Europeanisation by structural funding – a regional game?

Paper prepared for the 24th World Congress of Political Science; Panel: Europeanization in

Comparative Perspective

Work in progress – please do not cite

Katharina Zimmermann

Humboldt-University Berlin

Department of Social Sciences

Unter den Linden 6

10099 Berlin

Germany

katharina.zimmerman@hu-berlin.de

+49 (0)30 2093-4328

Introduction Until the 1990s, the process of European integration had been subject to theory building and

empirical work inspired by models such as neo-functionalism (Haas 1964), or

intergouvernementalism (Hoffmann 1966). In the 1990s, a new perspective gained increasing

relevance. It focused on EU policy making rather than on institution building and power

transfer from the national to the European level. In this context, also a new focus on the role

of the EU member states emerged: they were no longer seen as simply shifting power towards

a higher level, but also as ‘takers’ of processes taking place at the EU level (Börzel 2003). This

phenomenon of “domestic adaptation to Europe” (Vink, Graziano 2007, p. 7) is nowadays well-

known among political scientists as Europeanisation. While in the earlier years of the research

strand, ‘domestic’ mostly meant the member states as such with their policies, polities, and

politics (e.g. “When Europe hits home” Börzel, Risse 2000), nowadays it mostly refers to

knillspecific dimensions, such as environmental policies (Knill, Lehmkuhl 2002), or public

administrations (Kassim 2003). Particularly in the context of EU regional policy, also

subnational Europeanisation was taken into account (among others: Fleurke, Willemse 2006).

Beyond this greater differentiation and specification of the research objects in the empirical

analyses of Europeanisation studies, the term Europeanisation also seems to become a ‘catch-

all’ phrase again. It is no longer (if it ever was) reserved for mere ‘domestic adaptation’, but

used (again; see Olsen 2002) for everything which looks like ‘more Europe’ – including the

process of European integration. While this might be simply dismissed as the usual academic

terminological struggles, we could also interpret it in the light of a changing character of the

European Union, and the relationship between the EU-level and the member states. EU

legislation is nowadays of crucial relevance for national policy making, our every-day lives are

shaped by numerous EU-related factors such as the free movement of workers or regulations

on electronic communication, and almost all economic processes are in one way or the other

transnational. Internal politics of member states are no longer internal but relevant for the

entire EU, EU politics heavily shape domestic discourses, and so on. European countries are

closely linked to each other and the EU as such, as most recently also the reactions to the

Brexit-referendum illustrated.

Of course, in the light of these processes the question arises whether we can still distinguish

between a European and a domestic (member state) level. Are domestic and EU processes so

closely intertwined that this analytical distinction does not make sense anymore? And what

would this mean for the concept of Europeanisation when defined as domestic adaptation to

Europe? In fact, this ‘domestic-adaptation-definition’ draws clearly on distinguishing between

a European and a domestic level, since it “concerns a relationship between a cause located at

the EU level and change at the domestic level” (Radaelli 2012, p. 3) – an analytical perspective

which would make no sense in a completely transnationalised EU. However, at the same time,

we would of course not argue that there are no member states anymore, or that ‘domestic’

events are irrelevant. There are still numerous political and societal spheres which are probably

not yet strongly transnationalised. In this regard, the concepts of Europeanisation research

would be still of great help to grasp adaptation processes to the EU in these spheres, and it

would make much sense to distinguish between a domestic and an EU-level. However, where

should we draw the line between ‘domestic’ and ‘EU’ then?

Here, we argue that ‘domestic’ is too often (also implicitly) equated with ‘national’. In

Europeanisation research, we study Italian, French, or German adaptation to Europe, or we

study processes in Italy, France, or Germany, without reflecting clearly what these countries

stand for, or what we are actually interested in. For example, the way a politician in a

traditionally social democratic governed Spanish region reacts to the EU might be more similar

to the way a German politician in a social democratic region does, than another Spanish

politician in a conservative region. Similarly, we could assume that the socio-economic

situation of a region, the language, the size of a city, or even the weather might be much more

relevant for our outcomes of interest than nationally regulated or framed factors. Hence, why

should always countries, or other units as representatives of countries be studied? Why not

studying cities, regions, organisations, policy fields, or cross-national entities (e.g. coastal

zones) and empirically asking about the role of (particular aspects of) the nation state they are

part of?

In order to push forward such a de-nationalised perspective on Europeanisation processes, we

suggest in this paper to include the nation state as an empirical variable in the research process,

rather than simply using it as a default sampling reference, or as the standard unit of

investigation. By drawing on political scientists’ and sociologists notions on Europeanisation,

we will elaborate this argument, and also provide some empirical evidence for illustrating it on

the basis of subnational Europeanisation via the European Social Fund (ESF) as a most-likely

case.

Europeanisation – a de-nationalised perspective The most prominent approach in political scientists’ Europeanisation research is probably still

the ‘goodness of fit’-approach (Börzel 1999; Börzel 2003; Risse et al. 2001). It assumes “that

Europeanization is only likely to result in domestic change if it is ,inconvenient” (Börzel, Risse

2003, pp. 60–61). This means that for EU-induced change to happen, certain adaptational

pressure at the domestic level is required. Such adaptational pressure is given if domestic

policies or institutions do not show a fit in the sense of conformity with the European model.

Furthermore, Europeanisation cannot be expected in the case of a perfect fit, since no

adaptation would be necessary then.

