This article analyses the manner in which the parliaments of France, the UK and Greece have reacted to the process of European integration. It is argued that their reaction displays an incremental logic marked by slow, small and marginal changes based on existing institutional repertoires. In all three cases parliaments have used familiar mechanisms and procedures which they have modified only marginally. This reaction was path dependent, i.e. it was consistent with long-established patterns reflecting the subordinate position of these parliaments within national polities.

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ABSTRACT:Greece is frequently construed as a laggard in the implementation of EU policy. This paper examines the key characteristics of the Greek central government and links them to patterns of policy implementation. However, since governments, like all organisations, have the capacity to learn.Thus, implementation patterns change over time. Observations and inferences from experience matched by the acquisition of new techniques and critical events help improve the implementation of EU public policy. This is demonstrated by means of a case study (public procurement policy).

This article provides a norms-based account of institutional change. It compares two cases of attempted change, one successful and one unsuccessful. The argument is advanced that norm-based change occurs when the norms are congruent with the perceived interests of the actors who have the power to take the decision. Norms affect the process of institutional change not only by providing legitimacy to some forms of political action, but also by shaping the actors' perception of their interests as well their strategies. In that sense, norms, it is argued, help political actors combine Max Weber's zweckrational (goal-orientated) and wertrational (value-orientated) categories of behaviour. Empirical evidence drawn from the context of the evolving European Union supports this argument.

Institutions are more than mere agents of their creators. They produce unintended consequences by means of their autonomous action. In the context of the European Union (EU), supranational institutions, such as the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the European Commission produce such consequences, even in areas where no direct or overt transfer of powers has taken place, while performing the roles assigned to them by their creators. Using a case study regarding the protection of the free movement of workers, this article demonstrates that supranational institutions circumscribe the use of executive discretion by national governements by blurring the line between ‘safe’ and other issues, that is, the line that distinguishes between the ‘two faces of power’.