More recent trends in European Union studies have seen the theoretical focus shift away from the historical process of integration per se and toward the development of new and distinctive forms of governance within the EU, as well as a renewed focus on the nation-state and how it is shaped by the processes of European integration and governance, or “Europeanization.” In this effort to “bring the nation-state back in” to the field of EU studies, the institutions of the state are not assumed to be either disappearing or unchanging, but instead malleable to different degrees under the pressure of external forces for adaptation and change. Under these conditions, a new wave of comparative scholarship has sought to determine the extent to which institutional structures in various EU member states have converged, or possibly even diverged, in response to the common pressures of membership in an increasingly integrated polity.

The two books under review belong to this emerging field of Europeanization studies, and both make an important contribution to it. Transforming Europe is a compilation of case studies, most examining the impact of specific policy decisions at the EU level (gender equality, telecommunications, Economic and Monetary Union, environmental policy, etc.) on the domestic institutional structures of selected member states. Exceptions to this policy-oriented focus are the chapter on “Europeanization and Territorial Institutional Change” (Tanja A. Börzel), which examines changing patterns of interaction between central (national) and regional governments in Germany and Spain, and those by Jeffrey T. Checkel and Thomas Risse, which, respectively, examine the impact of Europeanization on citizenship norms and perceptions of national collective identity. The collected case studies are framed by introductory and concluding chapters written by the editors that clearly establish the theoretical and analytical framework for the study and draw out some general conclusions from the empirical chapters. The overall approach is a uniform and disciplined one, reflecting the book's development through a series of workshops involving the individual authors over a period of several years.

The authors in Transforming Europe adopt a three-step approach for examining the specific empirical cases: First, the Europeanization process relevant to the specific case is identified. Second, the “goodness of fit” between EU policy requirements and national institutions and practices is examined, to determine the extent of “adaptational pressures” on domestic structures. And third, the domestic institutional factors and actors facilitating or impeding change are analyzed, with five main mediating factors identified (multiple veto points, mediating formal institutions, political and organizational cultures, differential empowerment of actors, and learning). Following this approach, the book's editors conclude that there is only limited evidence in the cases studied of structural convergence across member states, with much persistence of nationally specific arrangements and even some divergence.

Much the same conclusion is reached by Christoph Knill in The Europeanisation of National Administrations which is essentially an extended and more detailed treatment of his chapter in Transforming Europe on the application of EU environmental policies in Germany and Britain. Utilizing a cross-policy (five different pieces of EU environmental legislation) and cross-country approach, Knill finds a similar mixed pattern of convergence, persistence, and divergence in administrative structures and styles in response to Europeanization. The key to explaining domestic change, he argues, is the extent to which EU policies challenge core national administrative traditions. If adaptation to EU norms can take place within established traditions, then it is likely to happen, although the resort to an agency-based perspective focusing on the interests and strategies of domestic actors is necessary to explain how and why. If EU policy prescriptions clash with core administrative traditions, however, then change is less likely to occur, although Knill leaves open the possibility for the adaptation of macro-level administrative arrangements in countries with a high reform capacity, as demonstrated by Britain in his study.

Knill takes issue with Maria Green Cowles and Risse in their concluding chapter of Transforming Europe however, when it comes to the theoretical explanation of domestic institutional change. While Cowles and Risse identify adaptive pressure stemming from the “misfit” between European policies and national institutional structures as the necessary condition for domestic change, Knill argues for a more differentiated perspective that gives greater weight to agency-based, as opposed to institution-based, approaches for explaining change. Which is appropriate, he argues, depends on the specific mechanism of Europeanization at work in a particular policy case, whether the explicit prescription of an institutional model for domestic compliance or, less directly, the alteration of domestic opportunity structures or of the beliefs and expectations of domestic actors. According to Knill, “The institution-based concept of adaptive pressure can hardly be applied in order to account for different patterns of administrative change in cases where European policies prescribe no concrete model for institutional compliance” (p. 227), but instead rely on less direct means of exerting pressure for change.

With their common stress on limited convergence and the diversity of national responses to adaptational pressures, both books make the important point that there is no single “European model” for EU member states to converge on. Not only are the domestic institutional arrangements and interest structures that mediate these pressures different, but the extent and nature of adaptational pressures also vary according to specific policy areas and situations. The findings of these books thus seem to cast doubt on the expectations of previous scholarship (e.g., Peter Katzenstein, ed. Tamed Power 1997; Simon Bulmer and William Paterson, The Federal Republic of Germany and the European Community 1987) that such a model existed, and was exemplified by the more decentralized and “semisovereign” governmental system of the Federal Republic of Germany. According to this widely held view, the German model of dispersed and diffusely exercised power conferred certain advantages for surviving and thriving within the emerging EU multilevel polity, and other member states would find themselves under strong adaptive and competitive pressures to conform to it. However, both books examine cases in which the degree of misfit between German structures and EU policy requirements was initially quite high, as well as cases in which German administrative structures and practices imposed problems for successful adaptation.

Both books are also similarly vulnerable to criticism of their conceptualization and understanding of the key variable of Europeanization. In both, the focus is overwhelmingly on formal EU policy decisions and prescriptions as the origin of Europeanization pressure (although Knill does distinguish between the different mechanisms by which Europeanization pressure can be brought to bear). This conceptualization of the term ignores other possible ways in which Europeanization can occur, with consequences for domestic institutions and politics, for instance, through the interaction of national and supranational actors within the EU context, and through the resulting diffusion of ideas and processes of mutual learning. Through such “constructivist” means, and not simply the pressure of formal policy decisions and requirements, the interests and perspectives of governmental and nongovernmental actors can be transformed, with implications for domestic institutions and structures. To be fair, the impact of Europeanization processes emanating from sources other than formal policy decisions or norms are considered by some of the authors in Transforming Europe especially in the chapter by Risse on the evolution of national collective identities, and Knill is willing to consider the “weaker” forms of adaptive pressure exerted by EU policies through their impact on the beliefs and expectations of domestic actors. But by and large, the conceptual understanding of Europeanization that is utilized in both books is a rather formalistic, policy-oriented one.

It is also a fairly static one. In both books, the process of Europeanization flows only one way, from the supranational to the national or domestic level. This ignores the reality that Europeanizing norms and decisions themselves often originate at the national level and are then transposed into EU policy decisions. As Knill suggests in his book's discussion of EU environmental legislation, for instance, the adaptational pressures on domestic administrative structures vary in accordance with the capacity of national governments to assert their own preferences at the EU level. When able to do so, national governments obviously reduce their own adaptational needs and shift the burden of adaptive compliance onto others in specific policy areas. Thus, Europeanization can be the diffusion of national norms and preferences in particular instances; but it is definitely not just a one-way street. However, as Cowles and Risse note, “Europeanization itself is a relatively recent phenomenon and continues to evolve” (p. 234). The same could be said of our understanding and use of this concept.