Mixing Methods: A Nested Analysis of EU Member State Transposition Patterns

Abstract: European compliance research has benefited greatly from both quantitative and qualitative studies. Scholars have raised our awareness of potential country, policy sector and Directive-specific compliance patterns, while drawing on very different samples of transposition and infringement data as well as institutional and preference-driven explanations for the observed trends. In our nested analysis of transposition timeliness across nine member states and 1192 directives, we critically assess the fit of our event history model as well as explicit patterns among countryvs. sector-specific trends. We then discuss the relative position of existing case studies within the larger sample based on their deviance and consider the extent to which member state transposition patterns can be generalized or remain individual, Directive-specific phenomena.