The concept of goodness of fit was very well received as a simple but convincing way to open

the black-box of the top-down EU-domestic relationship and was soon established as the

‘standard model’ of Europeanisation research (Caporaso 2007, pp. 27–29). When then soft law

and new governance forms became more relevant (Trubek, Trubek 2005), this also led to

further development of the Europeanisation toolbox. One example for conceptualising ‘new

EU-causes’ is López-Santana, who enhanced the ‘goodness of fit’-idea towards ideational fit

(López-Santana 2006). While the original goodness-of-fit-approach refers to the extent to

which existing domestic policies or institutions differ from the European framework (Börzel,

Risse 2003, pp. 61–62), ideational fit meant the degree to which domestic policy-makers

already accept a particular policy framework, for example regional policy (López-Santana

2006, p. 495).

With the new focus beyond hard-law, we can also observe an increasing creativity with regard

to research design in Europeanisation studies. Here, a ‘bottom-up’ research perspective gained

increasing prominence:

“By using time and temporal causal sequences, a bottom-up approach checks if, when, and how the

EU provides a change in any of the main components of the system of interaction. Finally, ‘bottom-

uppers’ try to measure the consequences of all this in terms of change at the domestic level.“ (Radaelli,

Pasquier 2007, p. 41).

One relatively detailed analytical approach which explicitly seeks to deploy a bottom-up

perspective is the so-called ‘usages-of-Europe’-approach. With reference to the act of usage,

the “national adaptation to the European level” (Woll/Jaqcuot 2003: 6) is conceptualised from

an actor-centred perspective. The European level is understood as providing a set of

opportunities or resources for domestic actors. Here, different types of resources are identified

(e.g. ideas, legal resources or discursive references), which are then used by domestic actors in

different manners (Woll, Jaquot 2010, p. 118). Usages are categorized according to function,

and the authors note three types: cognitive, strategic and legitimating.

Cognitive usage refers to the understanding and interpretation of a political subject and is most

common in when issues are being defined or need to be discussed, so that ideas serve as persuasion

mechanism. Strategic usages refer to the pursuit of clearly defined goals by trying to influence policy

decision or one’s room for manoeuvre, helping to aggregate interests and to build a coalition of

heterogeneous actors […] Legitimating usage occurs when political decisions need to be

communicated and justified. Actors rely on the image of ‘Europe’ to communicate implicit content or

employ related discursive figures such as ‘the European interest’, ‘European constraints’, ‘the

application of the Maastricht criteria’ to legitimate political choices. (Woll, Jaquot 2010, p. 117).

The usages approach was explicitly introduced as a sociological perspective on

Europeanisation (Jacquot, Woll 2003) addressing the interplay between action and institution

and emphasises the role of strategic action oriented by the EU, and thus adopts a more general

perspective which is in theory able to travel beyond Europeanisation.

The explicitly sociological view is insofar remarkable as for a long time, “[s]ociologists on the

whole have been curiously absent from EU studies” (Favell, Guiraudon 2011, p. 1Favell 2007,

p. 1; similar arguments are made by Beck, Grande 2007, p. 96, Eigmüller, Mau 2010, p. 9, or

Bach 2008, p. 7), and thus a more sociological-inspired perspective on the ‚project European

Union‘ was indeed missing for a long time. This changed slowly from the 2000s onwards and

is for example visible in the release of a number of books which explicitly deal with a sociology

of the European Union (e.g.: Kauppi 2013; Fligstein 2008; Favell 2007; Eigmüller, Mau 2010;

Beck, Grande 2007). These authors were interested in what has been called horizontal and

vertical Europeanization:

“[…] research on Europe in sociology […] conceives of Europeanization as a vertical process between

national societies and European institutions (authorities, public sphere, citizenship, etc.) and, second,

the repercussions of these supranational institutions for the national societies, for instance, the

adjustment of national norms and institutions to European guidelines. […] This is just one side of

Europeanization, however. Europeanization can and must be conceived concurrently in a second,

horizontal dimension. This horizontal dimension concerns, first, the emergence of a ‘post-social’

European social space with variable internal-external relations and, second, the relations between the

European societies. (Beck, Grande 2007, p. 97).

Empirical studies on horizontal Europeanisation focus for example on every-day practices of

European citizens (Müller 2014; Delhey et al. 2014), on cross-border activities in Europe (Mau

2012), or inequality dynamics in the EU (Heidenreich 2016).

The horizontal Europeanisation debate also took up a conceptual issue, which had already been

discussed in other contexts: the unreflective tradition to consider the nation state as the main

unit of analysis in social sciences; i.e. a ‘national container’ (among others: Wimmer, Glick-

Schiller 2001; Chernilo 2011; Beck 2007). This methodological nationalism was sought to

overcome by a horizontal, transnational perspective on Europeanisation – a “lateral opening

of the national container”(Beck, Grande 2007, p. 97). In fact, a similar perspective was also

discussed in the Multilevel Governance (MLG) literature in the early 2000s (among other

works: Hooghe, Marks 2001), which builds on the observation that in the course of the

European unification, authority became increasingly multi-layered and “has come to be shared

across global institutions, regional organisations, such as the EU, national governments, and

subnational governments” (Schakel et al. 2015, p. 271). In this regard, attention was drawn to

the subnational level as an independent entity of research (Jeffery, Schakel 2013), which can

be understood as ‘opening the national container downwards’.

Nevertheless, despite these fruitful conceptual reflections both in the MLG-debate and the

horizontal Europeanisation literature, neither a ‘downwards opening’ nor a ‘lateral opening’

was consequently adapted in the praxis of political scientists Europeanisation research. As we

mentioned above, almost all Europeanisation studies in this tradition deploy the nation state

(i.e. the EU member states) as the main point of analysis, and even if subnational levels are

investigated, the nation states are mostly the reference points. While this is of course an

appropriate approach when interested in the actual situation of nation states vis-à-vis the

European integration process, it is less useful for analysing Europeanisation mechanisms

which are not explicitly focused on nation states as such. In our eyes it does not make much

sense to take countries as the default research entities, or as the main reference point for

several factors, when interested for example in particular policies, or institutions.

This is we argue that a functional definition of the entities under study is required. This means

that we should select and conceptualise the units we study on the basis of the characteristics

we are analytically interested in rather than on implicit assumptions regarding national

systems. For example, if we were interested in the impact of EU policies on educational

policies, it could make sense to have the 16 German Länder as separate cases in the sample,

while France would only constitute one single case due to a centralised scheme. We could also

imagine to have transnational territories as cases, if the research interest suggests so. Of

course, this does not mean to disregard the role of national schemes – but it means to better

reflect this role and also leave it open to empirical findings. In other words: we include the

national level as an empirical variable rather than as the default background setting or starting

point of analyses. Whether there is any relevance of national German education policy for our

example could be tested by comparing the 16 German Länder: if we found greater similarities

among them compared to France, we could assume that the national scheme plays a role.

From an analytical viewpoint, this strategy fits perfectly with the bottom-up Europeanisation

research perspective mentioned above. From a bottom-up perspective, the researcher is not

only able to check “if, when, and how the EU provides a change in any of the main components

of the system of interaction“ (Radaelli, Pasquier 2007, p. 41), but also to investigate the role of

different factors without anticipating them. What is the role of particular features of national

systems in the adaptation process? How do regional actors frame it? Is the local political setup

more important than the national? Are there transnational processes underway? Answering

such questions from a perspective which does not rely on the ‘national container’ is easily

possible from a bottom-up research design. However, this conceptual potential of a bottom-

design has – at least to our information – not been deployed in political scientists’

Europeanisation discussion.

In this study, we suggest some first steps to overcome this desideratum by adopting a bottom-

up, de-nationalised perspective on empirical Europeanisation processes. The idea is to start at

the subnational level and to find out which conditions shape Europeanisation processes: are

they national or subnational? How do they relate to European ‘triggers’? And how do the

different conditions interact? We will answer these question by using a relatively simple

example of a most-likely case for our argument of de-nationalised Europeanisation processes:

social and employment policies. Deploying a most-likely case is insofar useful since it might

most probably allow us to observe the phenomena of interest (conditions at different levels and

their interaction) and develop more general perspective which could then also be applied to

less-likely cases. In the following section, we will outline why social and employment policies

are a most-likely case of de-nationalised Europeanisation and will develop our analytical

research perspective.

EU social and employment policies as drivers of de-nationalised

Europeanisation European employment policies mainly exist since the start of the European Employment

Strategy in 1994. Since then, employment has become one of the main priorities of European

policies with the overall aim to increase employment rates by labour market integration of

vulnerable groups. Nevertheless, the European Union does not have legislative power in this

field. In order to achieve greater coordination of national employment policies, the Open

Method of Coordination (OMC) was introduced in EU employment policies (Heidenreich,

Bischoff 2008). The OMC focuses on ‘soft’ governance modes such as reporting,

benchmarking, best practice exchange or recommendations. Its aim is to achieve greater

coherence among member states without relying on legal pressure. In this context, also one of

the oldest EU-domains was linked to the soft tools: regional and cohesion policy, and structural

funding.

Research on the impact of European employment policies showed that the effect of ‘soft’

coordinating instruments remains limited to single aspects (Graziano 2012, Zirra 2010). While

authors were able to depict Europeanisation processes in national frameworks particularly for

southern and eastern European countries (e.g. Ferrera, Gualmini 2004; Sirovátka et al. 2007),

at a more general level European governance mechanisms seemed to be rather ineffective or

at least weak in achieving an overall coherence of national employment policies (Blanke,

Kinnock 2010; High Level Group 2004)

Albeit we share the evaluations of these studies regarding national employment systems and

the relatively weak manifest role of European policies in this regard, we argue that several

pieces of the puzzle are missing if we only look at the national systems. As already Marks,

Hooghe and colleagues (1996) showed, while almost all EU policies are implemented via the

member states or entrusted bodies, in regional and cohesion policies the European level (i.e.

the Commission) is directly involved in implementation via its direct interaction with national

or subnational administrators (Marks et al. 1996, pp. 347–348). The steering idea behind

cohesion policy and the related governance tools is mainly to ensure an implementation of EU

policies without an active involvement of national governments in the implementation policies.

It is to some extent a ‘bypass strategy’ (Obinger et al. 2005, p. 567) to evade national political

interference in the execution process, and to directly deploy domestic implementation systems

(Hartlapp 2007, p. 11).

The greater emphasis of EU policies and governance tools towards the subnational

implementation level goes hand in hand with decentralisation processes in domestic social and

employment policies. Particularly in the context of the ‘activation turn’, where in many

European countries national labour market policies were linked more closely to subnational

organised social policies (Heidenreich, Rice 2016), we can observe trends of administrative

and political welfare decentralisation (Kazepov 2010; Künzel 2012; Minas et al. 2012). Against

the backdrop of our above-made claim for a de-nationalised perspective on Europeanisation

processes, we argue that such increased relevance of lower politico-administrative levels in

domestic welfare issues in combination with a strong EU focus on subnational implementation

makes social and employment policies a most-likely case for observing Europeanisation

processes which are independent from national contexts. Since our main objective in this paper

is to illustrate our conceptual argument, such a most-likely case is most suitable for an

empirical demonstration. Hence, in order to provide some real-world evidence on the matter,

we will compare local usage of the ESF in subnational entities across Europe.

