The process of Europeanization - the case of Norway and the Internal Energy Market

This paper approaches the study of national adaptation to the EU as a process involving institutional constraints and actors’ interactions across levels of decision-making. The argument is that domestic adaptation to the EU is a matter of ability and willingness to conduct integrative political bargaining rather than a matter of matching institutional structures. The paper provides an empirical case study of the Norwegian adaptation to EU energy sector legislation, denoted as the Internal Energy Market (IEM). The various outcomes to different directives in this sector indicate that the structural feature of a particular state or policy sector is inadequate to fully explain variations in national and domestic adaptation to EU legislation. Thus, the paper focuses on characteristics of the process of adaptation itself, focusing on issues like affectedness, policy similarities, bargaining opportunities, and potential for arbitration.