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The Commission in EU Policy Preparation
Abstract
Since the heyday of Jacques Delors, the Commission has been challenged by the rise of the European Council, the empowerment of the European Parliament and the creation of European agencies. However, while many scholars agree about the direction of change, there is disagreement about the extent to which the Commission's position has declined. A number of studies are sceptical, and we join this sceptical line. Our contribution is to focus on the Commission's role as a maker of both legislative and executive rules (implementing and delegated acts). These rules are all decided under complex inter‐institutional procedures. But the Commission possesses the right of initiative in all procedures. We investigate how the Commission can use this first‐mover advantage to influence EU policy. We establish a framework for understanding what strategic options the first‐mover advantage entails and provide a first empirical illustration with a qualitative analysis of ten selected Commission proposals.
... The adoption of NBS in marine and coastal ecosystems (MCE) requires policy interventions that cover several landscapes and seascapes, cross different jurisdictional boundaries and involve many actors from different levels of governance (from local to international level) [83]. 5 For these reasons, existing governance arrangements are sometimes problematic and prevent NBS from being adopted [36,71]. Research has shown that collaborative partnerships reassembling practitioners and stakeholders are not focused on NBS [4]. ...
... At the EU level, several actors are also involved in the decisionmaking process. Once the policy proposal is adopted by the Commission, it needs to be approved by the co-legislators, i.e. the European Parliament and the Council [5]. 6 More specifically in MCE governance, the responsible DG is the one in charge of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries 7 (DG MARE). ...
The paper focuses on the use of Nature-based solutions (NBS) in European marine and coastal governance-also called marine or blue NBS. Such solutions appear to be promising tools to deal with interdependent challenges such as climate change adaptation, biodiversity conservation and restoration, and sustainable development. Numerous research projects have demonstrated their utility and investigated the best ways to implement them. In addition, NBS are supported by international networks and agreements, and advocated by actors active at the international and European Union (EU) levels. However, blue NBS are mostly absent from EU policies (directives and regulations) and national, regional and local implementation of those policies. In this paper, barriers to the uptake of NBS at each step of the policy cycle are investigated: agenda-setting, policy formulation, decision-making, policy implementation, and policy evaluation. Policy recommendations and related EU policy opportunities for each of these steps are then presented.
... Even though changing institutional structures and power dynamics in the EU constrain the Commission's de jure monopoly and strengthen the European Council and the European Parliament (Crombez and Hix, 2011;Rasmussen, 2012;Majone, 2014), 5 the extent of this decline is still being debated in the literature (Bauer and Becker, 2014;Nugent and Rhinard, 2016;Egeberg and Trondal, 2017;Blom-Hansen and Senninger, 2021). The 'competence overlaps' introduced by the Treaty of Lisbon complicates this picture even further (Thomson, 2011;Bocquillon and Dobbels, 2014), as Article 17(2) retains the Commission's prerogative to initiate legislation, but Article 15 grants the European Council new powers to 'provide the Union with impetus and general political directions and priorities' (Treaty on European Union [TEU]). ...
... The majority of the AWPs do not provide full texts or information on the Commission's motivations, making it impossible to evaluate the extent to which inter-institutional agreement on the details of a policy proposal exists. We focus here on the existence of congruence in the prioritization of particular policy topics, though, the informational resources of the Commission, its unilateral control over what is included in the AWPs, and its ability to withdraw proposals make it unlikely that policy outcomes linked to AWP priorities would be antithetical to its preferences, even if they often fall short of its ideal outcome(Lupo, 2018;Blom-Hansen and Senninger, 2021). ...
Building on the existing research on the European Commission's agenda‐setting powers, this study examines the relationship between the policy priorities of the Commission and those of the other key policy actors in the European Union to determine the impact of other EU institutional actor preferences on the success of Commission priority initiatives. By using new and existing datasets to compare the European Commission's Work Programmes with European Council Summit Conclusions, the European Parliament's own initiative reports and Council Presidency Work Programmes, we are able to analyse the effect of policy priority congruence on the Commission's success and measure the autonomous policy influence of the Commission more accurately. Our results demonstrate that the Commission's priority initiatives are significantly more likely to result in legislative outcomes when they address policy topics already highlighted (whether fortuitously or as a result of Commission efforts) by the other key EU institutions. They also suggest that interpretations of the EU political system that ascribe the role of political executive to the Commission misconstrue its role.
... Scholars have focused on similarities between the Commission and the national bureaucracies of Europe (Bauer et al., 2021;Kassim et al., 2013;Wille, 2013). They have also investigated the changing character of the Commission's inter-institutional prominence, against the rising power of the European Parliament (EP) and its co-decision status with the Council of the EU (Abélès and Bellier, 1996;Blom-Hansen and Senninger, 2021;Kreppel and Oztas, 2017). ...
We examine bureaucratic politics within the European Commission, using novel data on the backgrounds of individual members of Commissioners' cabinets. Although cabinet composition has become increasingly regulated in recent decades, its selection remains a key area for personalised political appointments within an organisation more commonly known for its collective responsibility and lack of individual influence. Using data on the personal and professional backgrounds of cabinet members since the first Barroso Commission, we trace how administrative reforms meant primarily to 'de-nationalise' the selection of appointees have led to changes in cabinet composition. We then explore how cabinet composition impacts on the complexity of Commission proposals and its subsequent inter-institutional negotiations. We find that whilst more diversity of Commission cabinets clearly enhances the input legitimacy of the EU's legislative process, it neither benefits nor threatens the quality of the Commission's policy proposals or how they are processed politically.
