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This paper argues that the patterns of competition policy convergence in the European Union?s member states challenge existing formulations of the Europeanization process and specifically the notion that the likelihood of policy harmonization is a function of the preexisting compatibility or ?fit? between national and supranational policies. In the case of antitrust, the member states in which the existing arrangements were least compatible with the European policy were generally the first to adopt the approach of the European Commission?s competition enforcement regime, while the United Kingdom, in spite of having an established ? albeit dysfunctional? competition regime since the late 1940s, was the last of the medium and large-sized members to move toward harmonizing its antitrust rules. The paper concludes that the preexistence of an antitrust system actually made harmonization more difficult for Britain. It maintains that the unique homegrown policy and corresponding enforcement institutions allowed British industrial interests to develop preferences for specific orientations of the domestic system, which stymied attempts to Europeanize the British policy until a confluence of internal and external alignment pressures reshaped and redirected those preferences towards a more Europeanized approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews the last year in British politics with an emphasis on government, complementing Anthony King’s presentation on politics. It covers the tense relationship between Prime Minister Blair and Chancellor Brown; the Butler Report; the role of the Bank of England in economic policy-making; the effective delivery of public services, especially health; and the role of Britain in the EU. It concludes by suggesting that there is a new upsurge of populist opposition to the political class in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue in this paper that Protestantism is an important cause of Euroskepticism in Britain, Scandinavia, and to some extent the Netherlands. Protestants, in contrast to Catholics, had few tools for uniting the Continent. Their Christian universalism was real, but invisible. Their churches were arms of their individual states and lacked a transnational structure. Their few confessional parties were small, parochial and lacked a common European political agenda. And Protestant culture proved inadequate to generate a community spirit across national boundaries and between political leaders. But aside from their lack of tools, Protestant nations simply did not want to meld their states into anything more than a European economic cooperation zone. To the Protestant mind, the state was not the cause of Europe?s tragedies. Individual states were the bulwarks against coercive, homogenizing forces, whether they issued from the Vatican, Napoleonic Paris, Hollywood?or Brussels. States had saved what was most important in the sixteenth century; states could still be trusted to save what was most important in the twentieth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Britain has frequently been portrayed as a ?reluctant European?. But does this mean that it is also a reluctant supranationalist? This question is explored: (a) by contextualising the type of supranationalism experienced within the European Union by reference to a range of other examples; (b) by examining historic British attitudes to supranationalism, and British experience of supranational entities on rather different lines from that of the EU. In the process issues of sovereignty, management and accountability within supranational entities are also considered. The paper concludes by arguing that Britain is not a reluctant supranationalist. The key variable is seen as the way in which sovereignty is handled ambiguously in the EU, whilst it is argued that supranationalism in the British imagination and experience has used ambiguity for other purposes, but the locus of sovereignty has been clear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europeanization has brought radical change to the governance practices of all EU member-states, which have in turn clashed with traditional ideas about democracy. These changes in practices and challenges to ideas have profoundly affected all EU member states, but some more so than others, largely as a question of ?institutional fit.? The EU, as a ?compound? supranational polity in which governing activity is highly diffused through multiple authorities, has been more disruptive to ?simple? national polities such as Britain and France, in which governing activity has traditionally been channeled through a single authority, than to ?compound? national polities such as Germany and Italy, in which it has traditionally also been diffused through multiple authorities. The main problem for EU member-states, however, is not so much that practices have changed and that ideas have been challenged than that national leaders have generally failed to come up with new ideas and discourse that reflect the new Europeanized realities. But here, too, institutional differences matter, although to differing effect. Simple polities have greater potential for speaking to changes in practices and challenges to ideas, were they to so choose, because their concentration of authority ensures them a more elaborate ?communicative? discourse to the general public, in which they are better able to speak in one voice and to convey a single message than more compound national polities, let alone the EU, given the number of potentially authoritative voices with differing messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]