Albeit the above-mentioned ‘usages-of-Europe-approach’ only approaches one particular

aspect of Europeanisation, namely the reactions of domestic actors to a European resource,

and disregards eventually triggered domestic change (Zimmermann 2016), it is nevertheless a

highly useful tool for capturing the role of relevant conditions for some aspects of

Europeanisation processes. In this regard, actors’ preferences are stressed (Woll, Jaquot 2010,

p. 116), but also the role of capacities for action are mentioned as shaping the way and degree

how actors make use of EU-resources (Woll, Jaquot 2010, p. 121). We will therefore include

these two factors in our analysis and seek to unravel their role for subnational usages processes

in the context of the ESF. As we illustrate in the next section, we explicitly conceptualise these

two conditions as subnational, which means that we only include relevant factors for capacities

and preferences which are shaped by the national context.

Following the above-made claim that the national level should be explicitly included in

Europeanisation studies as an empirical variable, in contrast to the subnational factors, we will

also take in some national factors. Here, we draw on the abovementioned ‘goodness-of-fit’

approach, which builds on the premise that a certain misfit between the domestic and the EU

model is to needed to set off a Europeanisation process (Börzel, Risse 2003). Albeit usage is

not explicitly Europeanisation in the sense of the goodness-of-fit approach, it is nevertheless

is a necessary antecedent for it (Jacquot, Woll 2003, p. 6), and we can hence argue that the

same conditional arguments apply. In terms of policy misfit, we take into account the degree

to which a country has a strong national activation scheme with a clear emphasis on the labour

market integration of inactive groups, as promoted by the EU and inherent in the

programmatic ESF-regulations. Following López-Santana (2006), we argue that the overall

multi-level setup of a country, i.e. whether it is centralised, regionalised, or highly

decentralised could matter in terms of ideational fit. In a more decentralised country, the

domestic actors might be more ready to accept and recognize regional policy frameworks than

in centralised countries (López-Santana 2006, p. 495).

Table 1 summarizes the conditions which we derived from the Europeanisation literature and

linked to either the national or the subnational context. Most logically, we would expect to find

higher usage in cases where actors have higher preferences for usage, and good capacities to

do so. Furthermore, in the logic of the goodness-of-fit-arguments, we would expect to find

higher usage in cases with a relatively high policy misfit in terms and low ideational misfit.

Table 1: National and subnational conditions for usage of the ESF

National conditions Subnational conditions

National activation scheme (policy fit) Actors’ preferences

National multi-level setup (ideational fit) Actors’ capacities

However, our main objective here is not to contribute to the usages- or goodness-of-fit-

literature by a theory-test, but to confront national and subnational conditions. Although we

will also provide some evidence on the role of single conditions, we are mostly interested in the

relevance of the national and the subnational context, and in their interplay. While we adopt a

more inductively-inspired bottom-up perspective when measuring the subnational conditions

(see next section), we on purpose apply a very simple and general measurement of the national

conditions. We do so for mimicking an often applied strategy in Europeanisation research:

choosing countries on the basis of very general categories, and embedding the empirical

findings in these national contexts without going more into detail regarding the role and

relevance of the national settings. However, since we include the national factors in our

empirical analysis, we are able to test their empirical role and juxtapose them with the

subnational factors. In the next section, we will now provide an overview on our research

design and the applied methods.

We will illustrate our argument on the basis of empirical evidence on the usage of the ESF in

18 local entities across Europe, which we will analyse deploying a two-step fuzzy-set QCA.

Methods and research design

The data we use for the illustration of our argument is part of a larger dataset on the usages of

the ESF, and related processes of domestic change, in 18 local entities in six European

countries (see also Zimmermann 2016). We will use suitable parts of this dataset for running

a simple two-step fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), which will allow us to get

better insights into the conditional role of the national and the subnational factors, as well as

their relationship. After outlining our case selection strategy, we give in this section a brief

introduction into QCA, and we also discuss in greater detail how we measure the four

abovementioned national and subnational conditions.

Case selection and data-processing methods

As we argued above, for adopting a de-nationalised perspective on Europeanisation processes,

we need to define our units of analysis from a bottom-up, functional angle. Because we are

interested in the Europeanisation of subnational implementation of social and employment

policies, this research interest should guide our respective decisions. For conceptualising what

we mean by the ‘subnational level’, we do not need a definition of the higher levels; and thus

we do not need the nation state as a conceptual anchor. Since we are interested in

implementation stages, and in lower-level domestic social and employment policies, we can

pick as our units of analysis the lowest territorial subdivision in European countries with

autonomy in implementation. Defining the subnational level via its function in the policy-cycle

(implementation) rather than its territorial function in a particular constitutional setup

enables us to establish a perspective which does not give analytical primacy to the national

level’s constitutional power with regard to the territorial setup but to the policy-function which

is at the core of the research interest. The local level then appears as nested in a variety of

different – and analytical equally relevant – higher levels. These could be various subnational

levels, the national level, the European level and also further levels between and beyond. All of

these levels can be of decisive relevance for the actual role of the local level in a particular

dimension and shape the practices of policy implementation.

