Governance 'to go': Domestic actors, institutions and the boundaries of the possible

How to 'bring Europe closer to the people' has long been a preoccupation of the policy-maker at the EU level and has recently been restated as a goal of the member governments in the Treaty of Nice. Currently, the Commission is addressing this issue through the White Paper on European Governance. He re, it is argued that the focus on 'governance' as a strategy for inclusion was ill founded and underestimated the likely conflict with existing 'gove rnance' regimes at the domestic level. Moreover, the pursuit of 'heroic' Eu ropeanism with a concomitant emergence of a sense of 'Europeanness' or a Eu ropean 'identity' as advocated in the Commission's work programme for the W hite Paper on European Governance was misguided. Drawing on empirical resea rch into the activities of women's organizations in Greece, Ireland and the UK, it is argued that the extent to which EU level action may or may not s ucceed in bringing Europe closer to the people in the various. Member State s is mediated by the domestic political context; the characteristics of the groups being targeted, and the role of collective beliefs and values at th e domestic level. How organizations and individuals experience the opportun ities and constraints of the EU level is fundamentally affected by these th ree factors.