... Existen diversas imágenes que la ciencia política ha desarrollado para representar a la Comisión. No son infrecuentes los enfoques que evocan imágenes contradictorias, ya que a veces se la ve como motor de una integración «a cualquier precio», mientras que hay quienes la analizan en clave de política de partidos o de representación de intereses nacionales (Blom-Hansen y Senninger, 2021;Eckhardt y Wessels, 2018). La Comisión es un órgano político, pero que se presenta a veces como órgano técnico, e ideólogo de la integración europea (Karagiannis, 2000: 27). ...
Este artículo examina la posición constitucional de la Comisión dentro de la Unión y, en particular, explora algunos de sus poderes fundamentales a la luz de la jurisprudencia más reciente del Tribunal de Justicia. A caballo entre la tecnocracia y la política, y sin corresponder sus funciones a las que tradicionalmente ejerce el poder ejecutivo a nivel nacional, examinaremos brevemente su evolución, así como los debates sobre legitimidad a los que la acción de la Comisión ha sido sometida desde hace décadas. Tras explorar más en particular tres aspectos de su acción: su poder de iniciativa, su poder de desarrollo normativo y de ejecución, y su poder en la acción exterior, intentaremos sacar algunas conclusiones.
... In constantly around half of these policy areas, the Commission holds the exclusive right of legislative initiative (Biesenbender 2011). This first-mover advantage often allows the Commission to exert significant influence over the choices that its co-legislators in the Council and the EP ultimately take (Blom-Hansen and Senninger 2021;Rauh 2021b;Tsebelis and Garrett 2000). The Commission thus has some say in areas that can and do become rather salient for European citizens -think employment and social affairs, consumer protection, environmental policy, migration, or public health, for example. ...
The public politicisation of European integration indicates a growing demand for public communication of supranational politics. This paper highlights that the messages the European Commission sends to its citizens do not meet this demand. A text analysis of almost 45,000 press releases the Commission has issued during 35 years of European integration rather indicates an extremely technocratic style of communication. Benchmarked against large samples of national executive communication, public political media, and scientific discourse, the Commission used and notably continues to use very complex language, specialized jargon, and a nominal style that obfuscates political action. This appears disadvantageous in a politicized context and more research on the reasons for this apparent communication deficit is needed.
... The second proxy is the number of DGs involved in the drafting of the proposal, as identified in the impact assessment accompanying a proposal. DGs, which are not responsible for a proposal, can contribute to the drafting thereof through inter-service coordination (Blom-Hansen & Senninger, 2021;Panning, 2021). While every DG can participate, none is compelled to do so. ...
This article aims to examine the effect of intra-institutional conflicts in the European Commission on the extent of changes made to legislative proposals in trilogue negotiations. We develop and test three hypotheses related to how conflicts within the Commission, namely that intra-institutional disagreements during policy formulation (h1), and potential conflicts with previous (h2) or subsequent (h3) colleges of commissioners, increase the number of amendments to the Commission’s proposal adopted in trilogues. To test our hypotheses, we use a new dataset measuring the number of changes between Commission proposals and adopted legislation for 216 legislative acts negotiated between 2012 and 2019 by means of text-mining techniques. It is important to note that we control for differences between the Commission’s proposals and the co-legislators’ positions in order to distinguish between an effect on preferences anticipation and on the negotiations proper. Our results indicate that intra-institutional conflicts affect the Commission’s anticipation of the co-legislators’ positions. The effect on its behaviour in trilogues, that is, after the legislative proposal has been tabled, is less clear. Regarding the latter, only the number of Directorates-General involved is significantly linked with the number of amendments tabled. These findings suggest that while intra-institutional disagreements affect the Commission’s role in trilogues, the range of preferences is more important than the intensity of conflicts.
National energy and climate plans (NECPs) are a cornerstone of European Union (EU) climate policy. As ‘hard’ soft governance instruments, NECPs allow comparison of member state policies and monitoring of whether they reach EU aims. My argument is that NECPs can be analysed as regulatory talk, with both member states and the Commission using reputational strategies—performative, technical, procedural and moral—to lend authority to their policy descriptions and projections. I show that the technical rhetoric of draft NECPs varies according to domestic capacities. Commission comments are uniform, emphasising performance. Member states do not adapt their final NECPs to the regulatory talk of the Commission. They use the same reputational mix as in the draft NECPs. In sum, the NECPs portray an output‐oriented legitimation strategy, emphasising performance and technical proficiency. The actor bases of the found national variation of regulatory talk and its effects are questions for further research.
We argue that the European Commission, like national governments, is likely to have used the Covid‐19 crisis as an opportunity to bolster its own powers. We focus on the Commission's attempts to insert into legal proposals provisions to adopt delegated or implementing acts, as this is the only possible way to gain lasting rule‐making powers. We analyse all the Commission's legal proposals for an equal time span before and after the start of the Covid‐19 crisis and study whether the number of proposed delegation provisions has changed after the onset of the crisis. The analysis, to our surprise, does not show any clear evidence of a self‐empowerment strategy. In the conclusion, we discuss likely explanations for this non‐finding.
