LT Week 1: Conceptualising EU Policy-Making
Reading
1. Do Member States control the EU policy process?
- His central premise is that EU legislators can rely on two agents to implement
EU legislation: the Commission and the national administrations. When
deciding whether to delegate to the Commission or to national administrations, EU
governments trade the risk that the Commission may drift away from the agreed
policy against the risk that national bureaucracies may implement the legislation
differently.
- The choice facing the governments is then between a common policy which differs
from the policy agreed by the governments and a variation in how EU policies will be
implemented in each member state. How the governments decide the balance on
this trade-off depends on the complexity of the policy issue as well as the divergence
in the policy preferences of the governments.
- The more complex a policy issue is, the more the governments are likely to favour
delegation to national bureaucracies, because they tend to have more administrative
resources than the Commission. The more divergent the policy preferences of the
governments, the more the governments are concerned that delegation to the
Commission will lead to policy drift.
- Furthermore, if a policy issue is decided by unanimity - fully in agreement (such
as taxation), governments prefer to delegate to their national administrations,
knowing that once a decision has been made it will be difficult to change.
- On the other hand, if a policy issue is decided by a qualified majority (such as many
of the rules in the single market), governments will be willing to delegate to the
Commission, knowing that they will be able to reform the legislation if the
Commission changes the policy too much beyond their original intention
- The signing of treaties and their subsequent reform are the result of careful
bargaining and agreement between the member state governments in
Intergovernmental Conferences (IGCs) (Moravcsik, 1998; Christiansen and Reh,
2009).
- The requirement of unanimity in IGCs tends to produce ‘lowest common
denominator’ treaty bargains. However, the process of European
integration has been able to proceed because different governments have
placed different emphasis on different issues, and hence have been
prepared to ‘lose’ on some issues in return for ‘winning’ on the issues that are
more important to their national interests
- The resulting ‘package deals’ have gradually added new competences to
the EU and delegated increasing executive powers to the Commission
(Christiansen et al., 2002; Greve and Jørgensen, 2002)
- In line with the delegation framework presented above, the tasks facing the
governments in IGCs are to decide which tasks to delegate to a common
agent and to strike a balance between the need to ensure that a
common policy is implemented across the EU while limiting the scope
for policy drift.
, - Throughout the history of EU integration, governments have struck this
balance differently across policies and time, depending on the bundle of
issues that were on the negotiating table (Moravcsik, 1993, 1998).
- However, the history of EU treaty reform suggests that the member state
governments are able to rein in the Commission as their evaluation of the
trade-off between the need for common policies versus the risk of policy drift
changes
- With the extensive delegation of agenda-setting to the Commission in the Single
European Act, the member states experienced the day-to-day implications of these
powers in the construction of the single market
- As a result, in the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon treaties the governments
were more reluctant to hand over agenda-setting in new or highly sensitive policy
areas, and in several areas reformed the legislative procedures to restrict the
agenda-setting powers of the Commission where policy initiative had already
been delegated to the Commission.
2. Who is the principal agenda-setter in EU policy-making?
- Basically, the European Council (the heads of government) sets the guidelines and
objectives for the Commission and monitors how the Commission implements
these guidelines.
- The Commission has several responsibilities:
- To propose policy ideas for the medium-term development of the EU
- To initiate legislation and arbitrate in the legislative process
- To represent the EU in bilateral and multilateral trade negotiations
- To issue rules and regulations, for example on competition policy
- To manage the EU budget
- To scrutinize the implementation of the primary treaty articles and secondary
legislation.
- The European Council also executes CFSP and macro-economic policies, agrees
to the multi-annual budgetary framework and can adopt new policy competencies for
the EU.
- The medium-term political leadership of the EU lies in the hands of the European
Council in general and the president of the European Council in particular. Meeting at
least six times a year, the European Council provides guidance for the work of the
meetings of the Council (of ministers) and invites the Commission to develop policy
initiatives in particular areas and monitors the domestic polices of the member states.
- A principal agent approach stresses the hierarchical nature of the relationship
between the European Council and the Commission and defines their
interaction in terms of ‘command and control’
- In line with an intergovernmental perspective, the European Council is
considered to be the ‘dominant institution’ of the EU (Moravcsik 2002:
612)
- The Commission, which Werts describes as ‘subservient’ (2008: 52), is
regarded as an administrative body dedicated to applying the will of its
political masters
- The European Council acts as a principal, delegating power to the
Commission – the agent – to steer the legislative process and monitor
the implementation of its decisions.
