15 - Three worlds of compliance: a typology

Summary

A well-constructed typology can work miracles in bringing order out of chaos

(Bailey 1992: 2193)

Constructing a typology: methodological and practical background

It has been mentioned in the previous chapters that the considerations of domestic politics have been underrated in recent writing on compliance with EU law. The great importance of national preferences and ideology for the implementation performance of many countries is one major finding of this study. However, this is not a single overriding factor which determines the compliance performance of member states and could thus serve as a safe anchor for predicting the success or failure of future implementation cases in all of our fifteen countries. Therefore, it should not be read as a new over-generalised theory for explaining the implementation of EU law. In fact, an untidy overall picture emerges once the manifold hypotheses we derived from the different literatures have been discussed: no causal condition pre-supposed by existing theories is able to explain our empirical observations. This suggests, once again, that the search for law-like generalisations and for simple isolated causes that could explain complex empirical phenomena is futile (see, for example, Scharpf 2002b).

Classic factors from the comparative welfare state literature do not help either. Most importantly, there is no direct correlation between social expenses and compliance records. For example, the UK ranks fourth when it comes to delays in transposing our six Directives, but is on the lower end of the scale of social expenses in Europe.