Jarle Trondal

The many faces of EU committee governance

Committees linking national administrations and the EU level play a crucial role at all stages of the EU policy process. The literature tends to portray this group system as a coherent mass, characterised by expert-oriented ‘deliberative supranationalism’, a term developed through studies of comitology (implementation) committees. This article builds on survey data of 218 national officials in 14 member states who have attended EU committee meetings. These groups exhibit important common features: expert knowledge rather than country size plays a pivotal role in the decision making process; across types of committee, participants evoke multiple allegiances and identities. In spite of loyalty to national institutions, there is also a sense of belonging to the committees as such, though with significant variation among types of committee. Council and comitology groups are strongly intergovernmental, while Commission committees seem more multi-faceted. The primary aim here is to give an empirical account, but the main observations are interpreted from an institutional and organisational perspective.

The public administration turn in integration research

ABSTRACT This article highlights how the study of public administration is brought back into the study of European integration and European Union (EU) governance. The public administration turn in integration research has brought generic insights into the broader field of public administration but has also brought theories, concepts and hypotheses from public administration into the field of integration research. The purpose of this overview is to reveal the variegated and rich research agendas in public administration research and to stimulate further research. This public administration turn highlights (i) the impact of the formal organization of core executive institutions such as the European Commission; (ii) the conditional autonomy of subordinate administrative units such as EU-level agencies; (iii) the integration of multi-level administrative systems through collegial structures such as EU-level committees; and (iv) the external penetration and differentiated impact of EU-level institutions on domestic public administration. The lack of systematic knowledge about the impact of administrative structures within EU-level and domestic public administration is thus steadily reduced.

Is there any social constructivist-institutionalist divide? Unpacking social mechanisms affecting representational roles among EU decision-makers

Whereas a constructivist turn has occurred in recent international relations theory, a institutionalist turn has occurred in organization theories of the 1980s and 1990s. Social constructivism and organization theory exhibit important similarities as regards the basic underlying social mechanisms. Consequently, one rationale for comparing these two strands of argument rests on the observation that (i) some of the underlying social mechanisms are nearly identical, and (ii) they address the same dependent variables, i.e. identity formation and role enactment. The central question raised is how cognitive and integrative mechanisms may account for the role and identity perceptions evoked by government officials. Moreover, the frame of reference for the current discussion is national government officials participating on Commission expert committees and Council working parties. Building on survey and interview data, the current study shows that officials attending Commission expert committees tend to evoke expert roles more strongly than officials attending Council working parties. Moreover, supranational allegiances are enacted strongly among officials devoting a great deal of time and energy towards participating on these committees.

EU-level agencies: new executive centre formation or vehicles for national control?

The jury is still out with respect to whether European Union (EU)-level agencies act primarily as tools of national governments or not, although parts of the literature as well as the legal framework of EU agencies seem to favour the former interpretation. We argue that EU agencies which might be able to act relatively independently of national governments and the Council, but not necessarily independently from the Commission, would contribute to executive centre formation at the European level and thus to further transformation of the current political-administrative order. By measuring along several dimensions, we demonstrate that the Commission constitutes by far the most important partner of EU agencies. EU agencies deal (somewhat surprisingly) to a considerable extent with (quasi-) regulatory and politicized issues. When engaging in such areas, national ministries and the Council tend to strengthen their position, however, not to the detriment of the Commission. In addition to the Commission, national agencies make up the closest interlocutors in the daily life of EU agencies, indicating how EU-level agencies become building blocks in a multilevel Union administration, partly bypassing national ministries. We build our analysis on an on-line survey among senior officials in EU agencies.

THE RISE OF EUROPEAN ADMINISTRATIVE SPACE: LESSONS LEARNED

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.

Images of Agency Governance in the European Union

Diagnosis of the transformation of executive governance in Europe should incorporate the diverse dynamics of EU-level agencies. Recent years have witnessed comprehensive reform efforts in the European Commission aimed partly at increasing institutional effectiveness and efficiency. One constituent ingredient thereof has been the institution of non-majoritarian EU-level agencies with regulatory and non-regulatory discretionary competences beneath the Community institutions. This article conceptualises theoretically and explores empirically three complementary images of agency governance in the EU. Based on a rich body of survey (N = 265) and interview (N = 29) data among three regulatory and four non-regulatory EU-level agencies, the article demonstrates that EU-level agencies tend to combine the roles as autonomous administrative spaces, multilevel epistemic networks and Community institutions. EU-level regulatory and non-regulatory agencies blend all three images of agency governance. This article thus demonstrates that agency governance is only marginally affected by the regulatory–non-regulatory dichotomy.