But which ‘lowest territorial subdivision’ should we choose? Here, a twofold strategy seems

suitable. Since we want to confront national with subnational conditions, we should pick on

the one hand countries which differ on the relevant criteria, and on the other hand subnational

entities within these countries. For the first step, six countries were chosen which covered the

full range of worlds of activation and multilevel setups: France, Italy, Sweden, Poland, France,

Germany, and the UK. In a next step, we decided to include socio-economic performance as a

potentially relevant criteria, and sought to select one over-, one average-, and one

underperforming region in each of the countries.1 Within each region, one local case was then

chosen. Although not in a systematic manner, these cases vary alongside different dimensions

in order to cover a broad range of diversity (Seawright, Gerring 2008, p. 300), for example in

terms of their dominant political tradition, their size and their administrative responsibilities

in the multilevel system of the country. The sample thus includes cities with about 50,000

inhabitants, cities with about 2.7 million inhabitants, and cities that have, for instance, a strong

social-democratic or strong conservative tradition. Furthermore, some cities only have

administrative responsibilities for a small municipal territory, while others are capitals of a

region or even the country, but they all share that they are responsible for implementing social

and employment policies at the lowest administrative level. Table 2 lists the selected cases.

Table 2: List of selected cases

ACTIVATION

REGIME

MULTI-LEVEL

SETUP

SOCIO-ECONOMIC

PERFORMANCE

CASE

FRANCE Continental Centralist Over-performing FE1

Average-performing FE2

Underperforming FE3

ITALY Mediterranean Regional Over-performing IT1

Average-performing IT2

Underperforming IT3

GERMANY Continental Federal Over-performing DE1

Average-performing DE2

1 Local performance has been assessed by looking at the regional GDP, labour force participation rate and unemployment rate in comparison to the national average

Underperforming DE3

POLAND Central European Regional Over-performing PL1

Average-performing PL2

Underperforming PL3

SWEDEN Scandinavian Federal Over-performing SE1

Average-performing SE2

Underperforming SE3

UNITED

KINGDOM

Anglo-Saxon Centralist/Devolved Ove-performing UK1

Average-performing UK2

Underperforming UK3

Case knowledge for each case will allow for an assessment of the two subnational conditions.

The in-depth analyses of the case studies are founded on 18 extensive case studies and in six

country reports. The background data for these case studies and reports stem from a total of

264 interviews which were conducted in the 18 local entities in the context of a broader

research project. The case studies and country reports were analysed using a fuzzy-set

approach (see below) and the results were cross-checked with the researchers who conducted

the interviews in the individual cases. For reasons of anonymity, the actual names of the cities

are not mentioned and the cases are referred to by codes (e.g. the average case in France is

labelled F2 and the under-performing case in Poland is PL3). The case studies were conducted

in 2012 and 2013. Thus, although we did not limit the scope of our analysis to a specific

timeframe, the focus is on the 2007-2013 ESF programming period because the documents

and interview data mainly refer to this period.

Fuzzy-set analysis

The aim of this study is to test the role of different potentially relevant conditions for the usage

of the ESF in local entities across Europe. Here, both national and subnational conditions are

taken into account. For approaching the role of different conditions, the set-theoretically

founded tools of QCA (Qualitative Comparative Analysis) are most suitable. Here, the

empirical occurrence of outcome and conditions is assessed in terms of set-memberships; in

the fuzzy-set variant we deploy here in scores between 0 (full non-set membership) and 1 (full

set-membership). By explicitly taking into account the different notions of causal complexity

(i.e. conjunctural causation, equifinality, and causal asymmetry; Schneider, Wagemann 2012,

pp. 76–79) and building on Boolean algebra (Ragin 1987), QCA seeks to reveal underlying

patterns of sufficient and necessary conditions for a particular outcome. The main idea is to

identify the simplest set of conditions which can account for the observed outcome by

deploying a minimisation process (truth table analysis).2

For our purpose, we can define usage of the ESF as an outcome, and then test the conditional

role of the different above-mentioned factors. In order to avoid an unsuitable high number of

logical remainders3 and because it is most suitable for our purpose, we apply a so-called ‘two-

step approach’ (Schneider, Wagemann 2006). The basic idea behind this approach that often,

2 Due to space constraints, we only provide a brief overview to QCA. For a comprehensive introduction in QCA as an approach and a research programme, see for instance Schneider, Wagemann 2012. 3 For an analysis with four conditions, we would have 16 logically possible truth table rows; a model which would leave us most probably with quite high numbers of empirically uncovered rows when only dealing with 18 cases.

conditions “can be divided into two groups, which can be labelled ‘remote’ and ‘proximate’

factors” (Schneider, Wagemann 2006, p. 759). Remote and proximate factors for instance

differ with regard to their stability over time, or their spatial distance to the outcome to be

explained (Schneider, Wagemann 2006, p. 760). For the actual analysis, only remote factors

are included in a first step, and the solution paths are then included as “outcome-enabling

conditions” (Schneider, Wagemann 2006, p. 761) in a second step, together with the

proximate conditions.

Based on such a two-step analysis for usage as an outcome, we will evaluate the different

solution paths towards usage with an emphasis on the (conjunctions of) conditions in the

paths, the coverage scores, and on the cases which are covered by the different paths. This will

not only allow us to assess the role of different conditions (i.e. is their presence or absence

sufficient, or is it part of a conjunction?), it will also tell us more about the empirical relevance

of the different (conjunctions of) conditions (i.e. how much of usage is ‘explained’ uniquely by

a particular path?), and about the cases themselves (e.g. are all cases from one country covered

by the same path?). Here, also the parameters of fit – which help to assess the quality of a QCA

(Ragin 2006) – are of crucial relevance.

