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This chapter focuses on the contributions of German scholars to two of the three main research questions that have defined EU studies. Leaving aside the debate on the drivers of European integration, i.e. European integration theory, we will discuss the «governance turn» Fritz Scharpf, Beate Kohler-Koch, Arthur Benz, Ingeborg Tömmel and others promoted in studying EU institutions as well as the more policy-oriented approaches by Adrienne Héritier and again Fritz Scharpf and their students. We will then address the ever-growing literature on Europeanization on how EU policies, institutions and political processes have been affecting the domestic structures of member states, membership candidates, as well as neighborhood and third countries. In this context, German scholars also contributed to EU studies in what could be coined in methodological rather than substantial terms. Whereas Thomas König, Gerald Schneider, and others promoted the application of quantitative approaches, scientists like Bernhard Ebbinghaus and Markus Haverland dealt with general questions on research designs like case selection and causal inference. Finally, we will also discuss German contributions to diffusion research. The European Union as a most likely case for the diffusion of policies has attracted considerable attention by scholars dealing with the question of when and how policies spread across time and space. So it comes as no surprise that EU studies as well as diffusion research mutually benefitted from each other. In this regard, German scientists like Katharina Holzinger, Christoph Knill, Tanja Börzel, Thomas Plümper, Thomas Risse and others played a prominent role, too.
Mechanism-based thinking on policy diffusion. A review of current approaches in political science
(2011)
Despite theoretical and methodological progress in what is now coined as the third generation of diffusion studies, explicitly dealing with the causal mechanisms underlying diffusion processes and comparatively analyzing them is only of recent date. As a matter of fact, diffusion research has ended up in a diverse and often unconnected array of theoretical assumptions relying both on rational as well as constructivist reasoning – a circumstance calling for more theoretical coherence and consistency. Against this backdrop, this paper reviews and streamlines diffusion literature in political science. Diffusion mechanisms largely cluster around two causal arguments determining the desires and preferences of actors for choosing alternative policies. First, existing diffusion mechanisms accounts can be grouped according to the rationality for policy adoption, this means that government behavior is based on the instrumental considerations of actors or on constructivist arguments like norms and rule-driven actors. Second, diffusion mechanisms can either directly impact on the beliefs of actors or they might influence the structural conditions for decision-making. Following this logic, four basic diffusion mechanisms can be identified in mechanism-based thinking on policy diffusion: emulation, socialization, learning, and externalities.