Towards A New Executive Order In Europe?

Deirdre Curtin, Morten Egeberg

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415851701
• eBook ISBN: 9781317990239
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The executive branch of government in Europe is being gradually transformed in several significant respects. First, executive power has been continuously strengthened at the EU level in the form of the European Commission, EU-level agencies and diplomatic and military staff in the Union Council secretariat. Second, EU executive bodies relate directly to (regulatory) authorities at the national level in charge of applying (and partly preparing) EU laws and programmes, partly circumventing ministerial departments. Thus, parts of national administrations become parts of an integrated and multi-level Union administration as well as parts of national executives. Such a system with multiple political masters raises delicate questions about political steering and accountability. This book focuses on this fascinating development both from a political science and a legal perspective, encompassing the consolidation of the supranational executive as well as its relationships with its 'partners' at the national level.

This book was published as a special issue of West European Politics.

Tradition and Innovation: Europe’s Accumulated Executive Order

Deirdre Curtin and Morten Egeberg

In our view the question is not whether a common European executive order is emerging or not.¹ We use the term ‘executive order’ to convey our focus on the changing nature of executive power in Europe and to capture both the political level (ministers and other political office holders) and the administrative level (bureaucracy) of the order in our analysis. Europe has in fact had an executive order for centuries. After the peace of Westphalia this order became increasingly sophisticated as regards its institutional characteristics. However, it was not until the advent of the European Union and its predecessors that Europe’s executive order started to transcend its basically intergovernmental pattern inherited from the past. We ascribe this phenomenon in particular to the consolidation of the European Commission (Commission) as a new and distinctive executive centre at the European level, outside of the intergovernmental locus, the Council of Ministers (Council). This institutional innovation triggers significant centrifugal forces within national governments due to the Commission’s strategy of establishing direct partnerships with national (regulatory) authorities (agencies and others) that might be crucial for the implementation and formulation of EU policies.

The agencification that has taken place in most western European countries during the last couple of decades has been conducive to the development of this new administrative configuration across levels of governance. Precisely because agencies are kept at arm’s length from ministerial departments they have been able to establish their own autonomous and close contacts with executive bodies at the EU level. Such new arrangements imply that although the implementation of EU legislation is still mainly in the hands of national governments, it can be questioned whose agents the semi-autonomous national agencies really are. Such an order also raises sensitive questions about which actors should be held to account: holding governments to account may no longer be enough and may need to be complemented with mechanisms and forums that focus both on the accountability of supranational executive bodies as well as national agencies with dual loyalties.

In the next section we briefly outline the executive order that prevailed in Europe from the Peace of Westphalia (1648) until the advent of the EU and its predecessors. Arguably, in comparison with bilateral diplomacy and international governmental organisations (IGOs), the emergence and consolidation of the position of the Commission as a central executive actor placed the development of the European executive order on a radically different trajectory. The following section therefore deals with the conditions under which the Commission is able to act relatively independently of national governments and thus constitutes an executive force in its own right. We then turn to how these distinctive institutional conditions at the European level seem to trigger administrative constellations across levels of governance and across national borders that challenge the coherence of national governments in an unprecedented way. We also ask how a new order and new patterns of executive politics might affect implementation practices. The subsequent sections focus on the issue of accountability as it is raised and dealt with within the shifting executive orders. Finally, as part of the conclusion, we touch briefly on the factors behind the changing orders. The new order does not seem to replace the former order; instead it tends to be layered around already existing orders so that the result is an increasingly compound and accumulated executive order at the European level. Needless to say, such a layered and cumulative order complicates the discussion on accountability of the various actors for their varied tasks.

Pre-existing Executive Orders

Our point of departure is the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), which in a sense semi-institutionalised a system of territorially defined states in Europe. A system of formally sovereign states presupposes information about the ideas and activities of system participants. Bilateral diplomacy was seen as the means of ensuring that the requisite information was made available. From the second half of the seventeenth century resident ambassadors became the rule even among the smaller countries (Cross 2007). Within the time frame we cover (from 1648 onwards), we consider bilateral diplomacy on a regular basis as the first executive order in Europe. It constitutes an order because it is organised and because common norms and codes of conduct gradually developed so that diplomats came to perceive themselves as being grounded in two distinct worlds: their respective home state, on the one hand, and the diplomatic community, on the other (Batora 2005; Jönsson and Hall 2005). At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the diplomatic institution became more formalised: for example, the senior ambassador, i.e. the ambassador who had been longest at the post in a particular capital became the doyen or dean of the diplomatic body, or corps, in that particular country (Nicolson 1969). The fact that this person represents the other ambassadors in any disputes affecting their corporate rights and interests reflects very well the existence of a community. ‘Even as scientists, philatelists and other experts find, when they meet together, that the interests of their calling transcend all differences of nationality or language, so also do the diplomatic services of the several countries evolve a form of solidarity and establish certain tacit standards which they all respect’ (Nicolson 1969: 40). In her study of key international congresses from 1648 onwards Cross (2007) found that diplomats tended to share opinions more often that their respective political masters.

