Assessing Europeanization through Policy Frame Analysis: Impact of EU Soft Law on Dutch Childcare Policy

The book examines the capacity of the EU to shape the process of policy-making at the national level. It studies the impact of the Open Method of Coordination (the European Employment Strategy) on the childcare policy outcomes and discourses of the Netherlands. The applied analytical strategy - composed of the theory of discursive institutionalism coupled with the method of policy frame analysis - provides a thorough account of the evolution of the Dutch childcare policy and of the timing of the changes it underwent. Next to an analysis of the aggregate discursive dynamics of the policy field, the book provides also an insight into the framing activities of the individual policy actors (political parties and the Dutch social partners). Thus, it comprehensively reconstructs the political play in this sector of Dutch policy-making for the last fifty years. The unique contribution of the book is in the presentation of an accessible and rigorous research method to examine the domestic influence of international organizations via systematic tracing of the framing processes and discursive shifts at the international as well as at the national level of governance.