John Bachtler and Carlos Mendez have published a new article in the May 2017 volume of the Journal of Common Market Studies. It makes the case for a multi-dimensional approach to EU compliance research and provides the first cross-national assessment of financial compliance in EU Cohesion policy.
The analysis finds strong support for the impact of administrative capacity on cross-national compliance patterns and some evidence for the role of goodness-of-fit. Contrary to expectations, regional autonomy is not associated with compliance in this critical case of EU multi-level governance.
The main policy lessons are the need to strengthen administrative capacity and reduce regulatory complexity to improve compliance performance
