European Institutions and the Policy Process

Introduction

In the European Union (EU) political sphere, the European commission (EC) constitutes an important body. Different discourses have emerged within an increasing body of literature on the roles of the EC and its capacity to push through its agenda since its establishment through the Rome pacts. Kassim and Dimitrakopoulos identify the EC as a supranational institution acting as an initiator, guardian, and administrator of various legal frameworks.¹

It also serves the principle functions of external representation coupled with mediation.² These functions of the EC give it two implications on the EU. Firstly, in execution of external representation, guardian, and the initiation tasks, the EC steers policies developed by the EU. This aspect helps in the identification of the institution as having supreme influence on the EU actors. Conversely, when executing the roles of mediation and administration, the EC supports the directions as determined by the EU member states.

This assertion suggests that the commission is lowly influential on matters of making policies within the EU umbrella. These two different points of view shape the debate on the capacity of the commission to execute is functions without having to persuade member states. This paper utilises the second perspective in analysing the role and functions of the EC. Since the commission operates through the cooperation of different member states, the paper deploys the principle-agent model in arguing that the strength of the commission is based upon its power to persuade the other actors in the EU system.

The European commission (EC) background

The European commission constitutes an executive organ of the EU charged with proposing various legislations, implementation of decisions, and ensuring maintenance of the treaties made by the EU member states during their daily operations. The EC operations are structured in the form of a cabinet comprising 28 members with one being the president.³ The European council proposes the president, who is then voted in by European parliament.

The congress selects 27 other people of the body, but the head of state is required to give approval before the European legislative body votes in the entire body of 28 people. The EC was established to function independently and exercise supranational authority.⁴ The treaties leading to the establishment of the body does not permit member states to interfere with the operations of the commission. The commissioners are also required to make policies in a neutral manner, without favouring their nations of origin.

The fact that the EC possesses parliamentary scheme makes it dissimilar from other bodies of the EU. This aspect implies that it constitutes the only institution, which can offer a legislative proposal formally.⁵ However, the CFSP also shares this responsibility, though the commission does not possess any right of judicial co-operation on matters of crime and the power of policing. In situations where the parliament and the European council request certain legislations, the EC provides the foundation for the proposals.

Such domination ensures outlining and improvement of the EU ruling in a logical and synchronized manner. However, the monopoly induces some criticism from actors in the EU system claiming that the parliament also needs to have some level of power of legislation.⁶ Indeed, the Lisbon pacts give room for people to direct the EC to make laws on certain matters through formal requests that demand 1,000,000 people’s consents. Nevertheless, such a direction is not binding to the commission. This aspect suggests that the EC must operate as an independent body by being free from any external influences in its policy-making processes.

The powers of the EC in matters of proposition of law focus mainly in developing economic regulations. For instance, it has developed various legislations pegged on the ‘precautionary principle.’ This aspect implies that the legislations are called into action on substantive exposure of the environment to various hazards such as negative implications of climatic change.

This element opposes the evaluation of various regulations on their capacity to impact member states economically. To this level, the EC has developed laws that are stricter in comparison with existing ones in the EU member countries. Owing to the range of the EU bazaar, the impacts of the EC rulings are experienced in international platforms.⁷

Recently, the commission has engaged in criminal legislations, which attracts hefty criticisms. For instance, it introduced the concept of ecological crime following oil spillage in Cote d’ivoire, which was carried by a European ship in 2006. Though this occurrence attracted a legal dispute in a European based courtyard, the liberty of the commission to protect aquatic life was enhanced. The EC has also made proposals for the legislating on protection of intellectual property and incitements related to acts of terrorism as recruitment coupled with training of terrorists.

The need for persuasion of member states in driving EC’s agenda

Agents’ and principal’s preferences

The influences that can strengthen the EC emanate from the member states. This assertion suggests the existence of a relationship best described by the principle-agent model. Pollack argues that the principal-agent model depicts hierarchical “model where actor or a set of actors known as principals, may choose to delegate certain functions to another actor, known as agents”⁸.

In this sense, the EU member states collectively comprise principals while the EC assumes the functions of agents. Therefore, the EC possesses leadership abilities that are not only limited to the actions of the agents, but also requiring excitation by the principals. In deploying the principal-agent model to analyse the incapability of the EC to operate effectively without persuading other EU’s system actors, several reasons explain the dependency of the EC on the member states’ influences.

In the principal-agent relationship, there exits the need for distribution of various preferences between the principal and the agents.⁹ For the EC and member states, preferences are on various policy areas of interest to the commission and the member states. While the commission reserves the power to design policies in its respective areas of mandate, such policies are implemented through the principals. Therefore, the principals can either foster or frustrate effectiveness of the EC to design and implement the policies. Frustration is largely undesired. Consequently, the commission will by no choice resort to persuading the principals to support its policies.

Literature probing the effectiveness of the EC in executing its mandates needs to consider its substantive capability in setting its agenda from the paradigms of the roles of principals in the EU. In such a context, the commission acquired the capacity to establish optimal strategies for realisation of antecedents coupled with policy objectives.¹⁰

This move ensures that principals collectively benefit from unanimous actions. Nevertheless, arriving at an action acceptable to all member states involves persuasion of the principals. In this sense, persuasion is important since the costs for developing unanimously acceptable policies in the form of negotiations may curtail achievements of the EC. Indeed, the so termed as transaction costs in policy making process manifest themselves in the form of commitments, negotiations, and supply of necessary information requisite for making informed and effective decisions.¹¹

The agent, in this case, the EC, plays important roles in enhancing compliance to its preferences on specific policy areas when policy costs are commitment based. Principals may lack the willingness to bind or commit themselves to policies established through persuasions between the agents and predecessors to ensure their maintenances in the future.

In this extent, agents ensure compliance through monitoring of various agreed upon policy areas depending on agreed implementation strategies.¹² The agents must constantly remind the principals on the agreements entered into between it and the predecessors. However, this aspect does not form an outright rule that the principals will comply. The governments’ policies are influenced by philosophical school of thought in public administration adapted by the current regimes in power.

Although the agent (EC) can recall the biding pacts entered between the nations’ past political regimes to enhance compliance, friction associated with uninterested commitments may affect the effectiveness of the EC to achieve the intended outcomes upon implementation of certain policies. Therefore, persuasion of regime in power on the significance of policies designed by it remains an important determinant of the strength of the EC in pushing its agendas successfully.

In incidences where transaction costs depend on the information requirements, principals encounter sophisticated environment for pushing their policy agenda due to the extensiveness of policy areas requiring reconciliation. Pollack argues that in such situations, expert aid is incredibly important in ensuring that principals develop sufficient policy alternatives.¹³

This assertion suggests that the agent, the EC, only aids in the development of policies following broad and sketchy set of alternatives proposed by the member states. Under this approach, the EC does not have to persuade member states (principals) to commit to a given policy. However, where the recommended policy alternative fails to reflect the majority member states suggested set of alternatives, persuasion on appropriateness of the minority set of alternatives to comprise the best policy alternative becomes important for the effectiveness in the implementation of the developed policy frameworks.

In case negotiations are required in selecting policy alternatives, bridging preferences of different actors become important.¹⁴ In situations of high transaction costs, the EC possesses independent power and vice versa. Dependent power for the EC in pushing its agendas implies more needs for persuasion of the principals to behave in a particular way or adopt certain strategies necessary for the EC to execute its mandates successfully.

Transactional constituencies in policymaking

The capacity of the commission to generate a large amount of information regarding a particular policy area determines the threshold for its reliance on the EU member states to agree on its proposals collectively. According to Pollack, this aspect involves the exploitation of various transactional constituencies.¹⁵ The degree to which the EC mobilises existing transaction constituents determines its ability to pressurise various member states or bypass them in the process of executing its mandates.

While this move may be probable in myriads of policy areas, it is highly improbable to work well in the policy areas involving enlargement. Unanimous decision is required from ministers forming the council for successful formulation and implementation of enlargement policies.¹⁶ This execution requires persuasion of the actors. The capacity to mobilise a high number of transactional constituents remains instrumental in permitting the EC to gain accessibility to enormous information resources.

Information distribution

Information distribution implies the capacity of principals and agents to provide information and knowledge on various policy decisions. In some situations, the EC possesses information that all member organisations lack. In this sense, the EC operates as an epistemic community in the policymaking process.¹⁷ The capacity of the EC to possess information that principals (members states) do not have creates informational asymmetry.

In such a context, the member states may give the EC autonomy, as it possesses the requisite knowledge in development coupled with implementation of certain policies. Therefore, member states act as followers without the need for the commission to persuade them to behave or act in a certain manner during the policymaking process. However, this autonomy is highly challenging from the paradigms of the principal-agent model, especially in matters of delegation of powers.

Delegation of powers

The autonomy of the EC in policymaking, by virtue of the existence of informational asymmetry, introduces two main difficulties on the part of the principals (member states). Pollack indentifies these factors as slippage and shrinkage.¹⁸ Slippage refers to the pervasiveness of the agent (the EC) to act in a manner contravening the principal’s aims.

The agent may also deploy power delegated to it to explore various interests opposed to those of the principals¹⁹. This aspect is referred to as shrinkage. These challenges arise from differing capacities for agents and principals to generate the necessary information for making policies. Therefore, the EC can push for its agendas without persuading the member states subject to possession of more information on the best policy implementation strategies.

Shrinkage entangles a process producing less implication on the EU member states. Tallberg maintains that this reason makes its unlikely to take place²⁰. Consequently, even though the EC can manoeuvre easily over policies, shrinkage leads to few effects in the member states, and thus such policies are of little significance as they do not necessary affect the conduct of the principals.

Indeed, the EC must have its voice heard, through policies that it develops, by all member states. This assertion suggests that the only policies that are most important to the EC are those affecting the conduct of the member states. Such policies require persuasion since unanimous decisions are required for them to constitute general guidelines applicable to all member states.

Although the principal-agent framework may provide an understanding of the interaction between the agents, in this particular case, the EC, and principals (member states), the relationship is highly polarised. From one perspective, the EC only follows the direction set out by the member states, which makes supranational organisations entirely void of autonomy of mandates. On a different perspective, the agent acquires some autonomy through delegation by the principals.

The autonomy compels the agents to act in a manner contravening the principal’s interests prompting them to deploy stricter supervisions, thus providing limitation to the power of the supranational organisation. Therefore, it follows that a supranational organisation as the EC must always persuade and convince the principals (members states) that its policies are compliant to their collective interests for it to acquire a good operational environment and effectively push through its policies in the implementation process. This aspect implies that the strength of the EC is based on its power to persuade the other actors in the EU system. These actors are mainly the EU member states.

Dependency of EC on persuasion of EU actors

The previous section argued that by analysing the EC and the member states from the theoretical model of principal-agents relationships, the supranational organisation operations are effective if they can influence the actors. A dichotomy of the EC reveals that the institution is constituted of people who have different influential capabilities. It cannot be alienated from political actors. Smith suggests that commissioners for the EC are important icons for the representation of interests of external actors in the political spheres.²¹

He further claims that the commissioners’ actions depend on whether they previously served in bureaucratic or political careers. They cause fragmentation of the EC, those drawn from larger member states have more influence compared to those drawn from smaller ones, and their portfolio determines their level of influence.²² This realisation introduces the concepts of power and control of the policymaking processes in supranational organisations as the EC. Based on Smith’s dissection of the influential capability of different commissioners of the EC, it is arguable that the power possessed by commissioners increases their persuasive capacity to make the rest of actors in the EU system behave in certain ways.

Egeberg supports Smith’s argument that commissioners serve duo roles of propagating interests supporting their political inclinations and countries of origin and the functions reserved for them within the EC in the collective interest of all member states.²³ This perspective implies that they bring into the commission policies favouring their inclinations and nations and attempt to persuade other actors to support them.

Egeberg reckons that in theory, “the commissioners’ decision is accounted for by considering the organisational structure, demography, locus, and culture within which they are embedded, as well as the type of policy they are dealing with.”²⁴ Arguably, they make policy decisions profiling these affiliations and tend to persuade other actors to adopt the policies. Where specific commissioners have more powers in influencing policies as suggested by Smith²⁵, it follows that the policies most likely to be adopted by the EC are consistent with interests of the most powerful actors in terms of exerting more influence to all principals (member states).

The EC, through its representatives, the commissioners, is not necessary comprised of independent Europeanists. Making decisions reflecting interest of political actors call for the EC to possess the capacity to persuade the rest of the EU actors that its enacted policies correspond to their interest. Hooghe supports this argument by adding that the EC commissioners find themselves entrapped in the challenge of making decisions, which are politically contentious.²⁶ This aspect suggests that they are susceptible to political vulnerabilities.

Hence, they must reconcile this vulnerability with the power bestowed to them by the principals. In this effort, contention with politicians from different principals or the national bureaucrats is important²⁷ Failure to acquire it leads to shifting various blames on unpopular policies at the EC. In a bid to avoid this challenge, the EC, through its commissioners, must persuade and influence the national bureaucrats to support its policies. In addition, this capacity depends on the power possessed by the commission members. Smaller principals have only limited ability to oppose policies advanced by larger principals successfully, which implementation persuasion emerges from commissioners having greater powers as Smith argues.²⁸

Success in pushing through the EC’s legislative agenda calls for the commission to win the faith of external actors. Hooghe supports this assertion adding that public “management reforms in the commission have sought to align organisational methods in the public sector with those in the private sector”.²⁹ These changes are also reflected in the principles of work adopted by the commission including hierarchy, specialist expertise, and political initiatives.

Arguably, the goal here is to ensure that the commission receives positive backing from various key players having interest in its manner of operation. Bauer contends that this concern allows the EC to promote organisational networks and show loyalty to various political masters.³⁰ For the masters to support the initiatives of the EC, negotiations, which create the necessity for persuasions of various actors, become important for the effectiveness of the EC in execution of its mandates.

The need to persuade the rest of the EU actors accounts for changing structure of the EC from supranational organisations to intergovernmental organisations. Peterson notes that the EC constitutes one of the most powerful organisations in the global administration even though its influence is declining following Santer’s resignation.³¹

Although recent reforms of the commission have been instrumental in increasing its ability to constitute a modern organisation serving the interests of Europe, Peterson suggests that the EC is rapidly becoming an intergovernmental organisation.³² This averment implies that it is also losing its autonomy and focusing more on integrating itself into the EU systems. Integration and loss of autonomy means that the rest of the actors in the EU system have principle say in affecting legislative policies developed by the EC. Therefore, successful implementation of the policies calls for the EC to persuade these actors to support them.

The EC encompasses a chief actor in the EU system’s politics. In the execution of these roles, the influence from member states in making the EC policies becomes inevitable. Operating in a political arena calls an organisation to adopt different policies popular to some key players and unpopular to other actors. In as such, the EC is overly neither independent nor a technocrat supranational organisation in the EU political arena.³³

On investigating various incentives in appointment coupled with nomination of various EC commissioners, having the capacity to influence policy preferences adopted by the commissioners, while in office, Wonka suggests that the EC has vivid political union with the EU’s principals³⁴ (member states). Arguably, in maintaining the strength of these ties, the EC cannot legislate on policies, which may affect the principals negatively, although it is mandated to instil sanctions to noncompliant principals. The degree to which the EC can persuade actors is an essential determinant of its strengths.

In the evaluation of this capacity, Hodson studied and evaluated the capacity of the EC to highlight supranational entrepreneurship after the 2008 to 2009 global financial crisis. The author argues, “The Commission used initiatives and/or mobilised ideas and information to pursue a supranational European Union (EU) economic policy in few cases.”³⁵ However, he notes that the commission showed reluctance in supporting integration initiatives where such initiatives had no probability of success.

In some situations, some initiatives were dominated by selective preferences due to the EU executives’ partisanship.³⁶ This assertion suggests that after the 2008 global financial crisis, the EC never attempted to engage in initiatives that would foster economic recovery among its member states if it could not solicit for their acceptance with success. Indeed, it was perhaps of no importance to develop policies that would become unpopular among the rest of the EU actors so that persuasions to implement them would yield no fruits.

The EC was established mainly to further the EU’s agendas that are of common interests among all the actors in the EU system. Peterson explores the processes of evolution for the EC in terms of its roles, power, and effectiveness after elapsing of the Delors’ tenure.³⁷ He maintains that the strengths and effectiveness of the EC need evaluation from the context of its capacity to further the EU’s common goals, objectives and aims, the capacity to protect the interest of all member states, provide appropriate leadership, and serve its functions in an effective manner.³⁸

However, leadership approaches deployed by the EC leaders vary depending on the leadership situations. These concerns prompted Tommel to conduct research on leadership styles of Santer, Delors, and Prodi by focusing on the capacity of the three leaders to portray transactional and transformational leadership.³⁹ He concluded that Prodi and Santer served as transactional leaders while Delors served as a transformational leader.⁴⁰

Transformational leaders function well under situations requiring sudden turnaround, transition, or even a spark to rejuvenate the capacity of the followers to perform their duties. Transformational leadership style has the merit of setting visions coupled with inspirations necessary for the followers in an effort to drive organisational success. In the context of the EC and the member states’ relationships, the president of the commission is the leader while member states are the followers, as they are affected by the policies developed by the EC.

Transformational leaders possess the ability to ensure adequate and effective communication of success strategies and visions to all principals.⁴¹ Communication acts as a tool for influence and persuasions of the followers to embrace the policies developed by the leader together with his or her assistants, in this case, the EC commission members. Transactional leaders are highly dependent on the cognitions of the principals. In this context, whether Santer, Delors and Prodi deployed transactional or transformational leadership, influence, and persuasion of the principals was crucial in the effort of the EC to develop acceptable policies during their tenure.

Santer, Delors, and Prodi led the commission in different ways. The degree to which each of the presidents integrated the member states in decision making during the policy formulation and implementation process served as an indicator of the strength of the EC. Peterson argues, “The Delors’ commissions were far more an exception in their strength than is Santer’s in its weakness.”⁴²

Santer had promised to create lifelong legacy on how to manage the EC effectively, but he ended up leaving it highly fragmented and dominated by national rivalries⁴³. Arguably, this rivalry emanated from the increasing pressurisation of the agents by the principals to satisfy their interests. In striking common grounds between the interests of different actors, the EC definitely has to consider negotiating and persuading the principals to embrace particular policies depending on their (policies) capacity to satisfy common objectives of the rest of EU system’s actors.

The preceding discussions provide evidence on the argument that the strength of the European commission is based on its power to persuade the other actors in the EU system. However, Egeberg counter argues that international organisations are controlled and led by ministers affiliated to institutional frameworks at national levels, but the EC’s commissioners are affiliated to institutional frameworks operating at an international level.⁴⁴

Therefore, the EC serves as an important laboratory for experimentation of effectiveness of supranational organisations’ capacity to serve equal interests of all member states. Arguably, scenario aspect can only occur when the EC operates as an independent organisation with ability to enforce its legislations on all its principals irrespective of power disparities amongst them. However, as argued by Bauer, the EC is politically vulnerable due to pressures emanating from major bureaucratic actors in the rest of the EU system⁴⁵. Hence, the ability of the EC to execute its mandates without persuading the major actors in the EU political system remains questionable.

