National Agencies in the European Administrative Space: Government Driven, Commission Driven or Networked?

Abstract

Case studies indicate that national governments may be partly split so that national (regulatory) agencies operate in a 'double-hatted' manner, serving both ministerial departments and the European Commission when practicing EU legislation. Applying large-N questionnaire data this article follows up these studies by investigating how important various institutions are with respect to influencing national agencies when they are practicing EU legislation. How discretion is exercised at this stage of the policy process is not trivial; we demonstrate that also this activity is highly contested. Our main conclusion is that implementation of EU policies at the national level is neither solely indirect via national governments (as the standard portrayal says), nor solely direct (through Commission driven national agencies), nor solely networked (through transnational agency clusters).Implementation is indeed compound with several sources of power represented more or less simultaneously.2

Europe at the frontline: analysing street-level motivations for the use of European Union migration law

“…Instead, use of EU law can be motivated by substantive morality norms. In light of Egeberg and Trondal's (2009) 'double-hatted' agents who promote the interests of their national and European master owing to loyalty to the two masters, 'double-hatted' street-level implementers sometime use the different levels of law to bring about policy outcomes they personally consider as just.…”

“…Higher administrators seem to develop only weak EU loyalties, even if they have direct contact with EU institutions (Egeberg and Trondal 2009;Mastenbroek 2017). At the street level, the distance to EU institutions and national policy making is wide.…”

“…However, the Union lacks an implementation apparatus and relies on national administrations to apply its laws (Treib 2014: 6). This indirect implementation system leads to the question of whether individual national administrations turn into 'double-hatted' agents, serving a national and a European master (Egeberg and Trondal 2009), and to what extent they become 'guardians of EU law' (Mastenbroek 2017).…”

Filling the gap in the European administrative space: the role of administrative networks in EU implementation and enforcement

“…Several authors have used PA theory (Egeberg and Trondal 2009;Maggetti 2007Maggetti , 2014aMaggetti , 2014bYesilkagit 2011), connecting EAN impact to intentional design, bounded rationality and control problems (Bach and Ruffing 2013), empowerment of agencies (Bach and Newman 2010;Bach et al 2015), strategic use of information (Danielsen and Yesilkagit 2014;Eberlein and Grande 2005) and the hierarchy between ministry and agency (Martens 2008a). At the level of individual agency members, organizational variables like vertical and horizontal specialization have been suggested (Trondal 2011).…”

Conceptualizing the European multilevel administrative order: capturing variation in the European administrative system

“…One early contribution to this line of research was an 'Italian law school' studying administrative engrenage (Cassese 1987;Chiti 2004;Franchini 2004;Berlin et al 1987). Contemporary public administration research has similarly been preoccupied with both understanding the European administrative capacity building (for example , Egeberg 2006;Rittberger and Wonka 2011), and the interconnected nature of the European public administration (for example, Curtin and Egeberg 2008;Egeberg 2010;Egeberg and Trondal 2009). …”