Europeanization and domestic policy concertation: how actors use Europe to modify domestic patterns of policy-making

The Europeanization literature assumes that European integration affects domestic policies, politics and polities; yet, the impact on domestic corporatist patterns, which characterize policy-making in small European states, has received little attention so far. While contradictory theoretical expectations exist, this paper argues that European market-making policies tend to weaken domestic corporatist policy-making by offering new opportunities to domestic actors, in particular the executive. This allows them to bypass policy concertation. However, the impact depends on the usage domestic actors make of the European policies and is mediated by domestic factors. A comparison across policy sectors in two countries – Belgium and Switzerland – largely confirms these arguments. This means that domestic institutions such as corporatist policy-making are not only mediating factors in the process of Europeanization, but themselves subject to change. This effect even goes beyond the borders of the European Union, affecting policy-making in Switzerland as well. Keywords: Belgiumcorporatist policy-makingEuropeanizationmarket-makingopportunity structureSwitzerland ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This paper is part of the research project ‘The impact of internationalization on Swiss policy processes in comparative perspective’ directed by Y. Papadopoulos and funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation via the National Centre of Competence in Research on Democracy. Previous versions of this paper were presented at the ECPR joint sessions (Lisbon 2009) and the workshop ‘Establishing causality in Europeanisation research’ (Exeter 2010). I am extremely thankful to Alexandre Afonso, Stephanie Andrey and Florian Robyr for their case-study analyses. I also like to thank Yannis Papadopoulos, Francesco Stolfi, Oliver Treib and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Notes The Europeanization literature has been criticized for its top-down approach, which ignores the role of member states in the elaboration of European legislation. However, as regards Belgium and Switzerland, the limitation on the ‘top-down’ dimension is justified because Switzerland does not participate in the elaboration of the European decisions (regarding the bilateral agreements, free movement of workers was demanded by the EU as a counterpart for demands by Switzerland), and Belgium is usually not much involved in decision-making on the European level, at least not successfully (Bursens Citation2002: 183). In the 1990s, the EU introduced a leniency programme and substantially increased its application of fines, both in numbers and in the amount of the fines. Belgian unemployment reform 2003–2004, Belgian occupational pension reform 1999–2003, Swiss unemployment reform 1998–2002 and Swiss occupational pension reform 1996–2003. However, it is also possible that domestic factors contribute independently to explain the particular outcome (type of policy concertation). This was to some extent the case in the Belgian competition policy reform analysed here, which is therefore considered a case of weak evidence of Europeanization (Exadaktylos and Radaelli Citation2010).