Abstract
AbstractThe European Union relies on decentralised agencies to implement important transnational regulations, such as certifying the safety of medicines. However, the authority of these agencies does not have ‘hard’ legal status and crucially depends on disseminating ideas and information effectively: what can be termed ‘political entrepreneurship’. This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the political entrepreneurship of EU agencies by constructing a conceptual typology of entrepreneurial strategies. Drawing conceptually on transnational public administration, a new database is constructed of the ‘entrepreneurship’ of 33 EU agencies in 2014 based on their media communication activities, face‐to‐face networking in workshops and collaborations, and knowledge dissemination and ‘learning’ exercises. This is mapped against the political salience of agencies in the European Parliament and media. The mapping exercise shows four types of entrepreneurial strategies covering the population of EU agencies: technical functional, insulating, network‐seeking and politicised. The typology is validated through semi‐structured interviews in 11 EU agencies, showing the core characteristics of each type of strategy. The article concludes by arguing that this typology provides an important addition to existing categories of EU agencies based on autonomy and accountability, and advocates a future research strategy examining the interaction between agencies’ entrepreneurial strategies and the expectations and reactions of stakeholder audiences.
Highlights
European Union (EU) agencies are ‘integral in ensuring that regulatory policies can be implemented coherently and consistently throughout the EU’ (Rittberger & Wonka 2012: 3)
Kelemen and Tarrant (2011: 943) argue that ‘neither functional necessities nor convictions about the eficacy of “network governance” explain decisions concerning the design of European regulatory structures ... the degree of distributional conlict in the policy area in question explains the design of EU regulatory bodies’
Valence is not incorporated as a relevant dimension, given that EU agencies are usually less directly affected by day-to-day national press coverage and public opinion than by general ‘attention’
Summary
European Union (EU) agencies are ‘integral in ensuring that regulatory policies can be implemented coherently and consistently throughout the EU’ (Rittberger & Wonka 2012: 3) They do not have direct legal power to implement regulations (Busuioc 2013), but usually must rely on fostering their reputation and image among competent member state authorities, businesses, professionals, consumer groups and the media to gain authority. Existing research on EU agencies has systematically studied their formal and informal accountability to, and autonomy from, central EU institutions and national member states (see Rittberger & Wonka 2011). This literature, following Majone’s (1996) work, has tended to assume EU agencies have signiicant levels of power, which require control from, and accountability to, political principals. This article proposes an agenda that views agencies’ powers as
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