Policy Transfer in European Union Governance : Regulating the Utilities

This new book presents a clear conceptual framework for understanding the transfer of policy ideas between EU states, together with an empirical study of regulatory change within European utilities.

Policy transfer is a new instrument for understanding EU policy-making. This volume shows how the nature of institutions, interdependence between trans-national and national jurisdictions and social systems, relate policy actors across geographical boundaries, identifying four basic types of EU policy transfer and learning:

• ‘uploading’– how member states compete to shape the EU agenda in line with their own institutional arrangements and policy preferences
• ‘downloading’– how states adapt to changing EU incentives and constraints
• ‘socialization’ – how EU policy norms are internalized in the belief systems of domestic actors
• ‘information exchange’ between national actors in the course of EU interactions leading to a horizontal diffusion of policy ideas.

The authors use an institutionalist perspective to show how these forms of policy transfer operate across the diverse systems of governance found across the EU.

Policy Transfer in European Union Governance will be of great interest to students and scholars of European Union politics and policy, comparative public policy and political economy.