Innovative Approaches to EU Multilevel Implementation: Moving beyond legal compliance

Multi-level governance systems like the European Union (EU) calibrate integration with member state discretion in order to implement common, yet context-sensitive solutions to shared policy problems. Research on implementation in the EU typically focuses on legal compliance with EU policy. However, this focus gives us an incomplete picture of EU implementation, its diversity and practice. The contributions of this collection represent a shift toward a more performance-oriented perspective on EU implementation as problem-solving. They approach implementation fundamentally as a process of interpretation of superordinate law by actors who are embedded within multiple contexts arising from the coexistence of dynamics of Europeanization, on the one hand, and what has been termed ‘domestication’, on the other. Moving beyond legal compliance, the contributions provide new evidence on the diversity of domestic responses to EU policy, the roles and motivations of actors implementing EU policy, and the ‘black box’ of EU law in action and its enforcement. By reassessing the relative importance of EU policy and domestic factors and actors for the outcomes of EU implementation, the results give insight into on the nuanced interplay between Europeanization and domestication forces, useful for both EU researchers and practitioners.

The chapters originally published as a special issue in the Journal of European Public Policy.

Eva Thomann is a political scientist specialized in Public Policy and Public Administration. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Politics at the University of Exeter, UK. Her research about the implementation of public policies in multi-level systems and at the frontline was published, amongst others, in the European Journal of Political Research, Policy Sciences, Public Administration and the Journal of Public Policy. Her article "Customizing Europe: transposition as bottom-up implementation" appeared in the Journal of European Public Policy in 2015. A single-authored book about the customization of EU food safety policy is forthcoming.

Fritz Sager PhD, is Professor of Political Science at and member of the Executive Board of the Center of Competence for Public Management at the University of Bern, Switzerland, as well as Dean of the University’s Faculty of Business, Economics, and Social Sciences. He is specialized in policy research and evaluation, administrative studies and theory, organizational analysis, and Swiss politics. His research has been published in the European Journal of Political Research, Public Administration Review, Governance, Public Administration, Journal of Public Policy, Policy & Politics, Political Studies, West European Politics, Journal of Urban Affairs, American Journal of Evaluation, Public Management Review, Public Money & Management, Evaluation, and the European Political Science Review, among others. His most recent books are "The European Public Servant: A Shared Administrative Identity?" together with Patrick Overeem (2015) and a textbook in German language "Policy-Analyse in der Schweiz. Besonderheiten, Theorien, Beispiele", together with Karin Ingold and Andreas Balthasar (2017). His research has won several awards.