Measurement concepts

Every QCA-study relies on a careful definition of set-memberships, and on a sound assignment

of membership scores to cases. This ‘calibration’ is done by a close dialogue between theory

and empirical data (Schneider/Wagemann: 32). For our study, we had to calibrate first of all

usage as an outcome. Since our main objective is to illustrate our argument, we limit our

empirical scope to the most salient dimension of usage: strategic usage. Following the usages-

approach, we consider the as the active pursuit of ESF funding as strategic usage, which refers

to concrete attempts to get ESF-money for the own organisation (or a consortium or related

organisations). Such an active pursuit can be best measured by simply considering both

successful and unsuccessful applications for ESF-projects by actors in the field. In order to

calibrate the strategic aspect of usage as an outcome, we therefore analysed our empirical data

alongside the question to what extent a case belongs to the set of cases where all relevant actors

in the field actively seek to raise ESF funding. Full set membership (1) means that all or nearly

all relevant actors in the field use the ESF strategically, partial membership (0.66) refers to a

situation where many of them do, partial non-membership (0.33) means only very few, and

full non-membership (1) the absence of strategic usage.

When it comes to the conditions, we first if all assessed the role of the national activation

schemes. Here, our definition of set-membership followed the logic of the misfit approach, and

full set-membership (1) is understood as the presence of a strong national minimum income

scheme with a clear emphasis on the activation of inactive groups, as promoted by the EU and

inherent in the programmatic ESF-regulations. Partial set-membership (0.66) was assigned to

cases with a national framework in this regard but greater local discretion. Full non-

membership (0) applies to cases with no national minimum-income scheme, and partial set-

membership to cases where a rudimentary scheme exists (0.33). For assigning scores to

countries, we mainly deployed the findings reported by Clegg (Clegg 2016, 2013).

For conceptualising the multi-level setup of a country, we take into account whether a country

is centralised, regionalised, or highly decentralised with regard to its overall politico-

administrative organisation, since we assumed that in a more decentralised country, the

domestic actors might be more ready to accept and recognize regional policy frameworks than

in centralised countries. Consequently, full set-membership (1) was assigned to regionalised

countries, partial set-membership (0.66) to federally organised countries, and full non-set

membership to highly centralised countries.

The role of locally determined preferences is primarily measured with reference to the socio-

economic performance of a region, since it can be assumed that weaker local entities have

stronger preferences for using the ESF-money. In a first step, full-membership (1) and full non-

membership (0) were assessed by looking at the socio-economic performance of a region in

comparison to the national average, and then a more in-depth and subjective calibration was

deployed in order to distinguish between cases which are full in and partially in (0.66), as well

as fully out or partially out (0.33). Here, we took into account the subjective perceptions of

field actors, since these subjective perceptions shape their position in the field and their

preferences for action.

With regard to capacities, our case-knowledge indicated that particularly two actor-related

aspects were of relevance here: the ability to co-fund ESF-projects, and the administrative

capacities to handle the ESF-related bureaucracy. Accordingly we measured to which degree a

case is within the set of cases where field ac-tors command the relevant resources We

differentiated between cases where all relevant actors (1) or only most of them (0.66) command

these relevant resource, or where only a few (0.33) or none of the relevant field actors (0) do

so.

Table 3depicts the fuzzy-set scores for the three conditions and usage as an outcome for all 18

cases under study.

Table 3: Fuzzy-set scores for conditions and outcome

USAGE NATIONAL MIS-SCHEME

NATIONAL MULTI-LEVEL SETUP

LOCAL PREFERENCES

LOCAL CAPACITIES

F1 0,66 0,66 0 0.33 0,33 F2 0,33 0,66 0 0.66 0,66 F3 0,66 0,66 0 0.66 0,66 IT1 0,33 0 1 0.33 0,33 IT2 0,66 0 1 0.66 0,66 IT3 1 0 1 1 0,66 DE1 0,33 1 0,66 0 0 DE2 0,66 1 0,66 0.33 0,33 DE3 1 1 0,66 0.66 1 PL1 1 0,33 1 0.66 0,66 PL2 1 0,33 1 1 0,66 PL3 1 0,33 1 1 0,66 SE1 0 1 0,66 0 0 SE2 0,33 1 0,66 0.33 0 SE3 0,66 1 0,66 0.66 0 UK1 0,33 0,66 0,66 0.33 0,33 UK2 0,66 0,66 0,66 0.33 0,66 UK3 0,66 0,66 0,66 0.66 0,33

Usage of the ESF in 18 local entities across Europe As we can see from table 3, we have 11 cases where we empirically observed usage (F1, F3, IT2,

IT3, DE2, DE3, PL1, PL2, PL3, SE3, UK2, and UK3). A first look at the scores for the national

activation-scheme and the national multilevel setup already suggests an interesting pattern:

both in Italy and Poland, where we find comparably high usage, we have weak activation-

schemes and strongly regionalised structures. In the other countries, we have more or less an

opposite picture (lesser regionalised structures but stronger activation-schemes; and lower

overall usage). We could now assume that for example a misfit pattern is at work which

determines usage: a high ideational fit (i.e. regionalised policymaking) and low

institutional/policy fit (i.e. activation-scheme with focus on labour market integration); which

might lead to both adaptational pressure and greater acceptance of the EU policies. In a second

step, we could then analyse how local preferences and capacities shapes usage against the

backdrop of such goodness-of-fit patterns.

