The autonomy of European Union Agencies. A comparative study of institutional development.

he creation of European Union agencies is arguably one of the most prominent institutional innovations at the EU level in recent history. Especially since the early 1990s, the EU and its member states delegated a wide range of (semi-)regulatory, monitoring, and coordination tasks to a quickly growing number of agencies. Most existing research focuses on the creation of these agencies. As a result, we do not know much about how agencies develop after their creation. EU agencies are formally independent, but do they also behave autonomously in practice? How does actual autonomy vary across EU agencies and how does this affect the role these agencies play in the multi-level system of European governance? This study addresses these questions theoretically and empirically by comparing six EU agencies – the European Medicines Agency (EMEA), the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), the European Environm ent Agency (EEA), the European Monitoring Centre for Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), Europol and Eurojust. It shows how some of these agencies develop into relatively autonomous entities by acquiring a distinct organisational character and by generating support from actors in their environment, whereas other agencies do so to a much lesser extent or not at all. LEI Universiteit LeidenThe politics and administration of institutional chang

Transferring of the biological nitrification inhibition (BNI) character from Leymus racemosus to wheat

BACKGROUND: For reasons of feasibility, diagnostic telephone interviews are frequently used in research of psychiatric morbidity. However, it is unknown whether diagnostic telephone interviews are as valid as diagnostic face-to-face interviews. RESEARCH QUESTION: Are diagnostic telephone interviews for psychiatric disorders as valid as diagnostic face-to-face interviews? METHOD: A systematic review of original studies in PubMed, PsychINFO and Embase was carried out. We included studies considering (1) the sensitivity and specificity of diagnostic telephone interviews using face-to-face interviews as a golden standard and (2) the agreement between diagnostic telephone and diagnostic face-to-face interviews. Eligible were studies in the general population, in patients at risk for psychiatric disorders and in psychiatric outpatients. We assessed risk of bias with the quality assessment of diagnostic accuracy studies (QUADAS) instrument. RESULTS: We included sixteen studies. The included studies were generally small with thirteen studies reporting about <100 participants. Specificity was generally high in populations with low or intermediate prevalence of psychiatric morbidity. Sensitivity was low in these populations, but slightly higher in samples with more psychiatric disorders. Studies with a higher risk of psychiatric disorders generally reported higher percentages of agreement and higher kappa values. Considering the QUADAS-2 criteria, most studies had a medium or high risk of bias, especially concerning patient selection and unbiased judgement of the test. Of the six studies with a medium or low risk of bias, the three studies assessing current anxiety and depressive disorders yielded kappa values between 0.69 and 0.84, indicating good agreement. DISCUSSION: There is insufficient evidence that diagnostic telephone interviews for the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders are valid, although results for depression and anxiety disorders seem promising

Pathways to collaborative performance: examining the different combinations of conditions under which collaborations are successful

The literature on collaborative governance has generated several comprehensive models detailing the conditions which collaborations must meet to achieve collaborative performance. The importance of each separate condition – such as the presence of incentives to participate, appropriate institutional designs, or facilitative leadership – has been validated in various studies. How all of these conditions interact with each other, and whether all of the conditions need to be present to achieve performance, is less well understood. Leveraging the rich resource of the newly created Collaborative Governance Case Database, this article explores the different pathways to performance used by 26 local collaborations. The analysis shows that the presence of strong incentives for partners to collaborate is a crucial condition for success; almost all performing cases shared this starting point. Performance was then achieved by combining strong incentives with either clear institutional design (e.g. explicit rules, transparent decision-making) or with intensive collaborative processes (e.g. face-to-face dialogue, knowledge sharing). This analysis shows that the current models for collaborative governance can serve as roadmaps, laying out all of the different conditions than may be important, but that collaborations can follow different routes to reach their objectives

Transnational bureaucratic politics : an institutional rivalry perspective on EU network governance

This contribution introduces our symposium by highlighting four distinctive aspects of transnational governance from a bureaucratic politics perspective: the emergence of transnational institutions, their functioning, their impact on the domestic level, and the diffusion of regulatory standards. The general argument is that many accounts of transnational governance seem to be overly optimistic about the conditions for effective problem-solving and fail to take into account that institutional rivalry may either support or constrain the implementation of supranational policies. The aim of this piece is to review existing research, to highlight the contribution of the symposium articles in furthering an institutional rivalry perspective on transnational governance, and to sketch pertinent areas for further research building upon this perspective