Adapting to Brussels: Europeanization of the core executive and the ‘strategic-projection’ model

Abstract: This paper aims to contribute towards our understanding of Europeanization within national core executives. It is critical of conventional accounts which focus solely on the 'reception' of adaptational requirements from the European Union (EU). Instead it considers how member states may adapt at home for the purpose of 'projection': the attempt to maximize the uploading of national policy preferences into the EU policy-making arena. The paper proposes an innovative 'strategic-projection' model which conceptualizes Europeanization as operating through three distinctive modes - strategic adaptation, supranational learning and administrative optimization. Illustrated using examples of adaptation within the UK and Irish central governments between 1997 and 2007, together with evidence drawn from studies in other member states, European integration can be seen to exert largely hidden, but potentially transformative, pressures for change and convergence within national core executives.