Indeed, this is a quite common pathway of qualitative cross-national work: at a general level,

country patterns are identified, and at a more fine-grained level, mechanisms are studied. Also

some of our own previous work has followed this pattern. However, we argue that the

dominance of country patterns often does not emerge from the empirical data, but from our

own expectations and frames, and that these frames and experiences then structure our

interpretation and interpretation of the data. While quantitative data struggles with nationally-

framed datasets, qualitative researchers are faced with their own nationally-framed

interpretations. We might simply see national patterns albeit they are not there, or we might

overestimate existing ones and build further analysis on these misinterpretation.

In this regard, QCA can be a useful tool. Of course, not every dataset and every research

question is suitable for a QCA, but if they are, the approach can help us to avoid a national bias

in our cross-national analyses. As long as we have a sound calibration of our data, formal

analyses of necessity and sufficiency do not account for any non-existing or overly weak

country pattern. Cases within a QCA are only assessed by the criteria which is in the dataset –

and if we do not include country-criteria, the algorithm does not either. Let us illustrate this

for our dataset.With our fuzzy-set data, we can run an analysis of sufficiency for usage as an

outcome, and with mis scheme, multilev, esf scheme, capacities and preferences as conditions,

in order to test the empirical relevance and the conditional role of the different conditions. As

outlined above, we will follow a two-step approach in order to reduce logical remainders.

The first stage in this two-step-approach is to run an analysis for the ‘remote’ conditions, i.e.

those conditions which are beyond the reach of the actors under study. In our case, these are

the two national conditions, and the ESF-scheme conditions. All three conditions are

contextual and are not located at the level of the actors. As it is standard of good practice in

QCA, before running an analysis of sufficiency, we should also test for necessity. However, no

tested condition (presence or absence) results as a necessary condition for usage. Our

subsequent analysis of sufficiency for usage as an outcome and the three remote-conditions

reveals the following results:4

4 The computer output for the analyses of necessity and sufficiency can be found in the annex.

Table 4: Analysis of sufficiency for usage – remote conditions (intermediate solution)

multilev*~misscheme ~multilev*misscheme

Raw coverage 0.444543 0.385093

Unique coverage 0.354925 0.295475

Consistency 0.830846 0.861111

Explained cases PL1, PL2, PL3, IT3 F1, F3

Solution consistency 0.829851

Solution coverage 0.740018

Uncovered cases DE2, DE3, SE3, UK2, UK3,

Inconsistent cases in kind F2, IT1

Source: own data

For this analysis, we chose a threshold of 0.8 for raw consistency for truth table rows, which

seems adequate for our number of cases and the remote conditions.5 We made no simplifying

assumption about logical remainders. Solution consistency is not very high but still quite

acceptable, while coverage is below 0.75, and thus confirms what the high number of

uncovered cases already tells us: the national remote conditions only have explanatory

relevance for a relatively small group of usage-cases.

Nevertheless, two interesting factors result from the solution when we take a closer look at the

single paths, and the cases they cover. We have two sufficient paths in our solution, each is a

conjunction of two conditions. Path 1 displays a regionalised multi-level setup with weak

national MIS-scheme (multilev*~misscheme), and path 2 displays a centralised setup with a

strong national setup (~multilev*misscheme); the two paths are thus somewhat the opposite

of each other. Naturally, this means that there is no overlap in kind for coverage, and the

unique coverage is relatively high for both paths. The most interesting finding is that the first

path covers all Polish cases, and the second path all French usage-cases (F2 does not display

usage), which indeed suggests a country pattern. However, before we discuss this in greater

detail, let us turn towards the second stage of our two-step approach and include the proximate

(i.e. local factors). Here, we run separate analyses for sufficiency for the two remote-paths and

the local conditions (preferences and capacities). Table 2 depicts the results for both models:

Table 5: Analysis of sufficiency - proximate conditions (intermediate solutions)

Model with remote path 1

(multilev*~misscheme)

Model with remote path 2

(~multilev*misscheme)

preferences capacities capacities preferences remote path 2

Raw coverage 0.822538 0.674357 0.674357 0.822538 0.385093

Unique coverage 0.207631 0.059450 0.058563 0.147294 0.059450

Consis-tency 0.965625 0.958386 0.958386 0.965625 0.861111

Explained cases DE3, PL1, IT3, PL2,

PL3, F3, IT2, SE3, UK3

DE3, F3, IT2, UK2, IT3,

PL1, PL2, PL3

DE3, F3, IT2, UK2,

IT3, PL1, PL2, PL3

DE3, PL1, IT3,

PL2, PL3, F3,

IT2, SE3, UK3

F1, F3

Solution consistency 0.967868 0.938108

Solution coverage 0.881988 0.941437

Uncovered cases F1, DE2 DE2

5 Robustness test to be completed; first results indicate sound robustness

Inconsistent cases in kind F2 F2

Source: own data

For both models, we applied – as suggested – a high threshold for consistency (0.9), and the

only simplifying assumptions concerned the presence of the two remote paths.6 As we can see,

in model 1, the remote path 1 (multilev*~misscheme) is not included in the final solution, and

the local conditions preferences and capacities turn out as two different sufficient conditions

for usage. In the second model, the remote path 2 (~multilev*misscheme) is included as a third

sufficient condition in addition to the local preferences and capacities. Overall sufficiency and

coverage scores are quite high for both models.

When we look at the unique coverage scores and the explained cases in the second model, we

can see that preferences cover by far the most usage-cases (i.e. DE3, PL1, IT3, PL2, PL3, F3,

IT2, SE3, and UK3), and the overlap with capacities and the second remote path is very high.

Capacities adds information only for UK2, and the second remote path only for F1.

