This special issue about sectoral governance in the shadow of hierarchy focuses on two sets of questions. Firstly, do new modes of sectoral governance in themselves contribute to the efficacy of policymaking or do they require the shadow of hierarchy, i.e. legislative and executive decisions, in order to deal effectively with the problems they are supposed to solve? And, secondly, what are the institutional links between sectoral governance and territorially bounded democratic governments? How do different links contribute to the efficacy of policymaking and how do they change over time? Is there a retreat of government from policymaking and a corresponding increase of sectoral governance, or just the opposite?

While much has been written about the impact of European Union (EU) regulatory policy, most of the scholarly work is concerned with developments at the European level. Only recently have attempts been made to fill this gap. Although there is a growing number of studies explicitly concerned with the Europeanization of domestic institutions, we still lack consistent and systematic concepts to account for the varying patterns of institutional adjustment across countries and policy sectors. The aim of this article is to provide a more comprehensive framework for explaining the domestic impact of European policy making. We make an analytical distinction between three mechanisms of Europeanization -institutional compliance, changing domestic opportunity structures, and framing domestic beliefs and expectations -each of which requires a distinctive approach in order to explain its domestic impact. We argue that it is the particular type of Europeanization mechanism involved rather than the policy area itself that is the most important factor to be considered when investigating the domestic impact of varying European policies.

While much has been written about the European Union (EU), most of the scholarly work is concerned with the developments at the European level. It is only recently, that we observe increasing attempts to address this research deficit. Notwithstanding a growing number of studies explicitly concerned with the Europeanization of domestic institutions, we still lack consistent and systematic concepts to account for the varying patterns of institutional adjustment across countries and policy sectors. In order to arrive at a more general understanding of the domestic impact of European policy-making, this paper provides a more comprehensive explanatory framework. We distinguish three types of European policy-making, namely positive integration, negative integration, and what might be called "framing" integration, which are characterized by distinctive mechanisms of Europeanization, and hence require distinctive approaches in order to explain their domestic impact. We argue that it is the specific mechanism, rather than the nominal category of the policy area that is the most important factor to be taken into account when investigating the domestic impact of varying European policies..XU]IDVVXQJ In den letzten Jahren hat die Zahl derjenigen Studien deutlich zugenommen, die sich explizit mit der Frage beschäftigt, welche Veränderungen nationale Strukturen unter dem Einfluß der europäischen Integration erfahren. Gleichwohl hat sich bisher noch keine einheitliche Interpretation über sektorale oder nationale Anpassungsmuster an europäische Politiken herausentwickelt. Um zu einem umfassenderen Verständnis der Integrationswirkungen zu gelangen, wird im vorliegenden Papier ein sparsamer analytischer Rahmen entwickelt. Dazu werden zunächst drei Typen europäischer Politikgestaltung unterschieden, nämlich positive Integration, negative Integration und 'framing integration'. Diese Typen, so die Argumentation, sind von unterschiedlichen Mechanismen der Europäisierung geprägt. Eben diese spezifischen Mechanismen der Europäisierung und nicht der nominale Typus einer Politik setzen charakteristische Dynamiken auf der natioalen Ebene in Gang. Soll die spezifische Wirkung einer europäischen Politik auf die nationale Ebene verstanden werden, so bedarf es daher einer entsprechenden Analyse dieser Mechanismen und der von ihnen ausgehenden Impulse auf der nationalen Ebene.

This article investigates the implications of political and economic internationalization on patterns of governance from a statecentric perspective. The actual patterns of governance in internationalized environments can be related to the respective governance capacity of public and private actors, which hinges in turn on the strategic constellation underlying the provision of a public good. The specific strategic constellation varies in three dimensions: the congruence between the scope of the underlying problem and the organizational structures of the related actors, the type of problem, and the institutional context, all of which involve a number of factors. With this concept in mind, we identify four ideal-typed patterns of governance, enabled by different configurations of public and private capacities to formally or factually influence in various ways the social, economic, and political processes by which certain goods are provided.

Contrary to the wide majority of studies that try to characterise EU external governance by looking at the macro structures of association relations, our comparative analysis shows that overarching foreign policy initiatives such as the EEA, Swiss-EU Bilateralism or the ENP have little impact on the modes how the EU seeks to expand its policy boundaries in individual sectors. In contrast, modes of external governance follow sectoral dynamics which are astonishingly stable across countries. These findings highlight the importance of institutional path-dependencies in projecting governance modes from the internal to the external constellation, and question the capacity to steer these functionalist patterns of external governance through rationally planned foreign policy initiatives.