The Norwegian central administration ten years after accession

This study demonstrates that the European Commission contribute to weaken hierarchical decision-making processes, and ultimately politico-administrative control and oversight, within the Norwegian central administration. This article studies how the Norwegian central administrative apparatus is penetrated by the European Commission through ten years of “associated EU membership” through the EEA agreement. The study outlines two complementary theoretical approaches to account for actual decision-making processes within domestic central administrations: one ‘administrative integration approach’ claiming that different EU institutions have profound and differentiated impact on domestic hierarc…

Political dynamics of the parallel administration of the European Commission

ABSTRACT This chapter studies political dynamics at the micro-level of the European Commission and poses the following question: Does the European Commission manage to transform the loyalties and identities of Commission officials? Studying the mix of national and supranational loyalties amongst Commission officials is important in order to assess the political dynamics of the core executive of the European Union. Moreover, the parallel administration of the European Commission is an important laboratory for studying the political dynamics of system integration across the EU/nation-state interface. This study applies an institutional middle-range approach to make conditional assessments on …

Hvorfor trenger vi en ny infrastruktur for norsk forvaltningsforskning?

Artikkelen presenterer etableringen, organiseringen og gjennomføring av ny forskningsinfrastruktur for norsk forvaltningsforskning. Norsk Forvaltningspanel (NFP) er en forskningsinfrastruktur etablert for å gjennomføre jevnlige spørreundersøkelser blant forvaltningsansatte i staten (departementer, direktorater og tilsyn). NFP er en del av en større forskningsinfrastruktur som både muliggjør panelundersøkelser blant byråkrater over tid og koordinert datainnsamling mellom byråkrater, politikere, journalister og medborgere. Artikkelen skisserer bakgrunnen for etableringen av NFP, noen grunnprinsipper for organisering av infrastrukturen, samt en gjennomgang av fordeler og utfordringer ved etabl…

Public administration sustainability and its organizational basis

Benefiting from a novel data set spanning nearly half a century, this study probes the sustainability of public governance. Theoretically, it examines how sustainable public governance rests on its organizational fabric. The study illuminates how organizational factors systematically influence decision-making behaviour and thus public governance sustainability. Moreover, the study argues that since organizational structure is amendable to deliberate manipulative change, it may thus be an important design instrument of the context of choice in public governance. Accordingly, the article offers an avenue to build bridges between the academic and practitioner worlds of public administration. E…

The European Ombudsman : A Resilient Institution in a Turbulent, Evolving Administrative Order

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series One relatively unstudied development in the European Union’s evolving multilayered administrative system is the development of the ombudsman as a core institution of governance. At the national level, nearly all EU Member States have introduced an ombudsman. At the supranational level, there has been a European Ombudsman (EO) since 1995. This chapter sheds light on the strategies with which the EO proves itself able to build its capacity and adjust its institution successfully to the changing politico-administrat…

Balancing Roles of Representation in the European Commission

Representation is one essential dimension of executive governance. This article has a dual ambition: The first is to outline an institutional perspective on representation that may explore and explain the everyday balancing act of representation among government officials. The second ambition is to empirically illuminate dynamics of representation among crucial test-bed inside the European Commission, that of temporary officials. Temporary Commission officials offer a valuable laboratory for exploring the fine balancing act of representation. Based on survey and interview data on temporary Commission officials, this study supports an institutional perspective on representation in two ways. …

Researching European Union Agencies: What Have We Learnt (and Where Do We Go from Here)?

This review article, with a clear political science and public administration bias, takes stock of the existing literature on EU agencies and suggests a future research agenda. The article reviews studies on EU agencies' organization, tasks, proliferation and location in the political-administrative space. Whether the advent of EU agencies tends to underpin a basically intergovernmental, transnational or supranational order has potentially huge consequences for the distribution of power across levels of government, for the degree of policy uniformity and pooling of administrative resources across countries, for the role of genuinely European perspectives in the policy process, and for accou…

Byråkrati og geografi – Geografisk relokalisering av norsk sentralforvaltning

Akseptert versjon av en artikkel som er publisert i tidsskriftet: Norsk statsvitenskapelig tidsskrift Publisert versjon tilgjengelig fra forlaget på : http://www.idunn.no/ts/nst This study suggests one organisational theory approach to explain the geographical relocation of agencies in Norway. The question posed is how the Government succeeded in geographical relocation of a package of domestic agencies. The argument advocated is that the formal organisation of the decision-making process in Government largely explains the success of the proposal. The Government worked against several odds: Physical relocation of institutions tends to mobilise attention and resistance from affected stakehol…

Centre Formation and the European Commission: A Research Note

The preceding decade has witnessed a boost in research on the European Commission (Commission). One central issue debated has been Commission centre formation, both what it entails, its sources, and potential implications. Centre formation in this literature entails the internal integration of government institutions, thus reinforcing intra- institutional administrative hierarchies. Contemporary research, however, offers inconclusive results as regards the inter- nal integration of the Commission administration. The main motivation for this research note is to show that seemingly inconclusive findings in contemporary Commission research might in fact be complementary. Contemporary literatur…

Exploring Differentiated Disintegration in a Post-Brexit European Union

In the aftermath of the British referendum to leave the European Union and the European Commission's ‘White Paper on the Future of Europe’, it is not only time to take stock of the existing literature on differentiated integration, but also to rethink the perimeters of disintegration. We argue that phenomena such as Brexit embrace forms of differentiation which trigger the need for conceptualizing differentiated disintegration altogether. This article first sketches the path of the scholarly debate in a chronological way to grasp the breadth of existing literature. Second, it discusses differentiated disintegration as a potentially new area for research. Mapping several scenarios for future…

Managing mergers – governancing institutional integration

- Despite striking similarities, the adoption and implementation of policy shifts regarding higher education governance vary considerably across the globe, suggesting a mixed picture of diversification and isomorphism both within and across national higher education systems. By unpacking one particular structural reform process, this paper focuses on mergers as both a governance tool and a governance result in higher education. The paper analyzes the strategic decisions taken by Norwegian higher education institutions during 2014 in the light of a proposed national reform to merge institutions in order to enhance quality in higher education. The empirical basis of the paper consists of anal…

Agencification and location: Does agency site matter?

Published version of an article published in Public Organization Review, 11(2), 97-108. Also available from the publisher at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11115-010-0113-8 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 almos…

Translating the Global Script of the Sustainable University: The Case of the University of Oslo

In this chapter, Translating the Global Script of the Sustainable University: The Case of the University of Oslo, Romulo Pinheiro, Maryam Faghihimani and Jarle Trondal discuss the green strategy of University of Oslo. This chapter, which is conceptually based on neo-institutional theory, approaches the notion of the ‘sustainable organisation’ as a global, legitimate script, i.e. a dominant hegemonic idea which, once adopted and consequently adapted locally, is likely to enhance both internal and external legitimacy. This analysis is built on the empirical case of the University of Oslo (UiO), that sheds light on the ways in which the notion of a ‘sustainable university’ has been locally ‘tr…

Is the European Commission a ‘Hothouse’ for Supranationalism? Exploring Actor-Level Supranationalism

The article explores actor-level supranationalism among seconded national experts (SNEs) in the European Commission. The transformative clout of the European Commission is assessed by the extent to which SNEs adopt a supranational role perception. The survey and interview data presented demonstrates that SNEs evoke multiple roles, notably departmental, epistemic and supranational roles. OLS regression analyses reveal that actor-level supranationalism among SNEs reflect (i) processes of re-socialization inside the Commission, (ii) the organizational composition of the Commission and (iii) organizational incompatibilities between the Commission and domestic government institutions.

Representative bureaucracy and seconded national government officials in the European Commission

The 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 po…

Agencification of the European Union Administration: Connecting the Dots

This review paper, with a clear political science and public administration bias, takes stock of the existing literature on EU agencies and suggests a future research agenda in this area. We review studies on EU agencies’ organization, tasks, proliferation and location in the political-administrative space. Whether the advent of EU agencies tends to underpin a basically intergovernmental, transnational or supranational order is a major topic with potentially huge consequences for the distribution of power across levels of government, for the degree of policy uniformity and pooling of administrative resources across countries, for the role of genuinely European perspectives in the policy pro…

Reformer i UH-sektoren. Det muliges kunst

Public sector reform tends to harbour competing ambitions, problems and solutions. Reforms in higher education policy are no exception. They are often multi-faceted phenomena, partly because higher education institutions are complex organizations with wide-ranging expectations and demands from a variety of stakeholders. This chapter argues that higher education institutions cannot ‘organize away’ competing objectives, but rather aim to create organizational designs which help complex institutions to live with complex reforms. The chapter examines the ‘Structural Reform’ in Norwegian higher education and how higher education institutions responded. Launched in April 2015, it resulted in a la…

Flernivåstaten og krisehåndtering: En kommentar

Artikkelen diskuterer muligheter og utfordringer knyttet til koordinering på tvers av styringsnivåer. Utfordringen er minst tredelt: Dels knyttet til balansen mellom kontinuitet og endring, nærmere bestemt evnen offentlig forvaltning har til å balansere en stabil kjerne samtidig som den justerer, oppdaterer og reformerer; dels balansen mellom effektivitet og legitimitet, nærmere bestemt evnen til kortsiktig problemløsningen i møtet med kriser og langsiktige utfordringer knyttet til legitime løsninger generelt og parlamentarisk forankring konkret; dels dilemmaet mellom politisk-administrativ orden i turbulente tider, nærmere bestemt hvordan offentlige institusjoner håndterer kriser og vanske…

“Let's organize”: The organizational basis for stable public governance

This study carries two distinct contributions to extant litera-ture. Theoretically, it introduces an organizational approachto the study of public governance. Empirically, it demon-strates how the organizational architecture of governmentrepresents a stable and systemic capacity for public gover-nance across time. The study establishes how stabilityserves as an enduring feature of public governance andhow this is anchored in theorganizational architectureofgovernment systems. Moreover, structured flexibility isillustrated by how the civil service adapts to both interna-tional organizations and societal stakeholders. Theorizingthe organizational dimension of public governance, thisstudy also…

Is the European Commission a hothouse for supranationalism? : theorising and exploring the world of Commission civil servants

Does the European Commission (Commission) manage to transform and re-direct the roles played by Commission civil servants? To test the old neo-functionalist claim on loyalty transfer among civil servants, this article provides fresh survey and interview data on seconded national experts in the Commission. The transformative powers of the Commission are tested by assessing the extent to which seconded national experts adopt supranational role perceptions. Theoretically, the emergence of supranational role perceptions is accounted for by considering (i) processes of pre-socialisation outside the Commission, (ii) processes of resocialisation inside the Commission, and (iii) organisational inco…

Globalisation or europeanisation? : international contact among university staff

The article examines whether the increase in international contacts among university researchers is an impact of a general globalisation trend, or whether it is an effect of policy initiatives on national and supranational levels such as EU research programmes. The present study demonstrates that the sheer volume of international contacts among Norwegian university staff has increased substantially during the last 20 years with respect to conference participation, guest lecturing, study and research visits, peer review work, research collaboration and international publishing. While patterns of international visits have not changed with respect to geographical pattern, research collaboratio…

The many faces of EU committee governance

Committees linking national administrations and the EU level play a crucial role at all stages of the EU policy process. The literature tends to portray this group system as a coherent mass, characterised by expert-oriented ‘deliberative supranationalism’, a term developed through studies of comitology (implementation) committees. This article builds on survey data on 218 national officials in 14 Member States who have attended EU committee meetings. We show that these groups do indeed exhibit important common features. Firstly, expert knowledge rather than country size plays a pivotal role in the decision making process. Secondly, across types of committee, participants evoke multiple alle…

Sub-nasjonale styringsnivåer i et fler-nivå-administrativt system

Denne artikkelen undersøker hvorvidt respondenter i norske fylkesadministrasjoner oppfatter at sentrale beslutninger influeres av eksterne aktører – gjennom vertikale relasjoner til sentraladministrative instanser og EU/EØS-institusjoner, samt horisontale relasjoner til andre fylkesadministrasjoner – og hvordan variasjonen i slike relasjoner kan forklares. Artikkelen bygger på data fra en ny spørreundersøkelse i norske fylkesadministrasjoner (N = 893), og viser hvordan fylkesadministrasjonene under visse betingelser kan opptre med to eller flere «hatter», det vil si at beslutningene som treffes influeres av flere eksterne aktører samtidig. Hovedtyngden av respondentene oppgir nasjonale sent…

The Rise of a European Public Administration. European capacity building by stealth

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series This paper reports the European integration of the inherent state prerogative to formulate and implement public policy. It is suggested that the European integration of core state powers necessitates the supply of independent and integrated bureaucratic capacities at a ‘European level’. The rise of a genuinely European public administration is conceived of as executive centre formation. The paper suggests that the integration of public administration may be explained by organizational capacity building by stealth.

Correction to: The Palgrave Handbook of EU Crises

Crisis and EU Foreign and Security Policy: An Introduction

This chapter sums up the main findings in the four papers discussing the impact of various external crises on the development of the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy, the CFSP. Chapters discuss the EU’s foreign and security policy responses to the Russian annexation of Crimea and the ongoing war in Ukraine, the EU’s crisis management capacities, and the impact of crises on EU–US relations. Despite member states’ traditional reluctance to integrate further in this domain of EU policy, the CFSP is not breaking down. Instead, all the chapters suggest that the EU is able to cope with crises and that overall, crises and increased uncertainty have led to a strengthening of the CFSP mainly …

Crisis, Continuity, and Change in European Union Institutions: An Introduction

This section offers an overview of how EU institutions have been affected by crises and how they have coped with them. The section finds that EU institutions have responded to polycrisis mainly by “muddling through” based on familiar ways of governing and by introducing incremental changes, and in some cases, also heading forward with new institutional arrangements or structures. The section hardly finds evidence of institutional breakdown or even of minor reductions in the role of EU institutions—either vis-a-vis other EU institutions or vis-a-vis member state institutions. To the contrary—the EU institutions have proven to be resilient and able to deal with crises by drawing on their alre…

Conceptualizing the European Multilevel Administrative Order. Capturing variation in the European administrative system

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series Departing from the observation that both analysts and practitioners face problems of meaningful categorization of social order in general and the European political-administrative system in particular, this paper suggests a conceptual frame through which European administrative order may be understood. Providing such a frame is important, because the catalogue of categories of the European Union (EU) polity developed so far fails to acknowledge sufficiently its administrative dimension. Given that the ongoing pol…

The Robustness of National Agency Governance in Integrated Administrative Systems: Evidence from a large-scale study

This article examines government agencies facing choice architectures that are multiple, overlapping, ambiguous, and sometimes incompatible—in short: turbulent. It makes two contributions: First, two conceptual images of agency governance are outlined that derive distinct predictions on how agencies are likely to maneuver when embedded in integrated multilevel administrative orders. Secondly, benefitting from a large‐N dataset on agency officials (N = 1,963) from 47 government agencies, the study suggests that government agencies are primarily biased towards a pragmatist compound dynamic. Additionally, the analysis probes the robustness of these conceptual images by entering moderator varia…

