Completing the single market in financial services: an advocacy coalition framework

The paper applies a revised version of the ‘advocacy coalition framework’, modified so as to incorporate the role of material interests as well as ideas, to the empirical record of the policy-making processes of key pieces of legislation dealing with securities trading in the EU and which were necessary to the completion of the single market in financial services. It is argued that in almost all the Lamfalussy directives, the main (but, by no means, the only) line of division was between a ‘Northern
European’ coalition and a ‘Southern European’ one. This was due to differences in the national regulatory frameworks, the configuration of national financial systems
and their competitiveness (hence, ‘interests’). However, the tension was also due to different belief systems (hence, ‘ideas’) about financial services regulation.