Europeanization Beyond the Goodness of Fit: Domestic Politics in the Forefront
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Europeanization Beyond the Goodness of Fit: Domestic Politics in the Forefront1 Ellen Mastenbroeka and Michael Kaedingb a
Radboud University Nijmegen, Department of Public Administration and Political Science, PO Box 9108, 6500 HK, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected] b Leiden University, Department of Public Administration, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands.
This paper provides a critical assessment of the ‘goodness of fit’ hypothesis, which is central to the literature on Europeanization. According to this hypothesis, the ease of adaptation to European policies depends upon the extent to which these fit national policies and institutions. On the basis of a literature review and integration of research findings, we conclude that the goodness of fit lacks empirical and conceptual strength. We argue that part of the problem is that the relationship between the status quo and the response to the EU is spurious, as both variables are contingent upon the preferences or beliefs held by domestic political and administrative actors. This shortcoming has been recognized by advocates of the thesis, who have crafted more dynamic frameworks revolving around the goodness of fit by bringing in ‘political’ variables that may capture the overriding power of substantive positions of domestic policy-makers. However, we provide various examples showing that the goodness of fit is not a necessary condition for domestic change. We argue, therefore, that it would be theoretically sounder to directly focus on domestic preferences or beliefs, and no longer incorporate the goodness of fit into our models. We provide the outline of such an approach, building on rational choice and sociological institutionalism, giving some examples of particular models under these broad headings. We argue that such applications are more parsimonious than the expanded goodness of fit frameworks, in that they make the goodness of fit, and most of the additional variables suggested, redundant. In doing so, we hope to provide the foundations for further theoretical and empirical work on the dynamics of Europeanization. Comparative European Politics (2006) 4, 331–354. doi:10.1057/palgrave.cep.6110078 Keywords: Europeanization; adaptation; goodness of fit; neo-institutionalism; rational choice institutionalism; sociological institutionalism
Introduction How can we explain the effects of European integration on the member states? This is the central theme of the literature on Europeanization, a fashionable
Ellen Mastenbroek and Michael Kaeding Europeanization Beyond the Goodness of Fit
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branch of EU studies (Mair, 2004).2 Central to this literature is the ‘goodness of fit’ hypothesis, which holds that smooth adaptation to EU policies depends on the degree to which these fit existing national policies and institutions.3 This paper provides a critical theoretical assessment of this hypothesis, and the more complex theoretical frameworks built around it later. Our main argument is that theories on Europeanization gain parsimony if the good
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