This study offers a novelty specifying climate change as the legislation results in the European Parliament (EP) as an indicator of the consistency of political groups in realising their Euromanifestos. The article aims to investigate precisely the prospects and future of climate change policies in the EU post the 2019 general election. This study adopted qualitative legal research methods by studying the Euromanifestos of political groups in the European Union that competed in the 2019 European elections. Environmental issues, particularly climate change, were a significant focus in the study of these manifestos. Based on data from Euromanifesto, this study selected five EU Regulations as indicators of realising such political promises. In addition, the record of legislation and the results of voting during the establishment of the regulation was also applied as a data source in this study. In general, the cohesion between political groups in the EP is excellent. Based on a manifesto study, there are three essential findings; namely, most political groups in the EP make environmental issues, especially climate change, a politicised issue in elections. The second finding is that there are specific intersections between political groups, so it has implications for making the issue of climate change a common interest, and the results of the vote showed that a majority of Member of European Parliament members supported the establishment of the regulation. Finally, the solidarity of the EP political group cohesion in establishing regulations related to climate change is the last finding in this research.
In this paper, we examine how the EU Climate Adaptation Strategy and especially its pivotal principle of policy integration of climate adaptation has diffused into the climate adaptation strategies of Member States. We explore how this quest for climate adaptation policy integration (CPI) was pushed by vertical diffusion of the framing and policy mixes launched at the EU level. To do so, we analyse and compare national climate adaptation strategies in two EU Member States—the UK and Denmark—during 2013–2021, which witnessed Brexit and increased attention to climate impacts. Conceptually and analytically, we draw on the policy diffusion literature centring on four potential drivers of vertical policy diffusion: interests, rights, ideology and recognition. Furthermore, to scrutinize what is diffused, we conceptualize climate policy integration including the rationale and policy instruments for climate policy integration. We find that both countries’ approaches to climate change adaptation have been shaped by rights-based diffusion in a mixture of shadow hierarchy, soft power and activation of other policy areas with binding directives and observe how what appears to be asymmetrical diffusion has strong elements of symmetrical diffusion. We further identify divergence between the cases before and after Brexit and in mandating local level actions.
The Green Deal, the European Commission's current economic and environmental flagship initiative, demands policy change in many fields. One of them is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which has a history of complex and controversial reforms. This raises a classic question of EU studies: To what extent and under what conditions can the Commission act as a policy entrepreneur? Analysing its efforts to align the latest CAP reform with the Green Deal, this article shows that, whilst struggling to make an impact in the legislative arena, the Commission used its implementation powers to pressure member states to engage with the Green Deal in their national CAP plans. In doing so, it effectively blended hard and soft law to strengthen its position. The case offers evidence how Commission entrepreneurship can materialize even under adverse conditions.
The complexity of public policies has repeatedly been identified as a key challenge for modern democracies. Yet, we know only very little about the origins of this complexity. Controlling for functional and legal explanations, this article investigates whether complex policies have distinct institutional and political origins. The study builds on the assumption that complex policies are communicated in more complex language and uses textual data from 1,771 legislative proposals issued by the European Commission since 1994 to demonstrate that the complexity of public policies is strongly tied to institutional and political costs of policy formulation. Collegial cabinets formulate more complex policies whenever they face more inclusive decision‐making processes and struggle with higher internal preference bias and heterogeneity. The implications of these findings reach far beyond the political system of the EU and highlight that to a considerable degree, complex policies are the price of inclusive democratic decision‐making. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
In recent years, the pooling of authority among the member states of the euro area has intensified, expanding the remit of the Council, Commission and ECB. While it is commonly thought that large states dominate these institutions, a growing literature emphasizes the ability of small states to pursue their interests too. We explore whether the empowerment of euro area institutions was associated with relative net gains for small member states over large ones, and with relative losses during the euro crisis. We estimate the relationship between the relative amount of resources of different institutions, and the distribution of gains among members, throughout 1999–2016. We find that empowering the Council, the Commission or the ECB provides relative gains to small member states, although not against Germany.
This paper uses reputation theory to address a century-old puzzle: what guides the choice of coordination efforts in large politico-administrative systems? Max Weber, founder of the modern study of bureaucracy, famously considered a hierarchy superior to other organizational models. However, modern governments are not organized as one big hierarchy, but as a set of parallel hierarchies, typically 15-20 ministries. This raises a coordination challenge, which in practice has proven surprisingly difficult to meet. Based on reputation theory we argue that concerns of audience management are likely to be an important factor when deciding on the level of coordination. We investigate this argument in the European Union's central executive institution, the EU Commission. Based on more than 7,000 cases from the EU Commission's internal digital coordination system we analyze the impact of audience sensitivity and audience involvement on coordination efforts. Our findings suggest that audience concerns are important drivers of agencies' interdepartmental coordination.
In 2015 the European Commission re-launched better regulation with a comprehensive strategy comprising principles of regulatory management, tools, methodological guidance, and oversight. Half-way through the legislature, we appraise the strategy and show how policy and politics intersect. Better regulation raises issues about inter-institutional relations because it is a fundamental exercise in controlling who does what in the law-making process of the European Union. Consequently, we report on how the European Parliament and the Council have responded to the Commission’s strategy. We conclude by taking stock of what has been learned in the period 2015-2017 and point to the regulatory reform issues that will most likely dominate the agenda of the new Commission.
