The power of expertise: gauging technocracy in EMU reform negotiations

Abstract

Is the European Union a technocracy? Observers and practitioners of EU politics have debated this deceptively simple question for decades, without arriving at a clear answer. To a large extent, this is due to the elusive nature of technocracy itself, a phenomenon that is hard to define with precision, and even harder to measure empirically. To tackle this problem, the article presents a novel approach to technocracy in the EU based on the study of bargaining settings, in which political and technical actors interact horizontally and simultaneously -as opposed to sequentially-thus allowing for a better appraisal of the power of experts. Using data gathered by the 'EMU Choices' project, we apply this alternative framework to the analysis of negotiations on the reform of the Economic and Monetary Union over the period 2010-15, focusing on the role of two institutional actors: the European Central Bank and the European Commission. While we find some evidence for technocracy in EMU negotiations, this has been mostly at the hands of the hybrid Commission rather than the quintessentially technical ECB. This suggests both caution in dismissing the EU as hopelessly technocratic, and the need for further research on the nature of the Commission.

Working up the six-pack: Bargaining success in the European Council's task force on strengthening economic governance

“…Looking for evidence of technocracy, Târlea (2021: 1961) find that closeness to the Commission is associated with greater bargaining success (consistent with Lundgren et al, 2019) but that the opposite is true of proximity to the ECB's preferences. Being close to either of these institutions is correlated with lower bargaining success in dossiers that are higher in complexity, leading Tortola and Târlea (2021: 1961-1964 to conclude that the EU is perhaps not as technocratic as often thought.…”

“…Earlier work looking at decision-making in a range of policy areas also found no effect for proximity to the Commission on bargaining success for member states (Arregui and Thomson, 2009: 666–667). However, this argument has been increasingly challenged in recent analyses on the Commission's influence in reform of economic governance, where taking the same position as the Commission is associated with greater bargaining success (Lundgren et al, 2019; Tortola and Târlea, 2021). The Commission is known for its skill of taking advantage of windows of opportunity that enable actors to present major policy initiatives (Nugent and Rhinard, 2016: 1201) and as an information hub for policy (Bauer and Becker, 2014: 226). H1: The greater the distance between a member state's policy position and the preference of the Commission, the less bargaining success a member state will have.…”

“…Research that examines the role of the ECB during the crisis (Schoeller, 2018; Tortola and Pansardi, 2019) has argued it has gone beyond its mandate of price stability. The ECB is the foremost guardian of the Euro and was established as a ‘technical actor par excellence’ (Tortola and Târlea, 2021: 1954). If the ECB is expected to have more influence when the subject of decision-making is more complex and technical (Tortola and Târlea, 2021), then the complexity of the economic governance reform discussed in the Task Force should mean the ECB was in a position to provide unrivalled technical expertise through, for example, its written submission to the Task Force, something which neither the Commission nor the vast majority of member states could do.…”

A “More Political” Commission? Reassessing EC Politicization through Language

“…Once again, it is the Juncker Commission that is usually seen as culminating this trend, with its unprecedented number of high‐profile members (Wonka and Döring, 2014). Individual characteristics link to politicization not only because they influence the priorities and modus operandi of office holders, but also because they impact on the Commission's sway within the EU system, by affecting its components' (and in the first place the President's) leadership skills, and their effectiveness in negotiating with and persuading institutional and political counterparts – above all member state governments (Russack, 2019; Tortola and Tarlea, 2021).…”

Technocracy Ascendant: Central Banking and Ideology after 2008

“…A burgeoning empirical literature has also examined technocratic attitudes among public servants (Andersen, 2021;Raudla, Douglas, & Mohr, 2021;Ribbhagen, 2011;Tortola & Tarlea, 2021;Wood, 2021) and support for technocratic politicians and forms of politics among the voting public (Bertsou & Caramani, 2020;Bertsou & Pastorella, 2017;Lavezzolo, Ramiro, & Fernández-Vázquez, 2021) in Western democracies. Another strand of literature has delineated the rise of 'technopopulism'-the blending of technocratic and populist 'modes of political action'-as the dominant political logic of contemporary Western democracy (Bickerton & Invernizzi-Accetti, 2021;Caramani, 2017;Kriesi, 2014;Piquer & Jäger, 2020).…”