Why Strong Coordination at One Level of Government is Incompatible with Strong Coordination Across Levels: The case of the European Union

Introduction: ‘Better coordination’, meaning creating more consistency among decisions horizontally as well as vertically, is usually a stated goal in modern political-administrative systems. Recent administrative doctrines have shared a near universal agreement on the desirability of ‘better coordination’. What is often not realized, however, is the impossibility of combining strong coordination of implementation processes at one level of government with strong coordination across levels. In order to illustrate our argument, we use the multilevel European Union (EU) polity as our case in this paper. The EU inherited ‘indirect administration’ from classical international organizations: policies adopted by the international organization are to be implemented nationally by member states themselves, and not by bodies owned by the international organization (Hofmann 2008). Such an arrangement, characterized by relatively weak coordination across levels, allows for corresponding strong coordination at the national level. However, at the same time, this has often led to legislation being incorporated and applied rather differently across countries (Treib 2014)

European Parliament staff: who are they and do their backgrounds influence decision-making?

The European Parliament and the political groups within it employ a number of staff members to help co-ordinate various aspects of the Parliament’s legislative work. But who are these staff members and do their individual backgrounds influence their decisions? Morten Egeberg, Åse Gornitzka and Jarle Trondal present the results of a survey of European Parliament officials. They write that while staff come from a variety of different backgrounds, factors such as their nationality and previous experiences have only a modest effect on their decision-making behaviour. Nevertheless, these factors may have a more symbolic impact, for instance in terms of the trust placed in the Parliament by citizens

Fusion between Phagosomes, Early and Late Endosomes: A Role for Actin in Fusion between Late, but Not Early Endocytic Organelles

Actin is implicated in membrane fusion, but the precise mechanisms remain unclear. We showed earlier that membrane organelles catalyze the de novo assembly of F-actin that then facilitates the fusion between latex bead phagosomes and a mixture of early and late endocytic organelles. Here, we correlated the polymerization and organization of F-actin with phagosome and endocytic organelle fusion processes in vitro by using biochemistry and light and electron microscopy. When membrane organelles and cytosol were incubated at 37°C with ATP, cytosolic actin polymerized rapidly and became organized into bundles and networks adjacent to membrane organelles. By 30-min incubation, a gel-like state was formed with little further polymerization of actin thereafter. Also during this time, the bulk of in vitro fusion events occurred between phagosomes/endocytic organelles. The fusion between latex bead phagosomes and late endocytic organelles, or between late endocytic organelles themselves was facilitated by actin, but we failed to detect any effect of perturbing F-actin polymerization on early endosome fusion. Consistent with this, late endosomes, like phagosomes, could nucleate F-actin, whereas early endosomes could not. We propose that actin assembled by phagosomes or late endocytic organelles can provide tracks for fusion-partner organelles to move vectorially toward them, via membrane-bound myosins, to facilitate fusion

The compound machinery of government: The case of seconded officials in the European commission

This article explores the compound machinery of government. Attention is directed toward decision making within the core executive of the European Union - the European Commission. The article studies seconded national civil servants (SNEs) hired on short-term contracts. The analysis benefits from an original and rich body of surveys and interview data derived from current and former SNEs. The decision-making dynamics of SNEs are shown to contain a compound mix of departmental, epistemic, and supranational dynamics. This study clearly demonstrates that the socializing power of the Commission is conditional and only partly sustained when SNEs exit the Commission. Any long-lasting effect of socialization within European Union's executive machinery of government is largely absent. The compound decision-making dynamics of SNEs are explained by (1) the organizational affiliations of SNEs, (2) the formal organization of the Commission apparatus, and (3) only partly by processes of resocialization of SNEs within the Commission

The European Commission is a unique ‘laboratory’ for supranational institution building

As Morten Egeberg writes, international organisations are typically composed of representatives with affiliations to the national level. The European Commission, in contrast, is one of the few international institutions in which key actors owe their allegiances to the supranational level. Assessing the potential for the Commission to act as a ‘laboratory’ for experiments in supranational institution building, he finds that nationality plays only a minor role in influencing the behaviour of Commission staff, and is simply one of many factors influencing the actions of Commissioners

NASJONAL ADMINISTRATIV SUVERENITET – MYTE ELLER REALITET?

Til tross for EUs overnasjonale karakter på de fleste politikkområder, har det vært vanlig å si at også medlemsstatene nyter en form for administrativ suverenitet. Med dette menes at selv om EUs politikk (for eksempel i form av lover) kommer i stand på en overnasjonal måte, har det likevel i hovedsak vært opp til nasjonale myndigheter å stå for den pålagte gjennomføringen. Ved at EUs lover i stor grad har vært gitt i form av direktiver, kan dette ha gitt nasjonale myndigheter betydelig rom for tilpasning i iverksettingsfasen. Mye tyder imidlertid på at også den administrative suvereniteten er under press. Vi ser en tendens til at Kommisjonen, ofte understøttet av et raskt voksende antall EU-byråer, involverer seg direkte i hvordan EU-lovgivning skal praktiseres ved å samarbeide tett med nasjonale direktorater og tilsyn, gjerne uten å innlemme nasjonale departementer tilsvarende. EU-myndighetene mangler egne etater på det nasjonale nivået, men synes altså i stedet å knytte seg sterkt til allerede relativt fristilte nasjonale direktorater og tilsyn som således får en «to-hattet» rolle i forhold til eget departement på den ene siden, og i forhold til Kommisjonen og EU-byråer på den andre siden. I en viss forstand blir således nasjonale direktorater og tilsyn deler av to administrasjoner; en nasjonal så vel som en felles unionsadministrasjon. Vi viser i dette kapitlet at norsk forvaltnings virkemåte under EØS-avtalen i praksis ikke synes vesentlig forskjellig fra virkemåten til medlemsstatenes forvaltning når det gjelder iverksettingsfasen. Også den norske «administrative suvereniteten» er således under press

Political Leadership and Bureaucratic Autonomy: Effects of Agencification

Previous studies have shown that agencification tends to reduce political control within a government portfolio. However, doubts have been raised as regards the robustness of these findings. In this article we document that agency officials pay significantly less attention to signals from executive politicians than their counterparts within ministerial (cabinet-level) departments. This finding holds when we control for variation in tasks, the political salience of issue areas and officials’ rank. Simultaneously we observe that the three control variables all have an independent effect on officials’ attentiveness to a steer from above. In addition we find that the more organizational capacity available within the respective ministerial departments, the more agency personnel tend to assign weight to signals from the political leadership. We apply large-N questionnaire data at three points in time; spanning two decades and shifting administrative doctrines

Agencification and location: Does agency site matter?

Two decades of New Public Management have placed agencifiction high on the agenda of administrative policy-makers. However, agencification (and de-agencification) has been one of the enduring themes of public administration. Agencies organized at arm's length from ministerial departments have fairly often been located outside of the capital or political centre. Although practitioners tend to assign some weight to central versus peripheral location as regards political-administrative behavior, this relationship has been almost totally ignored by scholars in the field. In this paper, based on a large-N elite survey, we show that agency autonomy, agency influence and inter-institutional coordination seem to be relatively unaffected by agency site. This study also specifies some conditions under which this finding is valid. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC