Experiments in Supranational Institution-Building: The European Commission as a Laboratory

Egeberg, Morten

doi:10.1080/13501763.2012.681456

Cited by 33 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(44 reference statements)

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“…Two sets of theoretical arguments challenge this reliance on extraorganizational factors to explain individuals' roles and role perceptions in organizations. Whereas recent social constructivist work has carefully studied the potential importance of resocialization processes inside organizations (Checkel, ; Murdoch, Connolly, Geys, & Kassim, ), organization theory scholarship has concentrated on institutions' organizational specialization determining social interaction within public sector organizations (Egeberg, ; Trondal, ). Both literatures challenge the assumption that roles in organizations primarily originate from outside these organizations, but in distinct ways.…”

Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

How pre‐ and postrecruitment factors shape role perceptions of European Commission officials

2017

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Individuals' role perceptions are central guides to their behavior and choices as members of an organization. Understanding organizational dynamics thus requires knowledge about the determinants of such role perceptions, as well as whether-and when-organizations can influence them. This article brings forward a theoretical framework allowing for both prerecruitment (extraorganizational) and postrecruitment (intraorganizational) determinants of individuals' role perceptions, and examines its empirical implications using a large-N data set of temporary officials in the European Commission. We find that intergovernmental and epistemic role perceptions are strongly linked to prerecruitment factors (such as educational and professional background), whereas postrecruitment factors (such as length of affiliation and embeddedness within the Commission) are the main driving force behind supranational and departmental role perceptions. This heterogeneity in the importance of pre-and postrecruitment factors for distinct role perceptions has important consequences for conceptualizing organizational change.

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Section: Theoretical Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

How pre‐ and postrecruitment factors shape role perceptions of European Commission officials

2017

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“…As a consequence of their cross-cutting nature, transversal proposals easily exceed the competence area of the leading DG that is preparing them. Commission services are organised along functionally specialised lines (Egeberg, 2012) and so a trade-off is likely to occur between issue transversality and the problem-solving capacity of a leading service regarding that issue. Put differently, transversality is detrimental to the problemsolving capacity of individual DGs and gives way to information asymmetries.…”

Section: The Effect Of Uncertainty and Salience On Expert Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Politics behind the Consultation of Expert Groups: An Instrument to Reduce Uncertainty or to Offset Salience?

Ballaert¹

2015

PaG

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This paper answers the following question: Do the uncertainty and salience of issues determine whether the European Commission will use an expert group to assist with policy formulation? Using rationalist theory, three hypotheses test whether transversality, the importance of standard-setting and the salience of a policy proposal determine whether a Commission DG will ask an expert group to assist in preparing that same proposal. Data was retrieved from official documents via EUR-Lex. A binary logistic regression analysis has been conducted on a sample of 260 proposals that were drafted by DG Climate Action, DG Communications Networks, Content & Technology, DG Environment and DG Internal Market and Services. All proposals were adopted between 2010 and 2013. The empirical analysis shows that expert group involvement in policy formulation is neither negligible nor ubiquitous in terms of frequency as expert groups assisted in preparing 33.5% of the proposals. DGs were significantly more likely to consult an expert group when the proposal under preparation was more transversal in nature and/or when that proposal treated standard-setting more pronouncedly. In contrast, the salience of a proposal was shown to be insignificantly related to the presence of an expert group during policy formulation.

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“…Also, a review of the literature on the role of nationality in Commission decision-making concludes that Commission officials' national background plays only a minor role. However, nationality matters somewhat more regarding commissioners' behaviour, but makes up only one of several components of their highly compound role (Egeberg, 2012b).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Representative Bureaucracy and the Role of Expertise in Politics

Trondal

Murdoch

Geys

2015

PaG

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The vast majority of existing studies on bureaucratic representation focus on bureaucracies' permanent and internal staff. Yet, the rising sophistication of modern democracies and the technocratization of political life are gradually inducing an increased reliance on external experts to assist in the development and implementation of policy decisions. This trend, we argue, raises the need to extend studies of bureaucratic representation to such external and non-permanent experts in governmental affairs. In this article, we take a first step in this direction using seconded national experts (SNEs) in the European Commission as our empirical laboratory. Our results highlight that Commission SNEs do not appear representative of their constituent population (i.e., the EU-27 population) along a number of socio-demographic dimensions. Moreover, we find that the role perception of "experts" is primarily explained by organizational affiliation, and only secondarily by demographic characteristics (except, of course, education).

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Experiments in Supranational Institution-Building: The European Commission as a Laboratory

Cited by 33 publications

References 42 publications

How pre‐ and postrecruitment factors shape role perceptions of European Commission officials

How pre‐ and postrecruitment factors shape role perceptions of European Commission officials

The Politics behind the Consultation of Expert Groups: An Instrument to Reduce Uncertainty or to Offset Salience?

Representative Bureaucracy and the Role of Expertise in Politics

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