Tensions of governance in the European Commission

This article analyses tensions of governance within the core-executive of the European Union – the Commission. The applied test-bed is seconded national civil servants (SNEs) hired on short-term contracts in the Commission. The analysis benefits from a rich body of surveys and interview data among current and former SNEs. The data demonstrate that the decision-making behaviour evoked by SNEs contains a mix of departmental, epistemic and supranational behaviour. Intergovernmental dynamics are shown to be much less significant. The study also demonstrates that the secondment system scarcely creates enduring supranational loyalties among SNEs. The socialising powers of the Commission is condit…

European Union Crisis: An Introduction

What is the impact of crisis on European Union (EU) integration? This chapter unpacks the concept of crisis and ways to conceptualize it. We outline three conceptual scenarios on the EU’s putative response to crisis and subsequently apply them in all chapters of the volume. The chapter sums up the key findings from different parts of the Handbook on the impact of crisis on EU policies and institutions, as well as the applicability of existing theories. The volume finds overall that the EU has been surprisingly resilient in the face of crises due to its ability to adapt and absorb, and if necessary, change, in response to crisis. The chapter also discusses the EU’s responses to democratic ch…

Politikkens organisering

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Governing Turbulence: An Organizational-Institutional Agenda

This article sets out three ambitions: First, it argues in favor of adopting “turbulence” as a conceptual device for understanding governance in times of dynamic interactive change. Second, the article distinguishes three types of turbulence: turbulent environments, turbulent organizations and turbulence of scale. These three types highlight different sources and dynamics of turbulence. Third, the article outlines an organizational-institutional approach to the governance of turbulence highlighting four key dilemmas public organizations must confront in stabilizing and adapting to turbulence: stability versus adaptation; anticipation versus resilience; tight(er) coupling versus decoupling; …

Images of Agency Governance in the European Union : Community institutions, autonomous administrative spaces, or multilevel network administrations?

Diagnosis of the transformation of executive governance in Europe must incorporate the diverse dynamics of EU-level agencies. This paper conceptualises theoretically and explores empirically multiple images of governance of EU-level agencies. Based on a rich body of survey (N=265) and interview (N=29) data among three regulatory and four non-regulatory EU level agencies, the paper demonstrates that EU-level agencies primarily combine the roles as autonomous administrative spaces and multilevel network administrations. Hence, EU-level regulatory and non-regulatory agencies blend two models of governance. Moreover, the most important role observed among EU-level agencies is indeed as multilev…

The behavioural logics of international public servants: the case of African Union Commission staff

Although international organisations (IOs) are created by governments, their international public administrations (IPAs) have succeeded in ring-fencing their resources, and policymaking from direct intervention by member states. Research shows that international civil servants are best able to protect their autonomy when embedded in large and well-resourced IPAs. Staff in large IOs use their huge size, bureaucratic complexities, and different behavioural logics to protect their autonomy and thereby leave a ‘bureaucratic footprint’ in international affairs. Whereas the behavioural logics of large IPAs, mostly headquartered in the Global North, are reasonably well-documented, not much has bee…

De-territorialisering av offentlig politikk? : europeisk integrasjon og sub-regionale beslutningsprosesser

"Not So Different After All" : Governance and Behavioral Dynamics in the Commission of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)

Author's accepted manuscript (postprint).

Party Positions on Differentiated European Integration in the Nordic Countries: Growing Together, Growing Apart?

