In the past decade, the number of EU policy activities in research and higher education has increased greatly. The governance processes in these areas are increasingly characterized as multilayered, involving actors with a variety of roles, functions and loyalties. This article focuses on the forces shaping the policy positions and strategies of national science policy actors and coalitions in transnational policy processes through a case study of the positions, ideas and strategies held by central Swedish science policy actors in the process of building the European Research Council (ERC) during the first decade of the 2000s. The case is analysed from the perspectives of three versions of neo-institutional theory, each of which has somewhat different views on how institutions, interests and policy ideas interact in these kind of processes. The analysis shows that the Swedish influence on this process consisted primarily of an advocacy coalition of individuals with strong institutional positions in the Swedish science policy system and affiliations to transnational policy institutions and communities. Furthermore, the study shows that the policy actors largely functioned as normative entrepreneurs who related to general policy ideas shared by members of a transnational community, but also that the drivers of the development and the policy solutions were largely anchored in experiences and legacies from a national context.