The Importance of Small Differences - European Integration and Road Haulage Associations in Germany and the Netherlands (Paperback)

The book raises the question of how European integration influences interest groups' activities in Germany and the Netherlands. Theoretically, the study links up with the renewed interest in international sources of domestic politics and combines different fields, such as organisational analysis and institutionalist approaches, international relations theory and sectoral economic governance. Empirically, the book offers a detailed analysis of the road haulage sector; a sector of high strategic and symbolic importance for economic internationalisation which has only recently become the subject of Europeanisation. A comparative research design helps to grasp the differential consequences that European integration generates in the two countries.With a focus on the micropolitics of asscociations the study reveals how the internal mechanisms of associations led to different patterns of adjustment to the Europeanised political and economic environment in Germany and the Netherlands. The importance of these different patterns of adjustment lies in the influence they have on the nature of public-private interactions in the sector. Hence, the study not only provides empirical results on the differential impact of European integration, but also on its consequences for domestic (and European) politics and policies.