Governing at the frontier of the European Commission : the case of seconded national officials

Studies of executive institutions have largely dealt separately with national and international executive institutions (IEIs). This study unpacks and repacks four conflicting decision-making dynamics that unfold at the frontier of IEIs – that is, at the institutional rim where national and international executive institutions meet, interact and collide. The empirical laboratory utilised is seconded national experts in the European Commission. The survey and interview data presented demonstrate that the decision-making behaviour of seconded national experts in the Commission includes a mix of departmental (portfolio), epistemic (expert) and supranational behaviour. The suspicion early voiced by Coombes (1970) that seconded national experts to the European Commission are highly conscious of their national background and that they represent domestic Trojan horses in the European Commission is thus challenged by this study. Arguably, the decision-making behaviour evoked by seconded national officials in the Commission is strongly affected by organisational characteristics of the Commission itself and less by the member-state administrations from which the secondees originate.

Beyond the EU membership-non-membership dichotomy? Supranational identities among national EU decision-makers

This article poses the following question: Do national civil servants attending EU committees evoke supranational loyalties that transcend preestablished national and sectoral identities? Multiple institutional affiliations often trigger multiple identities. However, certain identities - like supranationalism - are fostered under particular institutional conditions. Three hypotheses on supranationalism are proposed. First, supranationalism reflects the EU membership of each nation-state. Second, intensive and sustained participation on EU committees among national civil servants leads to supranational allegiances among the participants. Finally, supranationalism is associated with the general lack of national coordination prior to EU committee meetings. The empirical analysis employs survey data of 160 Scandinavian government officials with various experience from EU committees. Additionally, forty-seven face-to-face interviews supplement the survey data. The main empirical observations are twofold. First, pre-established allegiances tend to exceed supranational identifications among national civil servants attending EU committees. Second, supranational allegiances are primarily enacted among government officials from EU member states and among officials who participate intensively in EU committees. Less empirical support is provided for the argument that supranationalism reflects the lack of ex ante national co-ordination mechanisms.

On Bureaucratic Centre Formation in Government Institutions Lessons from the European Commission

Identifying and explaining bureaucratic centre formation within government institutions – such as the European Commission (Commission) – is essential for understanding political order and the potential and limitations for public sector governance. Benefiting from a new body of interview data this article adds two key observations: First, bureaucratic centre formation in the Commission does not profoundly penetrate the Commission as a whole. Comparing officials from the Secretariat General and DG Trade, this study suggests that bureaucratic centre formation is primarily happening within the Secretariat General and only marginally penetrating DG Trade. Two behavioural logics tend to coexist within the Commission administration, albeit embedded and layered within different organizational sub-units. Variation in bureaucratic centre formation is associated with two key variables: (i) the accumulation of relevant organizational capacities at the bureaucratic centre, and (ii) the vertical and horizontal specialization of the Commission administration. Third, these findings hold when ‘controlling for’ recent managerial reforms inside the Commission. The article illustrates that despite recent Commission reforms, some core behavioural logics among Commission officials are not profoundly transformed. Points for practitioners The administration of the European Commission is seen as increasingly steered from the executive centre – that is from the President and the Secretariat General. This study, however, makes two main observations: First, it shows that the strengthening of the executive centre inside the Commission administration (the Secretariat General) is not echoed throughout the services of the Commission. The ambition to make the Secretariat General the service centre for the Commission President is currently not greatly penetrating and transforming the everyday activities of the Directors General (DGs). Second, the study shows that despite historic administrative reforms of the Commission, the everyday behaviour of Commission officials remains basically unaffected.

Parliament staff: unpacking the behaviour of officials in the European Parliament

Officials within parliaments have received marginal scholarly attention. This also holds for the European Parliament (EP) which contains a considerable administration. This study, based on an online survey (N = 118), shows that political group staff are primarily committed to the concerns of their respective political groups, but also to the arguments of those external actors which have similar party affiliation. Since most group officials are, in addition, affiliated to a particular committee, they also emphasize sectoral interests, including the concerns of affected interest groups. EP secretariat officials, on the other hand, give priority to sectoral and expert concerns. Both groups of staff rank European concerns above national ones, and pay more attention to the arguments of the European Commission than to the arguments of any other institution. This study thus suggests that officials in the EP contribute to the spanning of ideological and sectoral cleavages across European Union institutions. These observations may be seen as deviating from a basically intergovernmental portrayal of the Union.