Tracing the national mandate: Administrative Europeanisation made in Denmark

The article analyses the Europeanisation of the Danish national administration. The article offers a revision of the standard image of Danish adaptation to EU membership as being highly centralized and formalized. Rather, the Danish experience involves substantial polity change in terms of new institutions and procedures as well as a change in the overall approach to the EU. Whereas the initial response to membership favoured a strategy for polity adaptation based on centralization – vertical coordination and international bargaining framed by a discourse on sovereignty over a strategy emphasizing the importance of decentralization, horizontal coordination and transnational negotiation – the latter has gradually become much more influential. The analysis suggests two general conclusions relevant to the debate on Europeanisation and administrative change. First, it is argued that Europeanisation can in fact lead to substantial polity change, which makes the tendency to focus on policy change in Europeanisation studies somewhat one-sided and premature. Secondly, it is argued that the particular mechanisms involved in polity change have not yet received due attention within the Europeanisation debate.