ABSTRACT
The regulatory policy cycle approach to Europeanisation focuses on explaining the influence of European policy on national decision making. The institutionalist development will be evaluated, taking into consideration more recent developments in the road-haulage sector. The low state capacity, on the one hand, and the structure of interest intermediation, on the other, are the reasons why the association representing small hauliers is able to exert such a strong influence on policy development. Identifying a Europeanisation pattern of deviation amplification certainly does not imply that a policy dynamics of divergence would not have evolved at the national level had there been no European influence. The development of Italian railway policy has followed a trend more compatible with the European framework than the development of road-haulage policy. National institutional factors explain the national policy dynamics and why the influence of the European policy did not lead to convergence between the national and the European policy development.
