Now or Later: Tradeoffs in Implementation of Directives Among European Union Member States.

Of nearly 1500 European Union directives enacted between 1978 and 1997, over 65% had at least one infringement case opened against a member state for noncompliance. Existing research has considered the problem of infringement by either focusing upon timing alone or upon total numbers of infringements. These approaches incorrectly assume that all infringements are alike and thus can be addressed as parts of the same phenomenon. While some common factors contribute to higher levels of infringements overall, e.g. incapacities within the bureaucracy and complexity of the directives to be enacted, three factors separate late from substantive infringements: preferences, power, and opportunity. Infringements have a common source: disagreement by national political actors (policy-area minister and coalition members) regarding a directive but whether this disagreement transforms into substance or delay depends. Substantive infringements arise when three conditions are simultaneously present: the national political actors not only disagree with a directive, AND they have the power to affect national legislation, AND they have the opportunity to do so, in the national parliament. Late infringements arise when only some of these conditions are present: when national political actors disagree but lack tools to substantively influence legislation, e.g. when coalition members have weak parliamentary powers but disagree with directive content, or when strong national parliaments are involved in the passage of legislation during the transposition process. This dissertation analyzes the incidence of state noncompliance among EU member states using a novel approach on a new dataset. With these tools, I not only explain factors relevant to late and substantive infringements but also why previous research has been unable to provide this explanation until now.PhDPolitical ScienceUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/133308/1/jclip_1.pd