Parliamentary Administrations in the European Union

Anna-Lena Högenauer, Christine Neuhold, Thomas Christiansen, Thomas Christiansen, Anna-Lena Högenauer

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780230360365
• eBook ISBN: 9781137596260
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the role of parliamentary administrations in the control of European Union policy-making. It questions whether the decision to give parliaments greater powers in the aftermath of the Lisbon Treaty had only the intended effect of political debate on European policies, or whether it has also resulted in the bureaucratisation of parliaments. The authors argue that the challenges of information-management faced by parliaments lead them to delegate an extensive set of tasks to their administrations. They offer a broad empirical picture, analysing the challenges faced by national parliaments and the role and response of their administrations in the case of the European Parliament, national parliaments and regional parliaments. In addition, the book studies the interaction between different administrations and their contribution to interparliamentary cooperation. It presents a new and different perspective on the challenges and dynamics of multi-level parliamentarism.

1

Conceptualizing the Role of Parliamentary Administrators

Introduction

The Treaty of Lisbon acknowledged the role of national parliaments in the democratic functioning of the EU and strengthened their formal involvement in EU policy-making, most notably through better information rights and the creation of the EWS. These new opportunities led to greater academic attention and contributed to a growing literature on the role of national parliaments in the EU (e.g. Hefftler et al. 2015) and the contribution that these could make in helping to address the EU’s putative ‘democratic deficit’ (Bellamy and Kröger 2013).

The existing literature on European parliaments has largely focused on their political functions (e.g. Auel and Raunio 2014), on the roles of different political actors within parliaments and on the impact of party politics on parliaments (Hix 1999; Raunio 2002; Holzhacker 2005; Hix and Høyland 2013; Bellamy and Kröger 2014). However, just like state executives, parliaments are not purely political creatures. After all, it is widely acknowledged that bureaucracy is an essential part of modern states and societies (Arnold 1987), and with the rise of the bureaucratic state has come the growth of parliamentary administrations. These may be of a much smaller size than governmental bureaucracies and their activity may be less visible, but parliaments – like governments – do have bureaucracies of their own. This observation raises a number of questions that have not been answered conclusively in the existing literature: What role do these officials play within the legislatures in which they work, and how can we conceptualize the nature of this particular aspect of parliaments?

The aim of this chapter is to review the key literature on the roles of parliamentary officials, in order to develop a conceptual framework that allows us to capture the tasks of parliamentary officials in EU affairs. The key question that guides this effort is, in particular, how technical or political the tasks of administrators are – that is, how much influence they can potentially have on the scrutiny of EU affairs. For this purpose, the existing literatures on administrative roles in executive and parliamentary administrations will be reviewed. On this basis, more refined typologies of the tasks of officials in the EP and national parliaments are then developed.

The problem of delegation to administrators

Studies on bureaucracy often refer to the type of bureaucracy as idealized in the work of Max Weber. The Weberian ideal of a bureaucracy is characterized by hierarchical structures and the rule of law. The personnel of this type of bureaucracy are career officials recruited by way of ‘objective criteria and educational qualifications’ (Barberis 2011: 15). These professionals adhere to principles of neutrality (Weber 1978, in Barberis 2011). However, this idea of a neutral civil service has been questioned and there is an extensive debate about the need for, and the ways of, controlling policy decisions that are delegated by elected politicians to the bureaucracy (Boehmke et al. 2005: 149).

The literature on the delegation of powers to bureaucrats postulates that the complexity of the modern state and the issues at stake in policy-making require politicians to delegate certain tasks and decisions due to a lack of time and expertise. As a corollary of such delegation, governments often face a tension between the need to maintain political control and the value of bureaucratic expertise (Huber and McCarty 2004).

At the heart of this debate is the so-called ‘principal-agent problem’, which originates conceptually from economic analysis and concerns ways of minimizing risks in the presence of moral hazard (Grossman and Hart 1983). As Kassim and Menon (2003) point out, the principal-agent model has become the dominant model to probe into the challenges arising from contracting or risk-sharing (Grossman and Hart 1983) in any setting or context. Agency relationships are established when one actor or a set of actors (the principal) delegates a set of tasks to a second party (the agent), based on a contractual agreement (Kassim and Menon 2003: 122). Prime examples in this context are delegation of powers to executive agencies or the delegation within the executive, where policies are in practice often drawn up and managed by the civil service rather than by elected politicians.

