This article argues that current widespread characterisations of EU governance as multi-level and networked overlook the emergent architecture of the EU's public rule making. In this architecture, framework goals (such as full employment, social inclusion, 'good water status', a unified energy grid) and measures for gauging their achievement are established by joint action of the Member States and EU institutions. Lower-level units (such as national ministries or regulatory authorities and the actors with whom they collaborate) are given the freedom to advance these ends as they see fit. But in return for this autonomy, they must report regularly on their performance and participate in a peer review in which their results are compared with those pursuing other means to the same general ends. Finally, the framework goals, performance measures, and decision-making procedures themselves are periodically revised by the actors, including new participants whose views come to be seen as indispensable to full and fair deliberation. Although this architecture cannot be read off from either Treaty provisions or textbook accounts of the formal competences of EU institutions, the article traces its emergence and diffusion across a wide range of policy domains, including telecommunications, energy, drug authorisation, occupational health and safety, employment promotion, social inclusion, pensions, health care, environmental protection, food safety, maritime safety, financial services, competition policy, state aid, anti-discrimination policy and fundamental rights.

http://www2.law.columbia.edu/sabel/papers/learning%20from%20difference%20ELJ%202008.pdf

Learning from Difference: The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the EU

Most studies converge on the growth of processes of ‘multilevel governance’ (MLG) in policy making, related to the often combined trends towards supranationalism and regionalism. Such processes are usually analysed under the angle of their efficiency, while their impact on the quality of democracy is neglected. This article first defines the concepts of multilevel governance and accountability, and then identifies the various dimensions of the latter. It further argues that MLG generates novel forms of accountability, but undermines its democratic dimension mainly for the following reasons: the weak visibility of MLG networks, their selective composition and the prevalence of peer over public forms of accountability.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=992007

Problems of Democratic Accountability in Network and Multilevel Governance

Submitted version of an article published in the journal: Public Administration.
Published version available at Wiley InterScience: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2009.01779.x

/pdf/national-agencies-in-the-european-administrative-space-4lslmd44c2.pdf

National agencies in the european administrative space: government driven, commission driven or networked?

This paper argues that current widespread characterizations of EU governance as multi-level and networked overlook the emergent architecture of the Union’s public rule making. In this architecture, framework goals (such as full employment, social inclusion, “good water status”, a unified energy grid) and measures for gauging their achievement are established by joint action of the member states and EU institutions. Lower-level units (such as national ministries or regulatory authorities and the actors with whom they collaborate) are given the freedom to advance these ends as they see fit. But in return for this autonomy, they must report regularly on their performance and participate in a peer review in which their results are compared with those pursuing other means to the same general ends. Finally, the framework goals, performance measures, and decision-making procedures themselves are periodically revised by the actors, including new participants whose views come to be seen as indispensable to full and fair deliberation. Though this architecture cannot be read off from neither Treaty provisions nor textbook accounts of the formal competences of EU institutions, the paper traces its emergence and diffusion across a wide range of policy domains, including telecommunications, energy, drug authorization, occupational health and safety, employment promotion, social inclusion, pensions, health care, environmental protection, food safety, maritime safety, financial services, competition policy, state aid, anti-discrimination policy and fundamental rights.

/pdf/learning-from-difference-the-new-architecture-of-3fkpl1wzqn.pdf

Learning from Difference : The New Architecture of Experimentalist Governance in the European Union

Multi-level governance in the EC

Establishing separate executive bodies of a confederation or of a nascent federation of states seems in many respects to be the ‘hard case’ of institution-building. This article argues that ‘agencification’ at the EU level is basically about increasing the potential for more uniform implementation of EU policies across member states. The aim of this article is explorative by (i) assessing the current organisation and capacities of EU-level agencies, (ii) explaining why EU-level agencies emerge, and (iii) empirically exploring the actual role of EU-level agencies in their relationship to national administrations. The article argues that the recent booming of EU-level agencies is strongly embedded within and conditioned by existing institutional structures. Empirically, the article presents fresh survey data showing that EU-level agencies are involved in the formulation of implementation guidelines and even in the handling of individual cases within national agencies. Hence, EU-level agencies may be capable of significant task expansion beyond their formal mandates.

Building Executive Power at the European Level On the role of EU-level agencies

This paper reports a comparative study of the Environmental Regulatory Agencies in Norway, Denmark and Finland. Increasingly and relatively independently these agencies are taking part in transnational networks in the EU involving the European Commission. A strong informal penetration, fuelled by new and faster electronic technology, is taking place between the European Commission and the regulatory agencies, largely outside the control of the domestic politico-administrative leadership. This development may be questionable from a democratic point of view. The three national agencies differ with regard to degree of independence from their parent ministry and degree of contact with the European Commission. These differences may be explained by various formal organizational features, but also by cultural factors rooted in the specific national administrations. This article has later been published in Scandinavian Political Studies Vol.31, No.1, pp.91-102

Run-away bureaucracy? Exploring the role of National Regulatory Agencies in the EU

The EU is gradually expanding its executive capacity through agencies, and some of the newcomers in the agency family have a larger regulatory potential than the previous ones. This paper analyses the genesis of the European Chemical Agency (ECHA), a newly born European regulatory agency. Applying a process-tracing methodology, I analyze the process by which ECHA attained its legal framework, the processes that generated its organizational set-up, and the tensions involved in formulating its mandate. The study ascribes an independent role for institutions that goes beyond seeing functional imperatives as well as rational design as the dominant explanatory factors. The aim is to provide a clearer understanding of factors that lie behind both the breakdown and reproduction of organizational structures. The establishment of ECHA was mediated by and extracted from the pre-existing institutional framework, in particular from the Member States, and administrative continuity or change depended to a large extent on how different resources and capabilities were distributed and validated within the European institutional system.

Executive power in the making: the establishment of the European Chemical Agency (ECHA)

The European Commission has over the past years intensified its efforts to develop alternative and non-legal instruments for improving implementation in the member states. One specific instrument is networked administrative structures with national regulatory agencies , aiming to harmonize and improve implementation at the national ‘street-level’. Changes in character of the member states’ public administrations serve as an important background for these developments, a distinctive feature being the decentralization of tasks to regulatory agencies placed outside the central administrative hierarchy. Due to their relative autonomy, these agencies are well placed to work ‘double –hatted’ in the sense that they interact directly with the European Commission in enforcing EU law, at the same time as they perform traditional tasks as agents of national ministries. The case which is described and analyzed in this paper is the IMPEL network , an informal network between the European Commission and national environmental authorities in the various EU countries. It is argued that a network such as IMPEL is an arrangement that on the one hand may lead to more effective and homogeneous implementation of Community law, but that may on the other hand challenge the balance between different institutions at various levels of governance in the European Union. A later version of this paper was published in 2006 as a book chapter in M. Egeberg (ed.) The Multilevel Union Administration

Double-hatted agencies on the European scene? A case study of the IMPEL network

Establishing separate executive bodies of a confederation or of a nascent federation of states (outside a council of ministers) seems in many respects to be the ‘hard case’ of institution building. The reason for this may be that it creates a capacity for action and execution of policies and not just for talk and formal decision making and that the action of separate executive bodies may be perceived as particularly threatening by constituent governments less eager to transfer power upward. It seems to have been easier to form (parliamentary) assemblies and courts of justice.

The EU’s Subordinated Agency Administration and the Rise of Executive Power at European Level

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