government receives disproportionate information about those aspects of implementation
that most concern constituents. The interest groups involved may not complain about
failure to implement laws they were opposed to in the first place. In that case, the
government would not have full information about actions taken to implement the laws it
passes. McCubbins and Schwartz (1984) contend that in adopting fire alarm oversight,
legislators sacrifice the control of police patrol oversight in order to save the costs of
gathering information.
Fire alarm oversight hinders resolution of infringement cases for two reasons. First,
fire alarm oversight limits the information about implementation available to the
government. To resolve infringements, Member State governments must comply with
the policy guidelines laid down by the Commission in the letter of notice and/or reasoned
opinion. However, fire alarm oversight restricts the information about implementation to
complaints by domestic constituents. To the extent that the domestic constituents’ policy
preferences differ from those of the Commission, the fire alarm oversight mechanisms
will hinder the government’s efforts to resolve the infringement case. The government
may find itself unable to identify implementation problems until the infringement
progresses to the next stage.
Second, fire alarm oversight’s emphasis on cooperation between the government
and domestic constituents increases the number of veto points as defined in the historical
institutional approach. Fire alarm mechanisms have the problem that police patrol
oversight avoids. Fire alarm oversight establishes a multiple veto point structure.
Domestic constituents opposed to EU policy can use their privileged position in the
oversight structure to disrupt implementation. Under police patrol oversight, resolution
of infringement cases is concentrated in the hands of the governments who are subject to
Convention