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Existing scholarship claims that national policy has been much more deeply and dramatically Europeanized by the European Union (EU) than the administrative structures of national government. This finding appears to confirm the explanatory power of 'new' institutional theories, which emphasize the resistence of institutions in the face of strong pressures promoting greater convergence among dissimilar European political systems. Of the various national government structures that could be Europeanized, departments (or ministries) are especially important because they are primarily responsible for reconciling (or 'fitting') the demands of EU and national policy. However, existing scholarship does not fully investigate the extent to which departments themselves are Europeanized by the EU, or the impact that such a change could have on national policy. Taking as an example the Europeanization of one policy sector (the environment) in the United Kingdom, this article reveals that the national department has undergone a much deeper and more profound cultural change than one would expect if national structures were essentially unchanged by the Europeanization of policy. This single, but critical, case implies that the next phase of Europeanization research should open up the 'black box' of the state and examine the co-evolution of administrative structures, policies and politics. (British Journal of Political Science / FUB)

By any measure, European Community (EC) water policy has been very poorly implemented by the Member States, and lacks self-consistency in some key respects and a sound scientific foundation. The conventional wisdom is that policies decided collectively tend towards the lowest common denominator of state preferences. But recent experience in the water sector suggests that directives decided by unanimity are nonetheless extremely difficult to reform once they become embedded in national political systems, even when they create enormous political problems for Member States and are outdated scientifically. Taking as an example the United Kingdom (UK) government's handling of the directives on bathing and drinking water, this article shows how institutions have gradually hemmed in decision-makers, locking states into a policy trajectory that most now regard as sub-optimal in key respects. (Journal of Common Market Studies / FUB)

"The European Union (EU) has a hugely important effect on the way in which environmental policies are framed, designed and implemented in many parts of the world, but especially Europe. The new edition of this leading textbook provides a state-of-the-art analysis of the EU's environmental policies. Comprising five parts, Environmental Policy in the EU covers the rapidly changing context in which EU environmental policies are made, the key actors who interact to co-produce them and the most salient dynamics of policy making, ranging from agenda setting and decision making, through to implementation and evaluation. Written by leading international experts, individual chapters examine how the EU is responding to a multitude of different challenges including biodiversity loss, climate change, energy insecurity, and water and air pollution. They tease out the different ways in which the EU's policies on these topics co-evolve with national and international environmental policies. In this systematically updated fourth edition, a wider array of learning features are employed to ensure that readers fully understand how EU environmental policies have developed over the last fifty years and how they are currently adapting to the rapidly evolving challenges of the twenty-first century, including the COVID-19 pandemic. It is an essential resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying environmental policy and politics, climate change, environmental law and EU politics more broadly"--

"Following the landmark Paris agreement, policy makers are under pressure to adopt policies that rapidly deliver deep, society-wide decarbonisation. Deep decarbonisation requires more durable policies, but not enough is known about if and how they actually emerge. This book provides the first systematic analysis of the determinants of policy durability in three high-profile areas: biofuel production, car transport, and industrial emissions. It breaks new ground by exploring how key European Union climate policies have shaped their own durability and their ability to stimulate supportive political dynamics in society. It combines state-of-the-art policy theories with empirical accounts of landmark political events such as 'Dieselgate' and the campaign against 'dirty' biofuels, to offer a fresh understanding of how and why policy makers set about packaging together different elements of policy. By shining new light on an important area of contemporary policy making, it reveals a rich agenda for academic researchers and policy makers"--

Policy makers are under political pressure to adopt policies that achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. Reaching net zero is a demanding challenge requiring durable policies that last; that is, withstand short-term turbulence. However, there is a lack of clarity in the existing literature on both the conceptual meaning of policy durability and its empirical manifestations. This paper distinguishes between three central dimensions of policy durability and uses them to shed new light on the long-term evolution of EU climate policy. It reveals that the EU has addressed the relationship between policy durability and policy flexibility by working iteratively across and between different policy elements (instruments, programmes, goals, etc.). In revealing these patterns, it addresses a greatly neglected feature of policy design processes: the dialectical relationship between durability and flexibility.

Having explained their adoption, analysts are now trying to understand how EU environmental policies have subsequently evolved over time. In 2003, David Vogel famously speculated that having overtaken the US in the environmental race to the top, EU policies would also eventually succumb to policy gridlock, i.e. neither expanding nor dismantling. Empirical research has since confirmed that EU policy expansion is in decline, but less is known about why dismantling has also been very limited. This article breaks new ground by reconfiguring dismantling – a concept developed for national policy systems – to explain the various dismantling strategies deployed at EU level (1992 to 2016). It finds that the absence of significant dismantling is due both to the symbolic nature of early dismantling attempts and the failure of more recent attempts to build coalitions that overcome institutional obstacles to policy change in the EU.

Having explained their adoption, analysts are now trying to understand how EU environmental policies have subsequently evolved over time. In 2003, David Vogel famously speculated that having overtaken the US in the environmental race to the top, EU policies would also eventually succumb to policy gridlock, that is, neither expanding nor dismantling. Empirical research has since confirmed that EU policy expansion is in decline, but less is known about why dismantling has also been very limited. This article breaks new ground by reconfiguring dismantling—a concept developed for national policy systems—to explain the various dismantling strategies deployed at EU level (1992 to 2016). It finds that the absence of significant dismantling is due both to the symbolic nature of early dismantling attempts and the failure of more recent attempts to build coalitions that overcome institutional obstacles to policy change in the EU.