterns of delayed adaptation in the case of Drinking Water and accepted adaptation in the case of EMAS.

The explanation of the German implementation story illustrates our theoretical considerations in two ways.

To what extent can the findings derived from the implementation of EU environmental policy in Germany and Britain be generalised with respect to other European policies? To assess the general validity of these findings, an analytical distinction between different mechanisms of Europeanisation is introduced, identifying three basic patterns of how European policies might impact upon domestic administrative styles and structures. European policies might be very demanding and prescribe a concrete institutional model for domestic compliance; they might be confined to changing domestic opportunity structures; or, in their ‘weakest’ form, have no institutional impact at all, while being primarily directed at changing domestic beliefs and expectations (Knill and Lehmkuhl 1999).

I argue that it is this specific Europeanisation mechanism rather than the nominal category of the policy area that is the most important factor to be considered when investigating the domestic impact of varying European policies. In this context, it must be emphasised that this distinction is analytical rather than empirical, as many European policies might be characterised by a mixture of different mechanisms of Europeanisation. The existence of such ‘Europeanisation hybrids’ does not call the general argument into question, but indicates the need for careful analysis of the underlying Europeanisation mechanism in order to understand the domestic impact of a certain policy.

As will be shown, the existence of distinctive mechanisms of Europeanisation underlying different policies does not call into question the general validity of the analytical framework.

The implementation record of Britain with respect to the five policies under study is in sharp contrast with its general reputation as environmental laggard, at least with respect to the adjustment of administrative styles and structures to the requirements spelled out in European legislation. Considerable administrative changes took place in order to comply with the Directives on LCP, Drinking Water and Access to Information. Domestic resistance to change can only be observed in the EIA case, whereas the EMAS Regulation confirmed existing arrangements, hence requiring only negligible adjustments.

In contrast with Germany, where patterns of administrative transformation could be understood by conceiving of national administrative traditions as a static phenomenon, the explanation of the British cases illustrates the need for a dynamic conception of European adaptation pressure. This perspective takes account of the fact that adaptation pressure may not only vary with the design of European policies, but also as a result of endogenous national reform developments affecting the core of administrative traditions. The British cases demonstrate that the stability and continuity assumption underlying institution-based explanations cannot be taken for granted in countries which are characterised by a high capacity for administrative reforms, given the institutional features of the political and administrative system. Although implying no complete overhaul of national administrative traditions, far-reaching reforms led to substantial changes in administrative core patterns, hence altering the scope for sectoral adaptation.

To be sure, the above considerations are still very abstract and general in nature. However, further specification can hardly be achieved from a merely theoretical perspective; it has to take into account the peculiarities of the case under study. To do so, this chapter will clarify the scope of the underlying study and develop a more concrete framework for dependent and independent variables in order to specify the theoretical considerations in the light of the underlying research question.

The analytical scope of the study

This study is concerned with the impact of Europeanisation on national administrations. To what extent do national administrative systems change under European influence? To what extent do these changes imply patterns of administrative convergence across member states? Although one can think of numerous ways national administrative systems may become Europeanised, including, for instance, through the frequent interactions between supranational and national bureaucracies (Wessels and Rometsch 1996), the diffusion of policy ideas and mutual learning across member states' administrations, or legal implications associated with decisions of the Commission or the European Court of Justice (ECJ), I have already pointed out that the focus of this study is on the domestic impact of European policies. However, despite this initial restriction regarding the analytical focus, the particular type of policy under investigation still has to be clarified.

To study the impact of European policies on domestic administrative systems one could think of many theoretical starting points, including not only research on European integration, but also on comparative public administration and policy implementation. I argue, however, that the research questions dominant in these fields differ from the focus taken by this study; and thus only provide limited analytical insights for our context. More promising starting points are offered by new institutionalist approaches. Since they reflect a broad variety of different theoretical conceptions, I shall develop and specify a more integrated perspective in the light of the underlying research question.

In the analytical framework developed in the previous chapter the institutional scope of European adaptation pressure was identified as the primary factor to account for patterns of administrative transformation at the domestic level. The level of adaptation pressure can be inferred from the institutional compatibility of European requirements with the macro-institutional context of national administrative traditions. Although not determining the occurrence and form of sectoral adjustments, national administrative traditions confine the scope for sectoral choices. This way we are able to exclude certain options for domestic adjustment. The explanation of sectoral patterns of administrative change and persistence therefore requires a background knowledge of national administrative traditions. To capture the institutional dimension of adaptation pressure, we need to know if and to what extent European pressures for sectoral adaptation reflect challenges to administrative core patterns or not.

As pointed out in the analytical framework, the level of adaptation pressure varies not only with European policy requirements, but may also be affected by national administrative reforms which alter the macro-institutional context, and hence the range for sectoral choices. To grasp this dynamic conception of adaptation pressure, we need to have a closer look at the capacity for administrative reform, as it can be derived from the constraints and opportunities defined in the macro-institutional background.

The previous chapters analysed the administrative impact of EU environmental policy from a country-based perspective; they were based on the separate investigation of distinctive European policies for each country. It is the intention of this chapter to assess the validity of our modified institutionalist framework from a comparative perspective. It is on the basis of this assessment, that we are able to understand the extent to which Europeanisation has implied administrative convergence or divergence with respect to administrative styles and structures in German and British environmental policy.

European adaptation pressure and patterns of domestic change

The cross-country and cross-policy assessment of administrative transformation underlines the need for a more differentiated institutional approach which explicitly seeks to reduce the deterministic and conservatist bias inherent to ‘simple’ institution-based explanations, expecting administrative adaptation in cases of sectoral ‘fit’ and non-adaptation in cases of sectoral ‘misfit’.