European administrative networks (EANs) are a key building block of the European Administrative Space (EAS). Crucially, they are to fill the gap between the EU’s policy ambitions and its limited administrative capacities. Whereas ample research has been done on policy preparation networks, the role of implementing EANs has received less attention in the EAS literature. This article fills this gap by providing a systematic review of relevant insights in four adjacent literatures: EU governance; international relations; public administration; and EU compliance. Employing a systematic literature review, it reports divergent findings on EAN establishment, functioning and impact, as well as variant normative evaluations. These variant findings partly relate to a lack of comparative research, selective policy coverage and predominant focus on North-western states. We conclude by suggesting a number of lines for future research on these four important themes, arguing that the crucial question will be which impact these EANs have on the national implementation and enforcement of EU law.
European administrative networks (EANs) are a key building block of the European Administrative Space (EAS). Crucially, they are to fill the gap between the EU's policy ambitions and its limited administrative capacities. Whereas ample research has been done on policy preparation networks, the role of implementing EANs has received less attention in the EAS literature. This article fills this gap by providing a systematic review of relevant insights in four adjacent literatures: EU governance; international relations; public administration; and EU compliance. Employing a systematic literature review, it reports divergent findings on EAN establishment, functioning and impact, as well as variant normative evaluations. These variant findings partly relate to a lack of comparative research, selective policy coverage and predominant focus on Northwestern states. We conclude by suggesting a number of lines for future research on these four important themes, arguing that the crucial question will be which impact these EANs have on the national implementation and enforcement of EU law.
In the debate about the impact of the eurozone crisis on the EU’s institutional balance, antagonists have often argued past each other. Supporters of the new intergovernmentalism contend that the European Council has supplanted the European Commission in policy leadership, while scholars who hold that the EU executive has been a winner of the crisis highlight the new management functions it has acquired. This article argues, first, that an accurate assessment of the institutional balance requires a more global evaluation of the Commission, acknowledging external and internal dynamics. Second, it contends that the crisis did not cause a Commission retreat but accelerated a process already underway that finds its origins in the presidentialisation of policy control. The adoption of fewer legislative proposals during the crisis was due to the ability and choice of a strong president to focus the attention on crisis-related areas. The broader lesson is that rather than marking a further step in the decline of the Commission, the crisis reveals how the centralisation of power within the institution and its expanded management duties have enhanced its capacity to take strategic action. The Commission’s role as an engine of integration will therefore endure, but in a different guise.
In the academic debate on the relative powers and influence of the EU institutions, it has become common to suggest - especially in the case of advocates of the 'new intergovernmentalism' - that the European Commission is in decline. In this article we show that while in some limited respects this is indeed the case, the Commission's overall position in the EU system is not one of having become a weaker institutional actor. The extent of the losses of its powers and influence tends to be exaggerated, while in some aspects its powers and influence have actually been strengthened. We show this by focusing on three of the Commission's core functions - agenda-setter, legislative actor and executive - all of which are widely portrayed as being in decline. We incorporate into our analysis both the formal and informal resources available to the Commission in exercising the functions.
The European Commission is at the center of the European Union's political system. Within its five-year terms each Commission proposes up to 2000 binding legal acts and therefore crucially shapes EU policy, which in turn impacts on the daily lives of more than 500 million European citizens. However, despite the Commissions key role in setting the agenda for European decision making, little is known about its internal dynamics when preparing legislation.
This book provides a problem-driven, theoretically-founded, and empirically rich treatment of the so far still understudied process of position-formation inside the European Commission. It reveals that various internal political positions prevail and that the role of power and conflict inside the European Commission is essential to understanding its policy proposals.
Opening the 'black box' of the Commission, the book identifies three ideal types of internal position-formation. The Commission is motivated by technocratic problem-solving, by competence-seeking utility maximization or ideologically-motivated policyseeking. Specifying conditions that favor one logic over the others, the typology furthers understanding of how the EU system functions and provides novel explanations of EU policies with substantial societal implications.
The bureaucratic arms of modern international organizations increasingly consist of staff with ambiguous organizational affiliations. This article analyses the implications of this trend from the perspective of representative bureaucracy – using seconded national experts (SNEs) in the European Commission (Commission) as the empirical laboratory. Using a variety of datasets, we unveil Commission SNEs' profiles (to assess their passive representativeness) and link these profiles to their role perceptions (to evaluate their potential for active representation). This illustrates that Commission SNEs' background characteristics do not match those of their constituent population (i.e. the EU27 population) – suggesting a lack of passive representativeness. However, we also find that SNEs from countries favoring stronger national rather than European regulatory and policymaking powers are more likely to see themselves as a representative of their home country government. This suggests a potential for active representation in terms of SNEs' home country's policy preferences.