The Nordic countries constitute an interesting laboratory for the study of differentiated European Integration. Even though Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden share some historical, cultural, socio-economic and political characteristics, all those countries have ultimately opted for a different kind of relationship with the EU. Whereas Finland, a member of the Eurozone since its inception in 1999, has been considered to be part of the Union’s ‘inner core’ for quite some time, Iceland and Norway, in contrast, have opted to remain outside the EU albeit closely associated via the European Economic Area Agreement. The variation of relationships has also been reflected in Nordic parti…

Administrative Fusion: Less Than a European ‘Mega‐administration’

Abstract This study explores administrative fusion. It is argued that the differentiated organizational constellation of the European Union contributes to a differentiated fusion of domestic core executive institutions. The European Commission mainly activates the lower echelons of domestic government hierarchies and contributes to a relative weakening of domestic politico‐administrative leadership. On the contrary, the Council of Ministers accompanies primarily a strengthening of domestic government hierarchies — notably the Foreign Office. Based on a rich body of survey data, this article reveals that multi‐level interaction of administrative systems between the European Commission and th…

BUILDING FOREIGN AFFAIRS CAPACITY IN THE EU: THE RECRUITMENT OF MEMBER STATE OFFICIALS TO THE EUROPEAN EXTERNAL ACTION SERVICE (EEAS)

The Treaty of Lisbon introduced common action capacities in the EU's external relations administration, notably the European External Action Service (EEAS). One essential capacity is staff resources. This article analyses to what extent and under what conditions the practice of staff recruitment to the EEAS is independent of government influence, and in particular the recruitment of officials temporarily assigned from EU member states. The data draw on interviews with officials from all 27 member states as well as the EEAS which is charged with the selection of national public servants to the EEAS. Key findings suggest substantial independence of recruitment to the EEAS, and this independen…

Agenda Setting in the European Commission: How the European Commission Structure and Influence the EU Agenda

Representative Bureaucracy and the Role of Expertise in Politics

This is an open access journal from Cogitatio http://www.cogitatiopress.com The vast majority of existing studies on bureaucratic representation focus on bureaucracies’ permanent and internal staff. Yet, the rising sophistication of modern democracies and the technocratization of political life are gradually inducing an increased reliance on external experts to assist in the development and implementation of policy decisions. This trend, we argue, raises the need to extend studies of bureaucratic representation to such external and non-permanent experts in governmental affairs. In this article, we take a first step in this direction using seconded national experts (SNEs) in the European Com…

RAS869430 Supplemetal Material - Supplemental material for Public administration sustainability and its organizational basis

Supplemental material, RAS869430 Supplemetal Material for Public administration sustainability and its organizational basis by Jarle Trondal in International Review of Administrative Sciences

European administrative centre formation. Lessons from international bureaucracies

The strengthening of administrative powers is comprehensively documented within national governments. This article asks to what extent centre formation also happens within international bureaucracies. Based on a large body of data (N=121) within three international bureaucracies, this study adds two new observations: First, administrative centre formation is primarily observed inside the European Commission and only marginally within other international bureaucracies – such as the OECD and WTO Secretariats. Moreover, within the Commission, centre formation is primarily observed at the administrative centre (the General Secretariat) and only marginally within bureaucratic sub-units. Concomit…

DISECTING INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series As an area of research, specifying crucial conditions under which international public administration (IPA) may enjoy independence from member-state governments has become an increasingly vibrant research area. This special issue responds to three yet unresolved research tasks: (i) Systematically comparing IPAs by offering large-N data across cases; (ii) Taking organization seriously by identifying how the organisational architectures of IPAs affect decision-making processes and subsequently the pursuit of public…

The anatomy of autonomy : reassessing the autonomy of the European Commission

NATIONAL AGENCIES IN THE EUROPEAN ADMINISTRATIVE SPACE: GOVERNMENT DRIVEN, COMMISSION DRIVEN OR NETWORKED?

