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The paper deals with the conflicts associated with the so-called 'Dieselgate' affair. It explains the interaction of civil society, law firms and political actors which reshapes the legal systems in Europe. Once the federal government in Germany had decided that European car owners should not get any kind of financial compensation, a transnational coalition of consumer organizations and law firms successfully initiated a legal mobilization campaign to counteract the political decision. As a consequence, collective litigation rights were strengthened in Germany and at the European level. Theoretically, the paper refers to the literature on adversarial legalism. Whether this judicialized style of conflict resolution is spreading to Europe ('Eurolegalism') has been a hotly debated topic in political science. Our main argument is that the Dieselgate case is a catalyst event to foster the transformation process towards 'Eurolegalism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideas are at their most powerful as an explanatory variable when they lead agents to go against any broadly reasonable interpretation of their material self-interests. They become even more intriguing when they are instrumental in actuallycausinga crisis, in which actors undercut their own stated goals and then continue to make matters worse by sticking to those same ideas, even in the light of clear evidence that the policies they inspire are not working. This contribution shows two dynamics between power and ideas to explain Germany's behavior during the euro crisis. The first dynamic examines the changing macroeconomic consensus on how to conduct monetary and fiscal policy that governed the euro from 1999 to 2012. The second dynamic shows how a strict adherence to Germany's ordoliberal ideas of budgetary rules and structural reform turned a containable Greek fiscal problem into a full-blown systemic sovereign debt crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, I argue that the European financial market integration cannot be understood without the European Commission's gradual enforcement of supranational competition law for financial services. The conflict over the liberalization of public banks in Germany demonstrates how the Directorate General for Competition (DG COMP) deepened financial market integration through legal proceedings without the participation of the Council of Ministers. How could DG COMP prevail over the fierce resistance of Germany even though member states never intended for European law to have enough leverage to alter core elements of national financial systems? The article focuses on DG COMP's capacities for strategic action. DG COMP was able to enforce European competition rules for financial services, skilfully combining its legal competences with political strategies. The case illustrates that the regulatory integration of financial services in the EU is much more driven by supranational institutions than assumed by the bulk of the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We miss the significance of the advent of the Euro for European political, economic, and social order if we ignore its identity dimension. Money has always been a symbolic marker in nation-building efforts and is strongly related to collective national identities. This article makes two interrelated causal claims. On the one hand, the introduction of Euro bills and coins has already begun to affect Euroland citizens' identification with the EU and Europe in general. The Euro makes Europe real and reifies it as a political order, since it provides a visible link from Brussels to the daily lives of the citizens. On the other hand, existing collective identities pertaining to the nation-state explain to a large degree how comfortable people feel using and dealing with the Euro. The variation in attitudes between the Italian enthusiasm for the Euro, the German ambivalence about it, and the widespread British opposition can be accounted for by the differences in collective understandings and identification patterns with the nation-state and Europe. In sum, the causal arrows from the Euro to collective identities run both ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do European policies affect national policy-making patterns and problem-solving capacity, and to what extent do national policy-makers seek to influence European politics? In particular, what impact does European road haulage policy have on national policy within the context of the Single Market Programme (SMP)? How can the domestic policy response of four member states - Britain, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy - be explained with respect to the national policy background, problem-solving approach, policy instruments, and patterns of interest intermediation? While the policy responses of Britain and the Netherlands reveal congruence and confirmation, those of Germany and Italy indicate respectively change and resistance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employers' associations, and their influence on the economic transformation in Eastern Europe, have been largely ignored. In spring 1994, the Hungarian Parliament passed a law on Chambers which will render three new Chambers the supreme regulating source for all entrepreneurs' licensing, training and economic actions; membership will be compulsory. Drafters of the law claim the Austrian/German system as a model, but it is more reminiscent of the socialist structure of authoritarian/state corporatism. What prompted this development in a society with long exposure to market forces? As old normative patterns disintegrate, associations motivated by financial survival compete with the state for the power to dictate new norms. Co-evolutionary theory demonstrates the complex interaction of actors at the macro, organizational and micro levels of this competition and how it is translated into policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two perspectives dominate in the debate on European integration policy in the unified Germany. The first focuses on domestic inter-institutional tensions and ideological inhibitions that restrict German leadership in the European Union. By contrast, the second highlights the dominant position of the German economy and the weakening of external constraints in the wake of unification. Both perspectives point to important aspects of integration policy, but neither takes sufficient account of the Europeanization of the German state. Europeanization suggests that over the past decades Germany's key public institutions have become progressively programmed for integration. This has implications for analysing German policy in the run-up to the 1996 Intergovernmental Conference. Specifically, Europeanization calls into question the distinction between mainstream domestic policy and integration policy; the idea of a national interest that exists prior to, and independently of, an interest in integration; and the notion of external constraints on leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]