Examines one of the world's most powerful international administrations; Draws on data from the largest survey of Commission officials ever conducted by independent researchers; Based on insider testimony.The European Commission is arguably the world's most powerful international administration. It plays a central role in the political system of the European Union. The Commission is a permanent presence in the life of the member states, but its influence is felt far beyond their borders. Viewed historically as the motor of European integration, the Commission is the subject of intense controversy. It is portrayed frequently as technocratic, monolithic, and unaccountable, but also as fragmented and weakly led. According to accepted wisdom, it is populated by career bureaucrats, who want only to expand the competencies of the Union and therefore their own power.This book tests these views. It asks: Who are the people who work for the organization? What are their educational and professional backgrounds? What do officials believe about the role of the Commission in the EU today and whether the Union should have more or less power? What leads them to choose to pursue a career in the Commission, and how do they navigate its complexities? How does the Barroso Commission compare to previous Commissions? How harmonious are relations between cabinets and the services? What has been the impact on the Commission of reform and of the 'big bang' enlargement? Co-authored by an international team of researchers, this book draws on original data from the largest attitudinal survey ever conducted by independent researchers inside the Commission, as well as a structured programme of interviews with senior officials. It provides an authoritative account of the European Commission of the twenty-first century.Readership: Scholars and students of political science, especially those interested in international relations, EU studies, and public administration. (Résumé éditeur)
Since the latest financial and economic crisis took hold of the European Union (EU), its economic governance architecture has been undergoing crucial changes. Research into the institutional consequences of these reforms is still fragmented — especially with regard to the function of the European Commission. This article seeks to fill this void by analysing the supranational executive’s role in the four areas that have witnessed the most important changes: financial stability support, economic policy surveillance, coordination of national polices and supervision of the financial sector. The empirical evidence suggests that the Commission continues to be a powerful player in EU economic governance, but its primary role is changing. While its agenda-setting power is decreasing, most decisions in economic governance depend on the Commission to make them work. With more and stronger implementation competences, it may be less visible. But it is not less important. This finding qualifies the degree of intergovernmentalism in economic governance.
There is more coordination in the modern world than is plausibly explained by the classical mechanisms of community, market, hierarchy and their commonly discussed variants. This paper explores modalities of non-market coordination whose application is not constrained by the narrow motivational and cognitive limitations of pure forms of hierarchical and negotiated coordination. The focus is on two varieties of negotiated self-coordination under conditions where actual negotiations are embedded in a pre-existing structural context - either within hierarchical organizations or within self-organizing networks of cooperative relationships. Extrapolating from empirical findings in a variety of settings, it is argued that embeddedness will, at the same time, increase the scope of welfare maximizing `positive coordination' and create conditions under which externalities are inhibited through `negative coordination'. In combination, these mechanisms are able to explain much of the de facto coordination that seems to exist beyond the confines of efficient markets and hierarchies.
The Council is too often depicted as the battleground for intermittent clashes between national ministers. Based upon case studies of legislation produced in five ‘First Pillar’ sectors, the research presented here has explored the submerged, and much larger, part of this institutional ‘iceberg’: Council working groups. It does so by examining how members of these entities interact with civil servants in COREPER and ministers, on the one hand, and representatives of the Commission and the European Parliament, on the other. Contrary to many practitioner or formalist accounts, the principal finding is that working groups do not operate solely on a ‘technical level’. Instead, they are vital arenas through which the ambiguous nature of politics in the European Union heavily influences negotiating processes and legislative outcomes.
The underlying theme of this article is that to understand the process of European integration, it is vital to understand the dynamics of the European policy‐making process and the crucial role of the European institutions within this process. In this article the internal dynamics of the policy‐making process within the European Commission in two directorates (DG V [Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs] and DG XIII [Telecommunications, Information Industries and Innovation]) are explored. It is argued that a vital characteristic of the Commission's ability to influence any policy sector is its ability to respond rapidly to any ‘windows of opportunity’, ripe for EU intervention, or indeed to facilitate the appearance of these windows. Yet, the means required to achieve this end, and the degree of success met, vary from sector to sector. If it is accepted that the Commission has an important role to play in EU policy‐making, and ultimately in the integration process, a better understanding of the functioning of its constituent parts, of the interrelationships between them, and of the influence of their activities upon the actions of the Commission as a whole, is vital.
The literature on strategy formation is in large part theoretical but not empirical, and the usual definition of "strategy" encourages the notion that strategies, as we recognize them ex post facto, are deliberate plans conceived in advance of the making of specific decisions. By defining a strategy as "a pattern in a stream of decisions," we are able to research strategy formation in a broad descriptive context. Specifically, we can study both strategies that were intended and those that were, realized .despite intentions. A research program suggested by this definition is outlined, and two of the completed studies are then reviewed--the strategies of Volkswagenwerk from 1934 to 1974 and of the United States government in Vietnam from 1950 to 1973. Some general conclusions suggested by these studies are then presented in terms of three central themes: that strategy formation can fruitfully be viewed as the interplay between a dynamic environment and bureaucratic momentum, with leadership mediating between the two forces; that strategy formation over time appears to follow some important patterns in organizations, notably life cycles and distinct change-continuity cycles within these; and that the study of the interplay between intended and realized strategies may lead us to the heart of this, complex organizational process.
