Participation of Implementing Agencies in European Administrative Networks

Abstract

European administrative networks are an important part of the functioning of the EU, mainly because of their role in bridging the gap between policy implementation knowledge and the policy‐making activities of the European Commission. However, the extent to which implementing agencies actually participate in these networks, and which conditions explain network participation, have not yet been investigated. This article fills this gap by studying the conditions under which implementing agencies are expected to make more use of European administrative networks. Therefore, we turn to the participation of domestic implementing agencies in an administrative network during the common agricultural policy's post‐2013 reform. Relying on a fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, this case indicates that longer EU membership, in combination with a large staff and domestic implementation issues, contributes to more active participation of implementing agencies in administrative networks.

Flernivåstaten og krisehåndtering

“…Studiet av europeiske administrative nettverk har vist hvordan de har utviklet seg fra allerede eksisterende nettverksformasjoner, hvor tette båndene er innad i nettverkenef.eks. hvordan nettverkene bidrar til å koordinere beslutninger på tvers av styringsnivåer -, og hvordan de påvirker offentlige beslutningsprosesser ved å spre ekspertise og forme integrerte kunnskapsfellesskap (Maestenbroek m.fl., 2020;Polman, 2020).…”

Reap what you sow: implementing agencies as strategic actors in policy feedback dynamics

“…The CAP is a European policy domain in which policy changes take place on a regular basis and in which processes of path dependency and policy feedback are frequently used to explain the outcome of policy reforms (e.g., Daugbjerg, 2003Daugbjerg, , 2009Garzon, 2006;Kay, 2003;Kuhmonen, 2018). In the CAP, implementing agencies are also known to have direct access channels to the European Commission (Polman 2018(Polman , 2020. This makes the CAP an appropriate case to illustrate different types of implementation feedback.…”