"What do subnational offices think they are doing in Brussels?"

Are subnational offices decorative or are they substantively important? What do subnational governments hope to gain by funding offices in Brussels? Are they listening posts to detect upcoming legislation? Are they means to situate particular regions and localities in European networks of similar (or different) actors? Finally, and for our purpose most importantly, are they intended to influence policy making in the EU? Answers to these questions promise to deepen our understanding of the politics of multi-level governance in the EU. We know that supranational institutions exert real authority in EU decision making, and we also know that the authority of subnational governments has grown to significant proportions across several EU countries. We know far less, however, about how subnational and supranational actors connect

Implementing Multilateral Environmental Agreements: An Analysis of EU Directives

While a number of different theoretical models have been advanced to explain why states implement-or, indeed, do not implement-multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), very little empirical work has been undertaken to validate their predictions. With a view to narrowing this gap, the present article adopts a large-N, econometric approach to test the explanatory power of four distinct models of compliance-domestic adjustment, reputational, constructivist and managerial-in the context of European Union (EU) environmental policy. Using data on the number of ofıcial infringements received by 15 member states for non-implementation of environmental directives over the period 1979-2000, we ınd that all four models make a statistically signiıcant contribution to explaining spatio-temporal differences in legal implementation. Thus, our results suggest that the implementation of MEAs is shaped by a combination of rational calculations of domestic compliance costs and reputational damage, domestically institutionalized normative obligations, and legal and political constraints. We conclude by suggesting a greater need for multi-causal theoretical models of supranational legal compliance. (c) 2007 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.