The growing technical uncertainties and complexities of problems of global concern have made international policy coordination not only increasingly necessary but also increasingly difficult. If decision makers are unfamiliar with the technical aspects of a specific problem, how do they define state interests and develop viable solutions? What factors shape their behavior? Under conditions of uncertainty, what are the origins of international institutions? And how can we best study the processes through which international policy coordination and order emerge? While a variety of analytic approaches have been used to address the problems of international cooperation, the approaches have yielded only fragmentary insights. At its core, the study of policy coordination among states involves arguments about determinism versus free will and about the ways in which the international system is maintained and transformed. Among the overlapping topics of debate are whether national behavior is determined or broadly conditioned by system-level factors, unit-level factors, or some complex interplay between the two; whether state policymakers can identify national interests and behave independently of pressures from the social groups they nominally represent; and whether states respond consistently to opportunities to create, defend, or expand their own wealth and power, to enhance collective material benefits, or to promote nonmaterial values.' A related question of
While role behaviour and conflict dimensions in the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union have been fairly well documented, studies on the internal functioning of the College of the European Commission have been almost lacking. Thus, highly inconsistent images exist; ranging from portraying Commissioners as mainly independent Europeanists on the one hand, to seeing them as primarily national ‘ambassadors’ on the other. Although the main purpose of this article is to theorise College behaviour, some exploratory data indicate that Commissioners first and foremost champion their sectoral portfolio interests, while at the same time, although variably, being attentive to their collective responsibility within the Commission, their country of origin as well as their political party. Theoretically, Commissioners’ decision behaviour is accounted for by considering the organisational structure, demography, locus and culture within which they are embedded, as well as the type of policy they are dealing with. It seems as if politics in the College has much in common with politics within national cabinets.
As part of the “better regulation” agenda, the European Commission created a semi‐independent institution, the Regulatory Scrutiny Board, to monitor the preparation of policy proposals. The position of this Board is potentially wide‐ranging. A proposal that is not given the green light by it cannot proceed in the Commission's internal decisionmaking process. But so far, the Board has only received scant scholarly attention. We provide a comprehensive analysis of the impact of the Regulatory Scrutiny Board on the Commission's policy preparation. Using machine learning techniques and quantitative text analysis, we study 673 Board opinions and compare almost 100 draft and final policy proposals. Our findings show that the Board is an active watchdog that is taken seriously by the Commission's departments. A full understanding of policy preparation in the EU therefore requires more scholarly attention to the Regulatory Scrutiny Board.
The EU Commission regularly consults with external actors when preparing policy proposals. This paper investigates possible bias in the voices the Commission listens to across all policy areas and consultation instruments. We map the full range of consultation instruments used by the Commission and analyse variation in group representation across types of consultations and policy areas. Our analysis draws on a dataset of more than 350 major Commission proposals between 2011 and 2016. We find that the Commission has established a consultation regime with the widespread use of standard consultation instruments, including open online consultations, stakeholder conferences and consultation in closed fora. The range of consulted actors depends on both consultation instruments and policy types. Open online-consultations are most inclusive. Our findings indicate that the Commission may be able to counteract the influence of business by selecting the most appropriate format for consultation.
European Commission – Monopoly on legislative initiative – Power to withdraw legislative proposals, as recognised and limited by the Court of Justice – Interinstitutional Agreement on Better Law-Making – European Parliament Rules of Procedure – Interinstitutional programming procedures – Technical and political usages of the withdrawal – Question of confidence in national parliamentary systems – National Parliaments and Early Warning System – Parliamentarisation of the decision to withdraw – Principle of institutional balance
Coordination has been the most poorly understood and least examined problem for governments since their inception, and this book discusses the causes, consequences, and possible remedies of coordination problems.
This review article, with a clear political science and public administration bias, takes stock of the existing literature on EU agencies and suggests a future research agenda. The article reviews studies on EU agencies' organization, tasks, proliferation and location in the political-administrative space. Whether the advent of EU agencies tends to underpin a basically intergovernmental, transnational or supranational order has potentially huge consequences for the distribution of power across levels of government, for the degree of policy uniformity and pooling of administrative resources across countries, for the role of genuinely European perspectives in the policy process, and for accountability relations. Although the jury is still partly out on most topics, we see the contours of a more direct multilevel administration in which EU agencies not only constitute nodes within transnational agency networks, but in addition, in governance terms, relate more closely to the European Commission than to any other institution. © 2017 University Association for Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Since the latest financial and economic crisis took hold of the European Union (EU), its economic governance architecture has been undergoing crucial changes. Research into the institutional consequences of these reforms is still fragmented - especially with regard to the function of the European Commission. This article seeks to fill this void by analysing the supranational executive's role in the four areas that have witnessed the most important changes: financial stability support, economic policy surveillance, coordination of national polices and supervision of the financial sector. The empirical evidence suggests that the Commission continues to be a powerful player in EU economic governance, but its primary role is changing. While its agenda-setting power is decreasing, most decisions in economic governance depend on the Commission to make them work. With more and stronger implementation competences, it may be less visible. But it is not less important. This finding qualifies the degree of intergovernmentalism in economic governance.
Although the importance of international organizations is well-established, the specific contribution made to their policy outputs by administrative as opposed to political actors is rarely investigated. Still less attention is paid to how intra-organizational factors within international administrations affect the latter’s capacity to influence those outputs. Even in the case of the European Union, where the European Commission’s power over decisional outputs has been a long-standing interest, this issue has not been fully explored. Scholars have focused on horizontal factors, but have not addressed how vertical relations affect the Commission’s policy activism and therefore its influence on EU outputs. By examining how the transformation of power relations within the Commission has changed as a consequence of the strengthening of the Commission Presidency, this contribution fills that lacuna. Showing how a strong President has been able to control the Commission’s output, it demonstrates the importance of vertical relations as a variable.
While all institutions traditionally agreed that the Commission can withdraw its legislative proposals for “administrative” reasons (e.g. in the case of an outdated proposal), the Commission’s competence to withdraw a proposal for political reasons was never generally accepted. The present case was the first in which this controversy was put to the Court. Because the Parliament and Council had (informally) clinched a deal in a way that, according to the Commission, undermined the purpose of the original proposal, the Commission withdrew the proposal, preventing the legislator from formally adopting the act. The Court was faced with two competing views on the role of the Commission in the legislative process and chose the golden mean, upholding the “Community method”: the Commission may withdraw its proposal if the legislator intends to alter its essential elements in such a way that the purpose of the original proposal would be defeated. Still, it remains unclear whether the Commission is barred from withdrawing a proposal, in the ordinary legislative procedure, after the conclusion of the first reading.
The European Commission, although generally portrayed as a technocratic, non-majoritarian institution, or as an agent of EU member governments, has become increasingly linked to the European Parliament (EP) through a range of semi-parliamentary measures intended to increase the executive's legitimacy and accountability. In this article we argue that in addition to several highly visible and often treaty-based control instruments, an almost symbiotic, less visible, routine relationship can be observed between the two institutions. Based on an online survey of EP staff, as well as on minutes from EP committee meetings, this article examines the daily interaction taking place between the Commission and the EP, particularly at the level of officials. Although mutual interdependence in the legislative process may trigger daily interaction, the theoretical argument proposed is that the latter is facilitated and reinforced under two particular conditions: (i) if the two institutions share similar organisational patterns, and (ii) if they share similar behavioural patterns. Three such patterns are emphasised: sectoral, ideological and supranational.
This book examines the struggle of the European Union bureaucracy to maintain its autonomy in an increasingly complex institutional setting and adverse political environment. Using an original survey of nearly two hundred top European Commission officials, it shows that the European Union is a coherent organization that shares a common culture of supranationalism. The European Union's multicephalous structure of political authority limits the capacity of European politicians to curb the autonomy of the Commission but tends to undermine the legitimacy of the organization, which finds itself under persistent political attacks. These attacks inadvertently help the organization bolster its defenses against the external threats and trigger internal legitimation processes that reinforce the devotion of its employees to its institutional mission. The rich survey data show how Commission bureaucrats establish themselves as the “custodians of Europe.” The book helps disentangle the complexity of the Commission and makes a contribution to the study of international bureaucracies, a topic that has received little attention.
Despite advances in contemporary research on the ‘European administrative space’ (EAS), no widespread understanding about its meaning, mechanisms and significance yet exists. This contribution offers a comprehensive conceptualization of EAS and takes stock of accumulated lessons learned. The development of EAS can be understood as a process of institutionalization of common administrative capacity at a ‘European level’. The contribution suggests that the rise of EAS can be analytically grasped in terms of three analytical dimensions: independence; integration; and co-optation. Taken together, these dimensions seem to capture central aspects of the integration of public administration in Europe.
A considerable number of theories such as neo-functionalism and neo-institutionalism consider the European Commission a central actor in European Union (EU) politics. Yet, our theoretical understanding of the Commission is still limited. By taking recourse to principal-agent theory, this article argues that the European Commission should be considered neither a technocratic nor an overly independent actor in EU politics. The paper's theoretical focus is on member states' incentives to nominate and appoint particular types of European Commissioners and its likely effects on the Commission's policy preferences. The dataset used to test the theoretical claims was generated by the author for this purpose. It contains the theoretically relevant information on all European Commissioners appointed between 1958 and the present (N = 215) as well as relevant attributes of the nominating governments. I suggest that the Commission should be considered a political rather than a technocratic actor with close political ties to EU member states.
This article examines the conditions under which informal institutional change between EU Treaties becomes formalised in subsequent Treaties. Recent developments in institutional theory show how formal rule changes often result in informal rule adjustments, which feed back into the formal sphere. However, I show how such feedback has not taken place in one of the clearest examples of informal modifications of the EU Treaty, i.e. the way the agenda-setting power of the European Union has developed over time. I explain this phenomenon by developing a simple framework of change and stability, which links EU bargains with day-to-day politics and looks more closely at what determines the incentives of the decision-makers to formalise informal institutional changes. The framework emphasises that whether actors have an incentive to formalise informal changes depends on uncertainty regarding how the informal institutions might be applied, the costs of formalising them and the possible side-effects that such a change might entail. In this case, the informal changes were sufficient for the member states and the Parliament and decreased their willingness to incur the costs and risks of formal changes to the right of initiative, which would significantly affect the institutional balance of the Community.
The European Union is composed of its member states, yet these states have created and delegated increasing powers to a number of supranational organizations, including the executive Commission, the European Court of Justice and the European Parliament. Drawing from principal‐agent analyses of delegation, agency and agenda setting, this book seeks to analyse and explain the delegation of powers by governmental principals to supranational agents, as well as the subsequent role played by those agents in the process of European integration. The book is divided into two parts. The first part of the book analyses the historical and functional patterns of delegation to the Commission, the Court of Justice and the Parliament, suggesting that delegation to the first two is motivated by a desire to reduce the transaction costs of policy‐making, as predicted by principal‐agent models. By contrast, the delegation of powers to the Parliament fits poorly with such models, and primarily reflects the concern of member governments to enhance the democratic legitimacy of the Union. The second part of the book focuses on the role of supranational agents in both the liberalization and re‐regulation of the European market, and suggests that the Commission, Court and Parliament have played a causally important role alongside member governments as the ‘engines of integration’, but that their ability to do so has varied historically and across issue‐areas as a function of the discretion delegated to them by the member governments.