Submitted version of an article published in the journal: Public Administration. Published version available at Wiley InterScience: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2009.01779.x In terms of national agencies in the European administrative space, case studies indicate that national governments may be partly split so that national (regulatory) agencies operate in a 'double-hatted' manner when practising EU legislation, serving both ministerial departments and the European Commission. Applying large-N questionnaire data, this article follows up these studies by investigating how important various institutions are with respect to influencing national agencies when they are practising EU le…

The rift between executive contraction and executive detraction: the case of European Commission battery policy-making

Providing policy solutions to solve across border societal challenges in Europe, such as electrifying the transport sector by facilitating a European battery industry, call for increased coordination among policy-makers. This article offers a novel study of the formulation of the European Commission’s (Commission’s) battery regulation proposal. In doing so, the paper makes two distinct contributions to extant literature: Theoretically, it outlines two conceptual models of executive governance – that of the Commission as a contracted and a detracted institution – and offers an institutional-organizational approach to account for conditions under which each of these models is likely to unfold…

Organized systems and the ambiguities of behavior and change. Lessons from universities and jazz orchestras

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series Institutional change entails balancing multiple competing, inconsistent and often loosely coupled demands and concerns, often simultaneously. The ambition of this chapter is to discuss how organizations balance seemingly conflicting patterns of behaviour and change. Two common dynamics often observed in organizations are discussed below: First, organizations viewed as sets of formal structures and routines that systematically bias organizational performance and change, and secondly, organizations as loosely coupl…

A Differentiated European Union

Differentiation in the EU has substantially increased. It does not only refer to instances of (differentiation in) integration, but also (potential) disintegration. Differentiation can often be causally traced back to crises, yet it should not be equated with ‘crisis’. However, the literature has only scarcely discussed the putative link between crisis and differentiated integration. Fundamentally, demands for differentiation need to be treated as both a cause and an effect of integration. Thus, differentiation should be acknowledged as a persistent feature of European integration. The chapter discusses the development of differentiation in European integration and reflects upon the scholar…

On Trojan Horses and revolving doors: Assessing the autonomy of national officials in the European Commission

National officials working in international bureaucracies regularly invoke the fear that member states strategically use such officials for influencing decision making and agenda-setting to their advantage. This article theoretically analyses conditions under which the autonomy of national civil servants in international bureaucracies might become compromised. The ensuing predictions are then tested using a unique survey among seconded national experts (SNEs) in the European Commission (N ≈ 400). Finally, evaluating the characteristics linked to reduced autonomy among SNEs in the Commission, the article illustrates that these officials are, in practice, likely to be relatively independent from …

Integrating nascent organisations. On the settlement of the European External Action Service

This study shows how the EU’s new Common Foreign and Security policy (CFSP) administration – the European External Action Service (EEAS) – experienced early organisational settlement. We find that the EEAS acts relatively independently from member-state governments, suggesting administrative autonomy. It is also relatively integrated into the Commission structure, suggesting inter-institutional integration of sub-units in the two institutions. Important lessons can be learned. For organisation theory: Firstly, nascent organisations are likely to experience some degree of ‘settlement’ after birth by establishing ties towards organisations from which they originate. Secondly, settlement is in…

EU committees as sites of europeanisation

sj-pdf-1-ras-10.1177_00208523211007533 - Supplemental material for Discursive framing and organizational venues: mechanisms of artificial intelligence policy adoption

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-ras-10.1177_00208523211007533 for Discursive framing and organizational venues: mechanisms of artificial intelligence policy adoption by Frans af Malmborg Jarle Trondal in International Review of Administrative Sciences

International executives : transformative bureaucracies or Westphalian orders?

Public Administration is in an era of change. This paper studies one under-researched part of public administration, the executive arms of International Governmental Organizations (IGOs). These are referred to as International Executives (IEs) and provide a conceptual mapping and empirical illustrations of three important dynamics of IEs – intergovernmental, supranational and transgovernmental dynamics. The paper offers a middle-range organization theory perspective that suggests five independent variables that affect the behavior and roles of IE civil servants. The variables are (i) the organizational properties of IEs, (ii) the degrees of institutionalization of IEs, (iii) the recruitment…

