Does institutional misfit trigger customisation instead of non-compliance?

Abstract

This article analyses the role of institutional misfit in why member states customise European Union (EU) renewable energy (RE) policies when implementing them. Institutional misfit theory posits that member states only adjust to EU policies when the adaptation pressure remains moderate and national actors’ policy preferences align. Conversely, this article tests the argument that member states manage institutional misfit by adjusting – customising – EU policies, that is, through vertical EU policy change rather than domestic change. Using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, the article compares the customisation of EU Directive 2009/28/EC in Austria, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Surprisingly, results suggest that institutional misfit is not a necessary condition for customised implementation. Instead, when high institutional fit meets high salience, member states may issue substantively more ambitious policies than the EU requires. Conversely, when high institutional fit meets low salience, member states have no impetus to customise EU rules.

Keywords:

• European energy policy
• Europeanisation
• customisation
• implementation
• institutional misfit

Acknowledgement

We thank all discussants and referees for their helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Our sample does not include cases of outright legal non-compliance. However, the European Commission initiated infringement proceedings against member states that referred to the non-notification of national implementing acts as well as more detailed, sector-specific provisions like electricity grid regulation; moreover, practical compliance with mandatory RE targets for 2020 was quite varied among member states (Brendler 2022).

2 For the online appendix and replication data, see https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/BEOJSA.

3 For another example of the temporal component playing a decisive role in customized implementation (but working in the opposite direction), see Table A2 (online appendix).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Viktoria Brendler

Viktoria Brendler is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Osnabrück and the inter-university Research Institute Social Cohesion (RISC). Her research interests include European Integration, European and national energy policy and the governance of ecological transitions. [[email protected]]

Eva Thomann

Eva Thomann is a Professor of Public Administration at the University of Konstanz. Her research on multi-level and street-level policy implementation appeared amongst others in the Journal of European Public Policy, the European Journal of Political Research, Governance, and the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. Her book on the customisation of EU food safety policies (2019, Palgrave) won the best book award of the International Public Policy Association. [[email protected]]