ABSTRACT

In this book we have shown that national feed-in tariffs in the EU have become more similar over time even though the harmonisation of the support instrument failed. More generally speaking, the design of national policies in EU member states is apparently based not merely on national considerations but also on cross-national interdependencies. Although social scientists frequently assume otherwise, domestic factors alone apparently cannot explain the outcome of the national political decision-making process. Therefore, analysing countries as interdependent rather than independent actors will be of increasing importance for political scientists (Garrett et al. 2008).