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In this paper I identify whether budgets in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States are punctuated and investigate the variation in budget punctuations over time. Building on stochastic process methods, I find that budgets in all four cases exhibit mostly incremental changes punctuated by extreme shifts. In order to explain variation in budget punctuations over time, I rely on two models: partisan control of government and partisan distance of the assembly. The two models are tested using national budgetary data across all government functions for the four countries from the mid-1960s to 1989. I find that greater distance in strength and ideology among parties leads to increases in the degree of punctuations in the German and the British cases, whereas there is some evidence for the partisan control model in the American cases. In the Danish cases, partisan distance reduces the degree of budget punctuations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Europeanization, differentiated from European integration as the impact of European policies on national policies, practices, and politics, has had differing effects on EU member states, depending upon a number of independent variables. These include the constraints imposed by EU decisions in any given policy area, that is, whether the decisions demand that countries follow highly specified rules of implementation, less specified rules, suggested rules, or no rules at all. But adjustment also depends upon certain mediating factors, including countries' vulnerability to global as well as European economic pressures, their political institutional capacity to respond as necessary, the 'fit' of European policies with national policy legacies and preferences, and the discourses that influence policy preferences by changing perceptions of economic vulnerabilities and policies and thereby enhance capacity. Only by putting the decision constraints together with the mediating factors can we adequately explain countries' differential policy outcomes, whether inertia, absorption, or transformation. To illustrate, this paper considers three countries, France, Britain, and Germany, across a representative range of economic policy areas, including monetary policy, financial services, telecommunications, electricity, transport, and mutual recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]