The Administrative System of the European Union

Abstract

This volume is a primer on the European Union (EU) administrative system. It offers a wide-ranging analysis, notably on how EU administrative capacities relate to pre-existing institutional constellations at global, national, and subnational levels of government, and contribute to a system transformation of existing (largely nation-state) administrative orders. The intellectual foundations of the endeavor lie in the fields of administrative sciences, organizational and institutional theories, and theories of decision-making and the policy-making process. This introductory chapter aims to set the stage regarding the core aims of the volume, scholarly relevance, and a research agenda. It attempts to develop a perspective of public administration as the core characteristics and elements of the EU’s emerging political system. We argue that analyzing the patterns and dynamics of the administrative capacities of the EU is essential in understanding how the EU shapes European public policy. Administrative capacities are thus not analyzed in isolation, but as structures that mobilize systematic bias in the production of public policy (Arellano-Gault et al., 2013, 154; Schattschneider, 1975).