Policy is not made in the electoral arena or in the gladiatorial confrontations of Parliament, but in the netherworld of committees, civil servants, professions, and interest groups. This collection explores the private world of public policy. It provides a survey of the literature on the concept of policy networks and demonstrates its importance for understanding specific policy areas. The case studies cover policy-making in agriculture, civil nuclear power, youth employment, smoking, heart disease, sea defences, information technology, and exchange rate policy. Finally the editors attempt an overall assessment of the utility of the concept, focusing on such questions as why networks change, which interests dominate and benefit from networks, and the consequences of the present system for representative democracy. To describe policy networks is not to condone political oligopoly. Britain has witnessed the substitution of private government for public accountability. The analysis of policy networks draws attention to this erosion of representative democracy and exposes the private government of Britain to public gaze.
What is the scope for autonomous action of the European Commission? Its independence is much more contentious than that of the European Court of Justice, which is generally considered quite autonomous. While the literature on the Commission focuses predominantly on its ability to use its agenda-setting powers, the Commission's other means to influence European integration have been less well established. In this paper, I demonstrate how the Commission can use its role as a guardian of the Treaty to coax the Council of Ministers into action. In addition to agenda setting, the Commission can manipulate the Council's default condition, or change the preferences of some of its member states. Thereby the Commission may achieve decisions from the Council that would not have come about had the Commission only agenda-setting powers at its disposal. Effectively, the Commission here uses the greater autonomy of the European Court strategically for its own ends.
This paper compares legislative dynamics under all procedures in which the Council of Ministers votes by qualified majority (QMV). We make five major points. First, the EU governments have sought to reduce the democratic deficit by increasing the powers of the European Parliament since 1987, whereas they have lessened the legislative influence of the Commission. Under the Amsterdam treaty's version of the codecision procedure, the Parliament is a coequal legislator with the Council, whereas the Commission's influence is likely to be more informal than formal. Second, as long as the Parliament acts as a pro-integration entrepreneur, policy outcomes under consultation, cooperation and the new codecision will be more integrationist than the QMV-pivot in the Council prefers. Third, the pace of European integration may slow down if MEPs become more responsive to the demands of their constituents. Fourth, the EU is evolving into a bicameral legislature with a heavy status quo bias. Not only does the Council use QMV but absolute majority voting requirements and high levels of absenteeism create a de facto supermajority threshold for Parliamentary decisions. Finally, if the differences between the Council and the Parliament concern regulation issues on a traditional left-right axis, the Commission is more likely to be the ally of the Council than the Parliament.
The European Union is composed of its fifteen member governments, yet these governments have chosen repeatedly to delegate executive, judicial and legislative powers and substantial discretion to supranational institutions such as the Commission, the Court of Justice, and the European Parliament. In The Engines of European Integration, the first full-length study of delegation in the European Union and international politics, Mark Pollack draws on principal-agent analyses of delegation, agency and agenda setting to analyze and explain the delegation of powers by governmental principals to supranational agents, and the role played by those agents in the process of European integration. In the first part of the book, Pollack analyses the historical and functional patterns of delegation to the Commission, the Court of Justice, and the Parliament, suggesting that delegation to the first two is motivated by a desire to reduce the transaction costs of EU policymaking, as predicted by principal-agent models, while delegation of powers to the Parliament fits poorly with such models, and primarily reflects a concern by member governments to enhance the democratic legitimacy of the Union. The second part of the book focuses on the role of supranational agents in both the liberalization and the re-regulation of the European market, and suggests that the Commission, Court, and Parliament have indeed played a causally important role alongside member governments as "the engines of integration," but that their ability to do so has varied historically and across issue-areas as a function of the discretion delegated to them by the member governments.
The interplay among intergovernmental and supranational actors is a defining feature of the institutional life of the European Union (EU). Too often, however, these actors are considered independent of each other, and their autonomy is assessed in a vacuum. This is problematic because if there is such a thing as "endogenous preferences" in the EU, it appears exactly through this interdependence of intergovernmental and supranational actors. None of the institutionalist approaches to the EU has come to grips with this fact yet. Based on some very simple gametheoretic ideas, I offer in this article a rationale for "endogenous preferences" and discuss their impact on issues of delegations. Some cursory empirical evidence supports the claims that the preferences of supranational actors are related to those of the actors who select or appoint them. Similarly, the analyses presented here suggest that preferences over delegation to supranational actors are influenced by differences in policy views between principals and agents.
The author provides a public choice-based explanation of why the European Parliament is sometimes influential in the cooperation procedure. While a conservative Parliament can use its right of rejections to block a decision effectively whenever there is no consent in the Council, a Parliament in favor of change can successfully use its amendment right in the second reading whenever the constraints have been changed unexpectedly since the adoption of the common position such as to create an amendment win set. Then, the European Parliament can choose its most preferred policy in this set which is supported by the Commission, cannot be changed by the Council and is preferred against the status quo by a qualified majority in the Council. Copyright 1997 by Kluwer Academic Publishers