We date the start of the second executive order to the Vienna Congress (1815). The congress semi-institutionalised multilateral diplomacy in the form of conferences at the ministerial and ambassadorial levels among Europe’s great powers (the Concert of Europe) although they did not meet on a regular basis and there was no permanent location or secretariat attached to it (Schroeder 1994). It was the highly specialised sectoral or functional IGOs established from the second half of the nineteenth century (e.g. the International Telegraph Union and the Universal Postal Union) that gave rise to new initiatives such as a permanent secretariat with a fixed location, the division of labour between a general conference and an executive council, and regular meetings. According to Claude (1964: 175), ‘nothing essentially new has been added by the multi-lateralization and regularization of diplomacy until the secretariat is introduced; this is the innovation that transforms the series of conferences into an organization’.

One consequence of IGOs having been established in pretty much all imaginable sectoral and functional policy areas is that a huge number of non-diplomatic civil servants coming from sectoral or functional ministries and agencies have become involved in their work. In addition, national scientific experts may also be included in their work with the result that the European administrative space became much denser than before. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) alone today runs 42 ‘committees’ and 98 ‘working parties’ composed of national officials (Marcussen 2004). Studies have shown that the power distribution and conflict pattern within IGOs seem to reflect very much the power distribution and territorial pattern of conflict found in the wider system (Cox and Jacobson 1973). This is hardly surprising given that they are basically structured according to geography, organisationally expressed in the pivotal role of the respective councils of ministers. However, IGOs are institutions that provide a context for the collection, elaboration and diffusion of data, analyses, visions and ideas, for agenda-setting and collective problem-solving (Barnett and Finnemore 2004; Marcussen 2004). Expert-based permanent secretariats contribute significantly to task expansion at the international level and they also may be able to forge transnational coalitions by linking previously disconnected actors (Cox and Jacobson 1973; Barnett and Finnemore 2004; Trondal et al. 2005). Thus, although IGOs have been created by states, once established they do not necessarily operate as straightforward tools or agents of those states.

Because modern states are highly specialised both in sectoral and functional terms, and since problems to be dealt with generally presuppose the availability of rather specialised expertise, specialised institutions tend to interact directly with their counterparts in other countries or in the secretariats of IGOs rather than going through their respective foreign ministries or other central state authorities. This is what Keohane and Nye (1977) term ‘complex interdependence’. Slaughter’s (2004) portrayal of a ‘new world order’, consisting of disaggregated states that interact in a compound manner within and alongside IGOs, builds heavily on the complex interdependence perspective. Although such information, harmonisation and enforcement networks may encourage the formation of coalitions along functional lines, she claims that national governments retain primary power and that officials participating in those networks represent national interests (pp. 7, 262).

Executive Centre Formation at the European Level

We attribute the birth of what may be termed the third executive order first and foremost to the consolidation of the Commission as an executive centre (Bartolini 2005). The High Authority of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and its successors were indeed an institutional innovation at the European level: for the first time an executive body with its own leadership had been established outside the national ministers’ ‘council’. The Commission over time increased its actual autonomy in relation to national governments. As regards the services of the Commission, the move from an administration that had to rely heavily on seconded personnel from the member states to an administration in which a large majority are employed on a permanent basis is significant. The growing ‘internalisation’ (into the services) of recruitment and appointment processes is also indicative of such a development. The process of appointing top officials has been described as having become ‘objectivised’, meaning that a transparent procedure and clearly specified requirements have been adopted. Staff resources have been allocated to the process, and the committee, which presents the shortlist of candidates to the commissioners, is dominated by career officials. Normally, the recruiting commissioner seems to accept the candidates recommended by this committee (Egeberg 2006b). Thus, the internalisation of appointment processes means that the highly contentious practice of attaching national flags to particular posts in the various directorates general (DGs) has been considerably reduced (see also Wille 2007a).² Consistent with this, Balint et al. (2008) show that the Commission administration, as regards the degree of politicisation of the higher management and the degree of openness of the career system, over time has moved away from its Continental origin and instead moved closer to a British or Scandinavian model, i.e. in crucial respects a more independent service.

As regards the political leadership of the Commission it, too, has gained autonomy vis-à-vis national governments over time. Concerning the college, the Amsterdam Treaty assigned more leeway to the Commission president-elect as regards the selection of commissioners. The president also acquired the final say in how portfolios are allocated and even the right to reshuffle the team during the five-year term of office by redistributing dossiers, thus making it difficult for governments to attach particular national flags to particular portfolios. Also, the president is authorised to dismiss individual commissioners. Concerning the cabinets, there must now be three nationalities in any cabinet, gender balance and three posts reserved for Commission officials rather than outsiders brought in by the commissioners or foreign ministries. ‘The resulting changes produced cabinet constellations which would be unrecognisable to old Commission hands’ (Spence 2006: 72). Given that the average size of an ‘ordinary’ (not vice-president/ president) commissioner’s cabinet seems to be seven members, such a composition has changed the role of entities previously portrayed as national enclaves (Michelmann 1978) and as being sensitive to national interests (Cini 1996: 111–115). We are, however, short of empirical evidence on how cabinet members actually behave.

We are somewhat better equipped as regards studies on the role conceptions and behaviour of Commission officials. From an organisational theory point of view, the most important independent variables are, under most circumstances, features of the organisational structure within which decision-makers are embedded. For example, it matters whether this structure is the actor’s primary or only secondary affiliation, and according to which principle (function, geography, etc.) the structure is specialised (Egeberg 2004). The approximately 900 national experts who are seconded by national administrations to the Commission for a maximum of four years represent an interesting category since they work full-time within the Commission’s administrative hierarchy, while being paid by their home government with a return to former positions in domestic ministries or agencies usually foreseen. However, even under these conditions, their primary structure – i.e. Commission affiliation – seems to be most important. A survey study of 71 national experts showed that they overwhelmingly identify with their respective DGs/Units or an independent expert role rather than with their respective national governments. Accordingly, in their daily work, they pay most attention to signals from their directors in the Commission and little attention to signals from their home governments (Trondal 2006).

Concerning Commission officials in general, Michelmann (1978), in a study based on interviews and a survey originally administered by the Commission among its personnel, analysed the flows of information across hierarchical levels within DGs. He found no statistically significant effects of nationality on these flows. Contact patterns reflected rather neatly the formal hierarchy of posts. The qualitative interview data revealed, however, that officials might be approached by their compatriots and used as ‘access points’ to the inner circles of the services. In her study of 82 officials three decades later, combining quantitative and qualitative data, Suvarierol (2008) provided support for Michelmann’s conclusions. She focused on ‘task-related informal networks’ (for information and advice) as distinguishable from ‘task-related formal networks’, ‘career networks’ and ‘leisure networks’ and found that nationality is not even a factor shaping these informal (information and advice) networks which are not hierarchically predefined. Egeberg (1996) used 35 Commission trainees with at least two years’ experience from national administration as informants on decision-making within 15 different DGs. Only in a clear minority of units was nationality seen to matter for officials’ policy choices, and the concerns of the respective DGs constituted the dominating frame of reference for decision-making. And a questionnaire study of 218 national officials from 14 member states showed that an overwhelming majority considered the Commission’s representatives in Commission expert committees, Council working parties and comitology committees as mainly independent of particular national interests (Egeberg et al. 2003).

The interview and questionnaire study of Commission top officials by Hooghe (2001) seems at first glance to contradict the results reported above. She found that officials’ preferences as regards supranationalism vs. intergovernmentalism and regulated capitalism vs. market liberalism were related to their experiences before they entered the Commission and that their stay at the Commission had no significant impact on these attitudes. For example, those originating from federal states were more in favour of supranationalism than those from unitary states. But this conclusion did not hold for all Commission officials. The effect of Commission socialisation was considerably stronger for the officials who joined the institution before their thirtieth birthday. ‘The relative weight of international and national socialization is reversed’ (Hooghe 2005: 876). Hooghe’s dependent variables tapped attitudes at a very general level. Arguably, therefore, her observations might be quite compatible with...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Tradition and Innovation: Europe’s Accumulated Executive Order
• 2. Mapping the European Administrative Space
• 3. Bureaucratic Change in the European Administrative Space: The Case of the European Commission
• 4. Beyond the Myth of Nationality: Analysing Networks within the European Commission
• 5. Who Consults? The Configuration of Expert Groups in the European Union
• 6. At a Critical Juncture? Change and Continuity in the Institutional Development of the Council Secretariat
• 7. European Administration: Centralisation and Fragmentation as Means of Polity-building?
• 8. Delegation of Powers in the European Union: The Need for a Multi-principals Model
• 9. Reshaping European Regulatory Space: An Evolutionary Analysis
• 10. Halfway House: The 2006 Comitology Reforms and the European Parliament
• Index