To avoid the problem of explanatory determinism, we have to rely on a more differentiated conception of European adaptation pressure which distinguishes different levels of institutional incompatibility, namely, whether European policy demands are in contradiction with institutionally strongly embedded core patterns of national administrations or whether administrative adjustment is still possible within the range of options defined by this macro-institutional context. Defining the institutional scope of European adaptation pressure in such a way, we are able to specify the explanatory relevance of institutions as independent variables, i.e., how much institutions matter in order to account for patterns of administrative change.

National administrative traditions reflect general patterns of administrative styles and structures which are strongly embedded in the macro-institutional context of the state tradition, the legal system, and the political-administrative system (including characteristics of the civil service as well as the state structure and organisation). As these macro-institutional factors vary considerably across the two countries under study, fundamental differences with respect to the core patterns of national administrative traditions can be observed.

Germany: consensual intervention within comprehensive structures

The traditional elements characterising administrative intervention and interest intermediation in Germany come closer to the ideal type of intervening rather than mediating administration, as is illustrated in particular by the dominant patterns of interventionism and legalism. On the other hand, the tradition of corporatism as well as the preference for consensual rather than adversarial interaction patterns between administrative and societal actors implies important departures from the interventionist ideal type specified in the previous chapter. With respect to the structural dimension, German administration is traditionally characterised by rather comprehensive and segmented arrangements which are not only shaped by the federal structure of the state, but also by long-standing traditions of hierarchical administrative organisation at the regional level.

The German state tradition: semi-sovereign authority

Although from a comparative perspective, Germany represents the Continental tradition of a ‘state-centred society’, the evolution of the German state followed a particular path.

At first glance, a study of the administrative transformation in Europe seems to imply nothing new. There is an ever growing body of literature analysing the impact of global reform waves associated with what is known as New Public Management (NPM) on the structure and practice of public administration. There are a large number of country studies and a growing number of comparative studies on this subject (cf. Wright 1994; Pierre 1995; Flynn and Strehl 1996; Olsen and Peters 1996). However, this kind of public sector reform is not the central concern of this study. Here the analysis focuses on the Europeanisation of national administrations; i.e., the crucial question of how European integration affects domestic administrative practices and structures.

One could argue that the selection of this research focus does not necessarily make sense, as there is no European administrative policy per se which is explicitly concerned with the structure and practice of domestic administrations. Administrative policy, as a policy field in its own right, only exists in the national context, and it is still a very basic domain of the member states. This argument, however, overlooks one significant – although less spectacular – fact: the administrative impact of other European policies. Thus, for appropriate implementation, policy decisions to some extent always entail decisions on corresponding administrative arrangements. In other words, policy content and administrative implementation requirements are often closely related.

The brief review of the broader research context in which this study is embedded has revealed the analytical problems present in the development of an analytical framework aimed at accounting for the impact of European policies on national administrations. On the one hand, this can be traced to the fact that the leading questions analysed in those related areas are only partially congruent with the analytical focus underlying this study. On the other hand, research deficits emerge from theoretical gaps prevalent in these fields. This does not imply, however, that in order to address these analytical deficits we have to start from point zero. Bearing in mind that explaining administrative transformation is mainly a matter of studying institutions and institutional change, there is a certain common sense in putting institutions at the heart of administrative analysis (Lowndes 1996: 181). In this context especially, the approaches linked to the concept of the new institutionalism have contributed to a renewed interest in the study of public administration. At the same time, the new institutionalist approaches play a prominent role in Europeanisation research, and, more recently, have also been applied to implementation research (Knill and Lenschow 2000).

New institutionalism does not constitute a single and coherent body of theory, but comprises many different streams of argument. Although sharing a basic common assumption, namely that institutions do matter, there are a variety of conceptions of how, why and to what extent institutions make a difference.

Having elaborated on characteristics and dynamics of administrative traditions in Germany and Britain, it is the objective of this part to assess and illustrate the validity of our analytical assumptions on the change and persistence of national administrative styles and structures. To do so, the focus is on the implementation of EU environmental policy. For analytical purposes, five pieces of European legislation are considered which reflect the broad regulatory variety to be found in the environmental field and therefore cover a broad range of different administrative implications. Moreover, the five policies are selected in such a way, that their institutional adaptation requirements are ‘symmetrically’ distributed between the two countries under study.

This study is concerned with the impact of European policies on national administrations. In selecting this research topic, one could in principle focus on both the formulation and implementation of European policies. One could argue that explaining domestic administrative change in the light of European policy requirements is not merely a matter of analysing the process of implementation but also, and primarily, a matter of analysing why and how certain policy choices have been made at the supranational level. Several studies on the dynamics of the supranational policy-making process seem to underline this necessity. Both research carried out in the field of health and safety at work and environmental policy indicates that supranational policy-making in these areas is characterised by a process of ‘regulatory competition’ between member states (Héritier et al. 1994; Héritier, Knill and Mingers 1996; Eichener 1996). Individual states strive to avoid potential costs of administrative adjustment emerging from European policies that diverge from domestic provisions. The competition between the existing national administrative systems, which is inherent in regulatory competition, may therefore be taken as the basic starting point for studying the impact of European policies on national administrations.

Although many analytical insights can be gained by examining administrative changes in the context of the whole European policy cycle, this study takes another path. Its main focus is on the process of European policy implementation at the national level and the administrative changes following from this.