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The theoretical approach to Europeanization defines it as the outcome of a long historical process in which western European culture and civilization have influenced the rest of Europe. Besides cultural traditions and a capitalist way of life, such values as democracy, solidarity, liberty, and tolerance are promoted. As Petr Kopecky and Cas Mudde (2000) argue, the result of being “Europeanized” is the development of democratic values by implementing democratic human rights regimes and open political systems.

The pragmatic interpretation of the term Europeanization emphasizes the policies and institutions of the European Union (EU), their influences on member states and candidate countries, and the impact of the national systems on the political and administrative structure of the EU. In this narrowed context, Europeanization can be used interchangeably with the notion of European integration process. However, two other points of view contribute to an exhaustive picture of the conceptual reality of the term: the top-down and the bottom-up perspectives.

The Top-Down Approach

The concept of Europeanization frequently refers to allocation of EU regulations and institutional structures to the domestic level. First, the developments and changes in the domestic systems of the EU member states—much more visible in the recently accepted member states (those that joined between 2004 and 2007)—suggest that the EU has enormous political and institutional influence. Moreover, the top-down perspective reflects the reality that the political actors from the EU level are the individuals promoting the values of Europeanization, whereas national political actors are less involved in the process.

Claudio Radaelli (2000) sketches an even more pragmatic definition: Europeanization is a process through which the political, economic, and social dimensions of the EU become “incorporated in the logic of domestic discourse, identities, political structures and public policies.” Hence, the overarching European structure determines obvious changes in national systems.

Second, this “downloaded” Europeanization implies a whole new procedure of regulation through which European institutions—especially the legislative and executive bodies— gradually transpose different areas of policy making from the national level to the supranational dimension. Consequently, new secondary legislation (i.e., directives, regulations, decisions) agreed on by the member states must be implemented by subnational and national governments alongside domestic laws or even modifying the latter as necessary.

Third, the top-down dimension can also be explained by the shaping of domestic institutional structures. On one hand, the EU brings about the creation of new agencies and new types of cooperation; on the other hand, it affects administrative reform, public procurement, regional development, and budgetary procedures within the domestic sphere.

Thus, the EU affects the relationship between legislative and executive bodies by widening the scope of technocrats and executive leadership, especially due to their role in the economic and monetary union, and limiting the functions of traditional parliaments. In addition, during the accession process, the main actors in the negotiations with the EU are the national elites of the candidate countries, that is, the chief negotiators and their teams, some ministers, and key officials of the central civil service. Furthermore, when EU membership becomes the primary foreign policy goal, governments allocate to this purpose considerable human resources, especially from the central administration, personnel who are well trained and in possession of technical expertise. Once accepted into the EU, these administrative elites continue to have a primary role in the process of European funds absorption. In this context, it can be asserted that European integration creates new technical elites within central and regional governments.

Europeanization And Regionalization

In line with the idea of the top-down approach, the phenomenon of Europeanization cannot be analyzed without at least mentioning the concept of regionalization. From a broad point of view, these two concepts can be perceived as contradictory: the EU is a complex extra national network of member and candidate countries, institutions, and political actors, whereas regionalization strengthens the idea of regions as actors, underlining the importance of being as close as possible to citizens and their concerns. However, Europeanization involves regional development and greater decentralization, especially in former communist countries in which everything was strongly centralized for decades. The accession process provides new incentives for creating regional administrative institutions, and membership status offers the possibility of acquiring specific structural funds aimed at reducing or eliminating differences between European regions.

The Bottom-Up Perspective

The response of national actors, such as national institutions, citizens, mass media, and civil society, to EU regulations, directives, recommendations, and general policy guidelines influences the supranational dimension created by the European Parliament, the European Commission, the European Court of Justice, and the Council of Minister s, among others. Accordingly, the EU member states, especially their citizens and domestic policies, exert a strong influence on the European institutional framework by transforming them continuously.

Tanja Börzel (2003) underlines the role of member states and their governments, which are the main agents driving European integration and policy making with the goal of protecting their geopolitical interests and the economic concerns of their constituencies. In addition, as Svien Andersen and Kjell Eliassen (1993) maintain, power is shared de facto between the EU and national governments, or as Thomas Lawton (1999) concludes, there is a visible de jure transfer of sovereignty from the domestic arena to the European structure. Andrew Moravcsik (1999) and Adrienne Heritier (1999) call this national impetus the “bottom-up” viewpoint of Europeanization or even the “uploading” process of Europeanization.

Bibliography:

Andersen, Svien, and Kjell Eliassen. Making Policy in Europe:The Europeification of National Policy-making. London: Sage, 1993.
Börzel,Tanja A. “Shaping and Taking EU Policies: Member State Responses to Europeanization.” Queen’s Papers on Europeanisation, no. 2 (2003). www.qub.ac.uk/schools/SchoolofPoliticsInternationalStudiesandPhilosophy/Research/ PaperSeries/EuropeanisationPapers/PublishedPapers.
Grabbe, Heather. “How Does Europeanization Affect CEE Governance? Conditionality, Diffusion and Diversity.” Journal of European Public Policy 8, no. 6 (2001): 1013–1031.
Heritier, Adrienne. Policy Making and Diversity in Europe: Escape from Deadlock. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.
Kopecky, Petr, and Cas Mudde. “What Has Eastern Europe Taught Us about the Democratization Literature (and Vice Versa)?” European Journal of Political Research 37 (2000): 517–539.
Lawton,Thomas. “Governing the Skies: Conditions for the Europeanization of Airline Policy.” Journal of Public Policy 19 (1999): 91–112.
Moravcsik, Andrew. The Choice for Europe: Social Purpose and State Power from Rome to Maastricht. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999.
Radaelli, Claudio. “Whither Europeanization? Concept Stretching and Substantive Change.” European Integration Online Papers 4, no. 8 (2000). http://eiop.or.at/eiop/pdf/2000-008.pdf.