Nevertheless, particularly the second remote path is still of crucial substantial interest for us,

since it points towards a country pattern: in the French cases, the local factors seem to play a

little role, while the national factors are of greater relevance. In the Polish cases – the second

country pattern identified in the remote-analysis above - , this is not as clear as for the French

cases, since all Polish cases are not only covered by the remote-path 1, but also the local

conditions preferences and capacities, so that a clear statement about the relevance of the

national scheme is not possible. For the other usage-cases (except DE2), we can clearly state

that our local factors have a greater explanatory relevance than the national ones. Usage in all

except one (DE2) unexplained cases from the remote-analysis could be explained in the

proximate-analysis by either local preferences or local capacities, or by both. Figure 1 depicts

the relationships between the different conditions in a stylized Venn-diagram, with the

national conditions shaded in grey, and the local conditions transparent.

Figure 1: Stylized Venn-diagram for sufficient national and local conditions for usage

6 Robustness test to be completed; first results indicate sound robustness

Now, when we step back from scores, numbers, and paths, and formulate our findings at a

simplifying but more general level, we can first confirm our hypothesis that local factors are of

greater relevance than national schemes on the basis of our data. Local conditions turned out

as sufficient conditions for usage for all but one cases. These cases are located in either one or

both of the transparent frames in figure one. Only F1 could not be explained by local factors

and is thus located only in the lower grey frame. In the majority of the cases, both preferences

for usage, and the capacity to do so are present. In one case, we could only observe capacities,

and in two cases only preferences – but both conditions alone are still sufficient for usage.

Against the backdrop of the consistency and coverage scores for this condition, we can state

that particularly local preferences for action, such as a strong need for financial resources, or a

politically instable situation which brings actors in an insecure position with regard to their

implementation objectives, are highly relevant for the usage of the ESF by local actors. In

addition, albeit with slightly lower relevance, local actors’ capacities to use the ESF – such as

handling the administrative burden or handling the necessary co-funding – also turned out as

a sufficient condition. We measured these local factors independently from national ones, and

economic pressure or political instability only refer to the respective local setting. Again, we

argue that this indicates that local actors primarily orient their usages alongside local

conditions.

However, as we can also see from figure 1, five cases are located in overlapping spaces of grey

and transparent frames: IT3, PL1, PL2, PL3, and F3 are all covered by both local and national

conditions. This suggests that national factors are not entirely irrelevant. Particularly in

France, a combination of a centralised system and a strong activation-scheme seems to play a

role for usage. But also a combination of a regionalised system and a weak activation-scheme

could be of relevance in Poland – but here we would clearly need some additional case-study

insights, since we do not know whether the local or the national factors play the dominant role.

Further process-tracing or other qualitative analysis could for example focus on the question

how local actors refer to national schemes, and how these schemes influence their preferences

and capacities.

Discussion and conclusion The notion of methodological nationalism is neither something new, nor are the attempts to

overcome it. However, despite some fruitful efforts in the context of the multilevel governance

literature, political scientists’ Europeanisation research so far has not achieved to depart from

a nation-centered research perspective. Still, the main analytical focus lays on the relationship

between the EU level and the domestic level, with ‘domestic’ having a clearly national (i.e.

member states) related connotation. As we argued above, this was quite natural for earlier

Europeanisation studies which were interested in the member states’ reactions to the

European integration process, but if we are interested in processes which are not explicitly

concerned with nation states, there is no reason for a nation-focused perspective.

To be sure, this does not mean to disregard the national level in empirical research – on the

contrary. As we illustrated in the paper, for Europeanisation research it is most fruitful to

include national context factors as variables in the empirical research, and thus test their real-

life relevance for the phenomena under study. This does not only provide the researcher with

a more detailed picture on her research interest, it also faces the problem of methodological

nationalism in the sense that it relieves us from a priori assumptions on the national level. In

our small-scale empirical example, we tested the conditional role of four different factors for

the usage of the ESF in subnational social and employment policies; two of them being national

context factors (i.e. the national activation schemes and the national multi-level setup of a

country) and two of them subnational (preferences and capacities of subnational actors). Our

sample included 18 different cases from six European countries, and our findings showed that

local factors indeed played a much more prevalent role than the national factors when it comes

to the usage of the ESF. As expected, we found higher strategic usage of the ESF in cases where

actors have higher preferences for usage, and good capacities to do so; in several cases

independently from the national context. However, national factors were also not entirely

irrelevant. As hypothesized based on the goodness-of-fit literature, we found that indeed a

relatively high policy misfit and low ideational misfit between the EU model and national

schemes seems to play a role for subnational Europeanisation processes.

To be sure, our analysis is very superficial and general. While we measured the subnational

factors in direct contact with the empirical data and calibrated the set of local preferences on

the basis of in-depth case knowledge, the national schemes was assessed by only taking into

account some general knowledge on the country schemes from the literature. We did not assess

how local actors refer to national schemes in their usages, and what they mean to them. For

solid statements on conditions for usage of the ESF, we would of course need to calibrate the

national scheme on a more fine-grained and adequate basis. As we mentioned above, for a

better understanding of the actual empirical role of the French and the Polish national schemes

(it was for these two countries where the national factors seemed to play role), we would need

some further in-depth analyses. However, assessing national schemes on a very general basis

is actually the standard approach of many qualitative and quantitative studies. Very often,

welfare regimes, countries, or other categories are deployed as a basis for case selection,

interpretation, or for generalisation, but their actual relevance is to some extent taken for

granted and not empirically reflected. As we outlined above, we believe that this is especially

against the backdrop of ever increasing transnationalisation processes in Europe – and hence

a probably decreasing empirical role of nation states – a conceptual fallacy which should be

overcome in future Europeanisation research.

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