,- An alternative view: the joint agenda setting approach
- The principal agent model falls short of fully accounting for the complex
relationship between the European Council and the Commission.
Delegation theory emphasizes the hierarchical and often conflicting aspects
of the relations between member states and supranational institutions and
tends to overlook co-operative dynamics (Kassim and Menon 2003: 134).
- Yet, in many cases the European Council–Commission relations are two way
rather than purely top-down, and often collaborative rather than antagonistic.
In addition, the principal agent model presupposes that the respective
preferences of the principal and its agent are clear cut, independent and
stable. However, in practice, the Commission and European Council often
influence each other's position.
3. Are there significant 'unintended consequences' from intergovernmental decision-
making?
- With the extensive delegation of agenda-setting to the Commission in the
Single European Act, the member states experienced the day-to-day
implications of these powers in the construction of the single market.
- As a result, in the Maastricht, Amsterdam, Nice and Lisbon treaties the
governments were more reluctant to hand over agenda-setting in new or
highly sensitive policy areas, and in several areas reformed the legislative
procedures to restrict the agenda-setting powers of the Commission where
policy initiative had already been delegated to the Commission.
- All actors are not equally able to ‘win’, but not only the bigger member states
matter. Instead, proximity to the status quo and domestic ratification
constraints of certain governments best explain the outcomes in the
Amsterdam Treaty.
- The ability of the constitutional convention president to manipulate the
reference point for the discussion of proposed reforms as well as flexibility in
interpreting whether there was a consensus at the convention in favour of
particular proposals
- It is hard to see why some of the member states that benefitted the most from
the Nice decision rules, such as Poland, were made better off by the Lisbon
Treaty
- Integration has gone hand in hand with further differentiation, as some member
states have found themselves unable or unwilling to block others’ efforts of
furthering integration in a policy field, and exiting the union altogether has
until recently been considered too unattractive
4. What can be done to address implementation deficit in the EU?
- Under certain circumstances, therefore, member government principals might be
expected to delegate authority to a supranational agent such as the Commission of
the European Communities or the ECJ. However, this initial delegation immediately
raises another problem: What if the agent, say the Commission, has preferences
systematically distinct from those of the member governments and uses its
delegated powers to pursue its own preferences at the expense of the
preferences of the principals
, - The importance in this context of information, and of asymmetrically
distributed information in particular, can scarcely be overstated. In any
principal-agent relationship, the agent is likely to have more information about
itself than others have, making control or even evaluation by the principal
difficult. Without some means of acquiring the necessary information to
evaluate the agent's performance, the principal seems to be at a permanent
disadvantage, and the likelihood of agency losses seems large
- Solutions: when delegating authority to an agent, principals can adopt various
administrative and oversight procedures to limit the scope of agency activity
and the possibility of agency shirking
- Administrative procedures define ex ante the scope of agency activity, the
legal instruments available to the agency, and the procedures it must follow.
Such administrative procedures may be more or less restrictive, and they may
be altered in response to shirking or slippage, but only at a cost to the
flexibility and comprehensiveness of the agent's activities.
- In the case of the EC, both the Commission and the ECJ generally
have been given a broad mandate, while prior to the Single European
Act, the European Parliament was restricted to a limited institutional
role.
- Oversight procedures, on the other hand, allow principals ex post to (1)
monitor agency behavior, thereby mitigating the inherently asymmetrical
distribution of information in favor of the agent, and (2) influence agency
behavior through the application of positive and negative sanctions.
Among the formidable array of sanctions at the disposal of legislative
principals are budgetary control; control over appointments; and power to
override agency behavior through new legislation and to revise the
administrative procedures laid down in the agent's manda
- Strict oversight procedur example, consume considerable resources, and sanctions
may impose costs upon principals as well as agents, as we shall see. Hence,
principals will adopt a given control mechanism only if its cost is less than the
sum of the agency losses that it reduces
5. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the rationalist account of EU policy-
making?
- Generally speaking, delegation of authority by one or more principals (such as a
group of domestic legislators or a group of member states) to one or more
agents (such as a regulatory agency or a supranational institution) is a special case
of the more general problem of institutional choice or institutional design
- The basic approach of rational choice theory to the question of institutional
choice is functionalist. That is to say, rational choice theory explains institutional
choices in terms of the functions a given institution is expected to perform and
the effects on policy outcomes it is expected to produce, subject to the
uncertainty inherent in any institutional design
- Delegation of authority to an agent-whether a regulatory bureau (as students
of U.S. politics have considered) or an international organization (as
international relations theorists have)-is considered one particular aspect of
the institutional design process
- Functions:
