Representative bureaucracy and seconded national government officials in the European Commission

Zuzana Murdoch,Jarle Trondal,Benny Geys

doi:10.1111/rego.12089

Abstract

AbstractThe bureaucratic arms of modern international organizations increasingly consist of staff with ambiguous organizational affiliations. This article analyses the implications of this trend from the perspective of representative bureaucracy – using seconded national experts (SNEs) in the European Commission (Commission) as the empirical laboratory. Using a variety of datasets, we unveil Commission SNEs' profiles (to assess their passive representativeness) and link these profiles to their role perceptions (to evaluate their potential for active representation). This illustrates that Commission SNEs' background characteristics do not match those of their constituent population (i.e. the EU27 population) – suggesting a lack of passive representativeness. However, we also find that SNEs from countries favoring stronger national rather than European regulatory and policymaking powers are more likely to see themselves as a representative of their home country government. This suggests a potential for active representation in terms of SNEs' home country's policy preferences.

Highlights

With the rising sophistication of modern democracies, policy problems confronting public officials have likewise increased in terms of their overall complexity
We argue that the substantial and growing importance of experts and expert panels in the policy-making process raises important questions from a Representative Bureaucracy perspective (RB; Kennedy 2012; Meier and Capers 2013; Peters et al 2013; Schröter and von Maravić 2014): Who are these external experts? And does it matter for the direction of public policy who they are? Since the vast majority of existing studies on bureaucratic representation focus on bureaucracies’ permanent and internal staff (Kennedy 2012; Meier and Capers 2013), the external and non-permanent experts in governmental affairs have been overlooked
To assess the passive or descriptive representativeness of Commission seconded national experts (SNEs), Table 1 presents the composition in terms of gender, education, age and geographical origin of the European population (EU27), the Commission’s total staff, and its SNEs

Summary

Introduction

With the rising sophistication of modern democracies, policy problems confronting public officials have likewise increased in terms of their overall complexity.

Results

Conclusion