The Challenge to Unite Neighboring Approaches -- National Parliaments and Public Administrations in Europeanization Research

This article presents a critical overview of the state of research on the Europeanization of national parliaments and executives. We start from the assumption that patterns of governance as well as developments relevant to democratic theory can only be grasped comprehensively if parliamentary studies and research on public administrations are interlinked. Even though both strands of research have witnessed considerable empirical progress over the last decade, most studies still limit themselves either on the parliamentary or on the administrative side. Considering these "traditional" approaches, we review some of the most important outcomes of research on the Europeanization of national parliaments and administrations in a first step. In a second step, we discuss four "blind spots", which have so far remained unaddressed in most research agendas: the inclusion of actor-centered variables, executive-legislative interactions, policy-specific comparisons as well as the analysis of different parliamentary functions. We argue that eliminating these blind spots can lead to a deeper understanding of governance patterns in the EU multilevel system and conclude with calling for developing a comprehensive research agenda which takes into account these gaps. Adapted from the source document.