This essay takes stock of the literature on how European Union policies are being put into practice by the member states. It first provides an overview of the historical evolution of the field. After a relatively late start in the mid-1980s, the field has meanwhile developed into one of the...

Recent debates about the problem-solving capacity of supranational governance within the EU form the background of this paper, which explores the causal conditions for correct and timely transposition of EU directives. In this context, some scholars have pointed to the degree of fit or misfit...

Recently, political science has seen an intense debate about the phenomenon of “governance”. The aim of this paper is to clarify the basic concepts that are at the heart of this debate, notably “governance” and “modes of governance”. It argues that most contributions share a common...