The power of norms in the transposition of EU directives

Transposition research provides an excellent opportunity to bring new data to bear on two of the most dominant theoretical approaches to European Union studies: rational choice institutionalism and sociological institutionalism. Yet the goal of comparable testing is hampered by the underspecified nature of the sociological perspective. This paper takes some steps towards identifying and operationalising a sociological explanation of the transposition of EU directives. Examining an array of alternatives, we single out an approach that focuses on the transmission of norms as a way to explain transposition delay and content changes, and on persuasion to help explain norm change over time. To probe the validity of our explanation, we apply it to a case study of the transposition of two anti-discrimination directives from 2000 in Slovakia. In short, our paper aims to move forward the search for a testable sociological framework in EU studies, while offering an operational approach to studying the process of transposing EU directives.