Implementation Studies: Beyond a Legalistic Approach

Abstract

Notwithstanding the importance of decision-making processes in Brussels among politicians, eurocrats and lobbyists, the ‘travelling’ of EU policies to the national member-states, or the implementation process, constitutes a particular kind of research challenge. Most standard textbooks, whether on domestic or European policy, revolve around a basic definition in which implementation is about the process stage in which a policy decision comes into action. As put forward in one of the more influential definitions by Mazmanian and Sabatier:

Implementation is the carrying out of a basic policy decision, usually incorporated in a statute but which can also take the form of important executive orders or court decisions. Ideally, that decision identifies the problem(s) to be addressed, stipulates the objective(s) to be pursued, and in a variety of ways, ‘structures’ the implementation process.

(Mazamanian and Sabatier, 1983: 20–1)

On the basis of research traditions of domestic implementation, students of EU studies have since the 1980s developed a whole industry of implementation studies (for reviews see Treib, 2006; Toshkov, 2010; Angelova et al., 2012). We can identify at least two chief reasons for this (Svedrup, 2006). First, by studying the implementation of EU policies we are endowed with a critical perspective into how, and to what extent, the European integration process affects and transforms the member-states of the EU.