ABSTRACT
For academic research on the EU, the 1990s became the decade of pluralist and policy-oriented studies, most notably (‘multi-level’) governance approaches and Europeanisation. In this ‘second wave’ of EU-member state analysis (Holzhacker and Haverland 2006, 10), concerned with the form and impact of interaction between different locations of policy-making, two mainstreams can be distinguished. First, (multi-level) ‘governance’-studies, in which the network character of EU policy-making is emphasised, but which remain rather ambivalent on the role of governments. Where prominent analysts explicitly study ‘the conditions under which central state executives may lose their grip on power’ (Marks 1996, 341), others emphasise how member states retain a very substantial role in decision-making (Jachtenfuchs and Kohler Koch 2004, 102). The ways in which they deal with these demands at the national level is central to ‘Europeanisation’-studies, focusing on the impact of the EU at the national level.