Conclusion

The European Commission makes proposals for legislations binding the EU member states. In the execution of this mandate, the commissioners have an obligation to make neutral policies in a bid to ensure that the EC reflects the interest of the EU, and not the interests of individual states making the union. However, this paper argues that the EC operates in a political environment dominated by actors in the EU possessing different bureaucratic power and interests.

These challenges lead to the development of legislative policies interpreted by the principals as popular or unpopular policies. Since one of the principle mandates of the EC entails reflecting the face of Europe in the legislative frameworks and proposals given by the EC, it must deal with the challenge of convincing the principals that its legislative proposals meet this mandate. Therefore, the strength of the commission is based on its power to persuade the other actors in the EU system.

Bibliography

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Footnotes

1. H Kassim & D Dimitrakopoulos, ‘The Commission and the Future of Europe’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 14, no. 8, 2007, p.1249.
2. Ibid, p.1249.
3. Ibid, p.1251.
4. A Smith, ‘Why European Commissioners Matter’, Journal of Common Market Studies, vol.41, no. 1, 2003, p.137.
5. L Hooghe, ‘Images of Europe: How Commission officials conceive their institution’s role’, Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, 2012, p.87.
6. Kassim & Dimitrakopoulos, p.1251.
7. ibid, p.1253.
8. M Pollack, ‘The Engines of Integrations? Supranational Autonomy and Influence in The European Union’, in W Sandholz & A Stone (eds.), European Integration and Supranational Governance, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, pp. 217-250.
9. Ibid p.224.
10. M Bauer, ‘Reforming the European Commission’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 15, no. 5, 2008, p. 626.
11. Pollack, p.227
12. Kassim & Dimitrakopoulos, p.1256.
13. Pollack, p.229.
14. Ibid, p.230.
15. ibid, p.237.
16. M Egeberg, ‘Experiments in supranational institution-building: the European Commission as a laboratory’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol.19, no.6, 2012, p.782.
17. Pollack, p.229.
18. ibid, p.233.
19. J Tallberg, ‘Delegation to Supranational Institutions: Why, How and with What Consequences?’ West European Politics, vol. 25, no. 1, 2002, p. 23.
20. Ibid, p.25.
21. Smith, p.137.
22. Ibid, p.137.
23. M Egeberg, ‘Executive Politics as usual: Role Behaviour& conflict dimensions in the College of Commissioners’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol.13, no.1, 2006, p.1.
24. ibid, p.1.
25. Smith, p.139.
26. L Hooghe, ‘Images of Europe: How Commission officials conceive their institution’s role’, Journal of Common Market Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, 2012, p.87.
27. Hooghe, p.89.
28. Smith, p.139.
29. Hooghe, p.89.
30. Bauer, p.657.
31. J Peterson, ‘Enlargement, reform and the European Commission: Weathering a perfect storm?’ Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 15, no.5, 2008, p.761.
32. Ibid, p.761
33. C Meyer, ‘Does EU politics become mediatised? The case of the European Commission’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol. 16, no.7, 2009, p.1048.
34. A Wonka, ‘Technocratic and Independent? The appointment of European Commissioners and its policy implications’, Journal of European Public Policy vol.14, no.2, 2007, p.169.
35. D Hodson, ‘The Little Engine that Wouldn’t: Supranational entrepreneurship and the Barroso Commission’, Journal of European Integration, vol.35, no.3, 2013, pp. 301.
36. Hodson, p.301.
37. J Peterson, ‘The Santer Era: The European Commission in normative, historical and theoretical perspective’, Journal of European Public Policy, vol.6, no.1, 1999, p.46.
38. Ibid, p.46
39. I Tommel, ‘The Presidents of the European Commission: Transactional or transforming leaders?’ Journal of Common Market Studies vol.51, no.4, 2013, p.789.
40. Ibid, p.789.
41. Ibid, p.791.
42. Peterson, p.46.
43. Ibid, p.46.
44. Egeberg, p.779.
45. Bauer, p. 673.