A similar challenge confronts elected representatives in legislatures, who also need to delegate certain decisions due to time constraints (Arnold 1987: 279). Delegation to staff within parliaments is also necessitated by the fact that the limited number of MPs are at a disadvantage compared with the much larger ministries that they are supposed to control.

The principal-agent model has been applied to the US Congress, with its elected members seen as the principal and the bureaucracy seen as the agent (e.g. McCubbins and Page 1987; Moe 1984, 1987). Here, principals are faced with the possibility of the administration developing policies deviating from the original mandate, a trend that has been coined as ‘bureaucratic drift’. Such drift is a principal-agent problem that questions the extent to which political actors are able to ensure that their original intentions will indeed be carried out by the administrative staff (McCubbins et al. 1987).

In this context, the concept of ‘optimal delegation’ to bureaucrats is of relevance. Boehmke et al., when developing a model of policy-making, recognized multiple sources of information – from the bureaucracy, an interest group – and their respective impact on policy-making (Boehmke et al. 2005: 140). This helped them to address the legislature’s optimal delegation problem: ‘legislative preferences over agency policy choices’. In particular, they observe that the legislature has a slight preference for an agency with preferences closer to those of the legislature than one that differs from those of the legislature (Boehmke et al. 2005: 141). They also raise the point that legislative delegation can be desirable. This is so because the agency to whom authority is ‘delegated may be more expert than the legislature itself’. Agencies moreover tend to integrate various input by lobbyists and this can ‘lead to better informed choices when policy-making’ (Boehmke et al. 2005: 162).

For political actors, the main risk that poses itself is such that ‘the very skills and expertise that bureaucrats enjoy create the possibility that bureaucrats will usurp the rightful role of politicians in policy-making processes’ (Huber and McCarty 2004). An excessive amount of bureaucratic influence can ultimately challenge democratic principles, which is why the literature has devoted much attention to questions of political control and oversight. The literature on the US Congress in particular has produced valuable concepts and insights, albeit in the context of the control of parliament over executive bureaucrats in agencies – that is, bureaucrats that are external to the functioning of the parliament itself. In this regard, three approaches in particular stand out:

•First, Arnold introduced a distinction between statutory oversight techniques, non-statutory techniques, and administrative rules and procedures. Statutory techniques involve the use of authorization or re-authorization bills or budgetary bills to provide guidelines or to place prohibitions on agencies. Non-statutory techniques comprise the use of hearings and reports to control bureaucratic activity. Finally, administrative rules and procedures allow legislatures to make agencies transparent and create channels of appeal for interested parties (Arnold 1987: 208–10).

•Second, McCubbins and Schwartz distinguish between ‘police patrol’ and ‘fire alarm’ oversight. Police patrol oversight requires the legislature regularly to check samples of an agency’s work, whereas fire alarm oversight relies on citizens and interested parties examining administrative decisions. A system of rules and procedures allows access to information and establishes rights of appeal (McCubbins and Schwartz 1984: 166).

•Finally, in the context of governments and executives, Huber distinguishes between ex ante and ex post institutions. Ex ante institutions kick in before civil servants take action, whereas ex post institutions serve as a remedy. One ex ante remedy would be to allow politicians to select suitable (and potentially politicized) civil servants who sympathize with the views of the politician or government. Other ex-ante measures involve administrative rules and tight legislation. Ex post instruments include hearings and courts. Budgetary powers can be used both to allow and to prevent certain actions by the agent (Huber 2000: 399–401).

Overall, the different classifications overlap and can be combined as presented in Table 1.1.

Table 1.1 Parliamentary oversight over executive bureaucracies

	Ex-ante (prevention)	Ex-post (correction)
Statutory	•Tight laws •Reauthorization bills •Budget	•Budget
Non-statutory	•Politicized appointments	•Hearings •Reports •Appeal to courts
Admin. rules and procedures	•On consultations and stakeholder hearings	•On transparency •On appeals

Note: Based on Arnold 1987, McCubbins and Schwartz 1984, Huber 2000; cf. Högenauer and Neuhold (2013), ‘National Parliaments after Lisbon: Administrations on the Rise?’, OPAL Online Paper 12/2013.

