Explaining EU Impacts at the Domestic Level – The Europeanization of Regulatory Policy in Denmark

Abstract

This chapter questions the value of ‘goodness of fit’ as an explanatory variable in studies of EU impacts on domestic change. Instead it points to the important role of domestic politics. The analysis is based on case studies of domestic regulatory policies of consumer protection and competition policy in Denmark. It is assumed that EU pressures and policies affect domestic policy content not only directly though legal acts, but also indirectly through domestic political actors making use of the EU in policy-making processes at the domestic level. Hence the chapter also explores whether and how domestic actors have been making use of EU policies and pressures in shaping domestic policy content. While the ‘goodness of fit’-hypothesis in itself holds little explanatory value, Europeanization through changing domestic opportunity structures as well as framing beliefs and expectations are important in explaining domestic policy change. The chapter concludes that changed domestic opportunity structures and actors’ beliefs and expectations are much more important than ‘goodness of fit’ when assessing EU impacts on national regulatory policy. An emphasis on actors’ interaction in domestic politics is thus supposed to be a prerequisite for obtaining satisfactory explanatory value in studies of Europeanization.