ABSTRACT
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a ‘fad’ is a craze or something that is enthusiastically, but briefly, taken up by a group of people. Evidently, academia is just as prone to faddish thinking as any other area of social life. New terms, new concepts and new organizing devices seem to come and then go with increasing regularity as the pressure on researchers to ‘make their mark’ grows. It is against this backdrop that Christoph Knill has assembled this special issue, whose aim is to ‘improve our understanding of policy convergence and its causes’ (Knill 2005: 765). This is a challenging and thought-provoking question that deserves a wider airing, not least in the European Union (EU) literature. I would like to congratulate Christoph for attempting to raise the profile of this important but under-appreciated topic among the readers of this journal. I would also like to thank him for giving me the opportunity to offer my own comments and suggestions on how the study of policy convergence in the EU can be taken forward.