However, this literature on executive civil servants does not describe political oversight over parliamentary civil servants well. Most of the mechanisms are too formalistic to govern the relationship between politicians and staff within the same institution. In addition, political oversight in the case of agencies is about controlling administrators when they implement and manage policies after parliament has adopted a legislative decision. In the case of parliamentary staff, and in particular in the context of the scrutiny of European affairs, the challenge is to control administrative activity and input before parliamentary decisions. In the context of EU affairs, parliamentary staff is usually involved in the preparation of a parliamentary decision, rather than in the long-term management of policies. Thus, the use of laws, the re-authorization of bills and administrative rules on appeals, transparency and stakeholder hearings is applicable only in the context of policy-related activity where decision-making is delegated to bureaucrats.

The instruments available for political oversight over parliamentary administrations are therefore somewhat different. In order to avoid internal conflict, national parliaments generally try to ensure that parliamentary staff is politically neutral and at the service of all parties. The ex-ante measures can take the form of rules on the political neutrality of civil servants and politically neutral appointments.

One of the main forms of control and oversight available to politicians in parliaments is trust. As politicians take the final decisions in legislatures, it is in their power to follow administrative advice or to discard it. Accordingly, it is in the power of political actors not to accept advice provided by officials if it becomes apparent that the latter are politically biased. Administrators, in turn, will anticipate that their influence depends on the extent to which they are trusted and will try to avoid any blatant bias (DeGregorio 1994: 2; Winzen 2011). Trust is strongest where administrators adhere to a written or unwritten professional code that includes transparency and neutrality as its core principles. However, lack of trust is more likely to have negative consequences on the influence of administrators if bigger – and especially governing – parties mistrust them. Manley’s study of politically biased committee staff in Congress illustrates that the opposition can do little to check staff as long as the staff is supported by the majority (1968).

In this context, Gailmard and Patty’s research into the conditions under which delegation works best is useful. Based on a formal model, the authors show that the risks of delegation are held in check if issues are delegated to officials that have ‘some measure of control over policy issues they care about’. Accordingly, politicized competence is the best ‘kind available in equilibrium’ (Gailmard and Patty 2007: 886). The model developed builds on the assumption that officials are motivated to varying degrees to invest in their career. They are thus either policy motivated ‘zealots’ or policy indifferent ‘slackers’ (Gailmard and Patty 2007: 874). Within a regime of ‘politicized competence’, zealots – and only zealots – invest in developing expertise and remain in the bureaucracy throughout their careers. A main incentive for zealots to invest in their expertise accordingly is a merit system that is based on job tenure protections combined with discretion-setting by the legislature (Gailmard and Patty 2007: 875). Note that politicized competence as conceived by Gailmard and Patty (2007) is not to be confused with politicization and partisanship but, rather, is to be seen as the willingness of officials to develop their policy expertise.

The fact that political oversight in parliaments thus relies predominantly on informal mechanisms highlights two other aspects about delegation: First, in order for a positive relationship between politicians and staff to develop, it is important that staff acts – at least to some extent – according to a logic of appropriateness, and accepts and internalizes principles of neutrality and transparency (Olsen 2006). Second, when studying these processes it is particularly important to know whether extensive delegation to administrators – beyond merely ‘technical’ tasks – takes place in the first place. Therefore, in this volume we seek to establish the types of task that are delegated to parliamentary administrators.

The literature on delegation suggests that delegation is particularly likely to occur in the context of complex issues and those of low salience (Manley 1968) – which implies a high level of delegation to parliamentary administrators in EU affairs, as these are perceived by parliaments as being both complex and of low (electoral) salience. In addition, a further incentive may lie in the desire of parliaments to reduce their dependence on the information pr...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Conceptualizing the Role of Parliamentary Administrators
• 2. Administrative Players in the European Parliament
• 3. Transnational Bureaucratic Networks in the EU: The Role of Parliamentary Officials in Inter-Parliamentary Coordination and Control
• 4. The Administrations of National Parliaments and the Scrutiny of EU Affairs
• 5. The Europeanization of National Parliamentary Administrations: Convergence or Divergence?
• 6. New Tasks, Limited Resources: Regional Parliamentary Administrations in EU Affairs
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index