This paper summarises the main theoretical findings of a large-scale qualitative project on the transposition, enforcement and application of six EU labour law Directives in fifteen member states. Focusing on the transposition stage, our argument starts from a theoretical puzzle: When confronting the empirical results from our 91 cases with the various hypotheses that we derived from the literature, it turns out that all causal conditions suggested by existing theories, and even two of the most prominent hypotheses (on misfit and veto players), have at best rather weak explanatory power. On closer inspection, our qualitative studies show that even their basic rationale does not hold in some groups of countries. As a solution, we offer a typology of three worlds of compliance within the fifteen EU member states covered by our study, each of which is characterised by an ideal-typical transposition style: a 'world of law observance', a 'world of domestic politics', and a 'world of neglect'. This typology provides the key to understanding when and how individual theoretical propositions are relevant.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by European University Institute (EUI), Robert Schuman Centre of Advanced Studies (RSCAS) in its series EUI-RSCAS Working Papers with number
22.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: