Regulatory cybersecurity governance in the making: the formation of ENISA and its struggle for epistemic authority

Cavelty, Myriam Dunn; Smeets, Max

doi:10.1080/13501763.2023.2173274

Cited by 22 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 41 publications

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“…Agencification in the EU stretches the confines of the European regulatory state to the maximum by extending to policy domains that were formerly the exclusive terrain of national institutions. Although the rise of the European regulatory state has long been acknowledged (Levi-Faur, 2011;Majone, 1994;Rimkutė, 2021), scholars have recently observed the growth of the European regulatory security state covering policy areas such as defence, cybersecurity, border control, and health security (Dunn Cavelty & Smeets, 2023;Kruck & Weiss, 2023;Obendiek & Seidl, 2023). To illustrate, in view of the recent global health crisis, EU institutions and member states have agreed to strengthen the European Health Security Union to address cross-border health risks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Theoretically, we draw on long-established literature to introduce two sets of hypotheses on the diverse legitimation sources of non-majoritarian institutions: 'non-majoritarian standards of legitimacy' versus 'derived standards of legitimacy' (Majone, 1998(Majone, , 1999. The 'non-majoritarian legitimacy' hypotheses are built on the argument that expertise is the raison d'être and prime foundation of authority of EU-level regulatory agencies (Bode & Huelss, 2023;Dunn Cavelty & Smeets, 2023;Rimkutė, 2022). Political decisionmakers and member states delegate tasks to EU agencies to generate regulatory policy solutions that are expected to be insulated from politics and based on technical data and scientific knowledge.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Widening Authority–Legitimacy Gap in EU Regulatory Governance? An Experimental Study of the European Medicines Agency’s Legitimacy in Health Security Regulation

Rimkutė¹,

Mazepus²

2023

Preprint

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Agencification in the EU stretches the confines of the European regulatory state to the maximum by extending to policy domains that were formerly the exclusive terrain of national institutions. Although the challenge to legitimize EU-level agencies is widely acknowledged, scant empirical research has been done on the conditions under which EU-level epistemic authority prevails or fails. To fill this gap, we examine whether EU agencies are perceived as more legitimate when the scientific nature of their regulatory outputs is made explicit and whether they start facing grave legitimacy challenges when national-level stakeholders signal disapproval with their scientific recommendations. We draw on a survey experiment with Dutch local politicians to study their legitimacy perceptions about the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and its mandate to authorize vaccines in view of cross-border health security risks. Our data suggest that the EMA is regarded as a highly legitimate agency and that disapproval by national-level politicians and citizens does not undermine its epistemic authority in the eyes of local decision-makers. This study contributes to the scholarship on non-majoritarian institutions’ legitimation imperatives by introducing novel research avenues and analytical tools to continue rigorous empirical testing of the well-established theoretical and normative claims.

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