People Who Run the European Parliament: Staff Demography and Its Implications

AbstractWith few exceptions, parliament administrations, including secretariat officials and party group staff, have been relatively unexplored. However, a small, but growing, literature on the administration of the European Parliament (EP) indicates that officials play a role in the policy process that goes beyond technical and procedural questions. On this background, this article therefore aims at, first, finding out who the people working in the EP secretariat and group secretariats are, and, second, investigating whether it matters who these people are. Based on an online survey, we unveil the bureaucrats’ nationality, gender, educational background and former and future career (plans)…

People who run African affairs: staffing and recruitment in the African Union Commission

AbstractThis study contributes to the field of International Public Administration (IPA) and the emerging area of Informal International Relations (IIR) by examining the politics of staffing and recruitment of the African Union Commission (AUC). Although the AUC has become a major political player in international affairs, there is a dearth of knowledge about the civil servants who work for the AUC and who run this paramount pan-African executive body. To address the void, this paper draws on a survey of 137 AUC staff, archival studies and interviews to explore recruitment of AUC staff. Combining organisational theory and informality as analytical lenses, the study demonstrates that, first,…

The Rise of European Administrative Space. Lessons learned

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series Despite advances in contemporary research on the European administrative space (EAS), no widespread understanding about its meaning, mechanisms and significance yet exists. This research agenda paper offers a comprehensive conceptualisation of EAS and takes stock of accumulated lessons learned. It is suggested that the rise of EAS features a transformation of administrative order that analytically can be grasped in terms of four analytical dimensions: independence, integration, co-optation and institutionalisatio…

Discursive framing and organizational venues: mechanisms of artificial intelligence policy adoption

The purpose of this article is twofold: to theoretically assess ideational and organizational explanatory factors in the adoption of artificial intelligence policies; and to examine the extent to which the European Union has managed to facilitate a coordinated artificial intelligence policy in the Nordic countries. The study utilizes a mixed-methods approach based on systematic web searching, systematic policy document analysis and key informant semi-structured interviews. The study finds that the European Union has utilized framing-based strategies to set an agenda for a coordinated European artificial intelligence policy. Moreover, the strategy has affected member-state artificial intell…

Re-discovering international executive institutions

Public Administration is in an era of change. This article aims at re-discovering one underresearched part of public administration, the executive arms of International Governmental Organizations (IGOs). These are referred to as International Executives (IEs). The article provides a conceptual mapping and an empirical illustration of three important dynamics of IEs – intergovernmental, supranational and transgovernmental dynamics. The study also offers a middle-range organization theory perspective that suggests five independent variables that foster the advent of supranational and transgovernmental behavior and roles among IE civil servants. The variables suggested are (H1) the organizatio…

On Trojan Horses and revolving doors: Assessing the autonomy of national officials in the European Commission

This is the author's accepted and refereed manuscript to the article Abstract. National officials working in international bureaucracies regularly invokes the fear that member-states strategically use such officials for influencing decision-making and agenda-setting to their advantage. This article first theoretically analyses conditions under which the independence of national civil servants in international bureaucracies might become compromised. The ensuing predictions are then tested using a unique survey among Seconded National Experts (SNEs) in the European Commission (N ≈ 400). Finally, evaluating the characteristics linked to reduced independence among SNEs in the Commission, the ar…

Internasjonalisering av forskning : endrede rammebetingelser og lokal tilpasning

This article illustrates traditional and emerging patterns of internationalisation of research. The article identifies changing national and international conditions for research, and analyses the actual research practices among scientific personnel. The study covers the permanent scientific staff of four Norwegian universities, three poly-technical universities, and Agder University College. The empirical analysis builds on survey and interview data among permanent scientific staff as well as supplementary documentary materiel. Internationalisation of research is theoretically illuminated by two approaches – one organisation theory perspective and one institutional approach. The empirical …

Conceptualizing the European multilevel administrative order: capturing variation in the European administrative system

Acknowledging that both analysts and practitioners face problems of meaningful categorization of social order in general, and the European political-administrative system in particular, this article suggests a conceptual frame through which European administrative order may be understood. Providing such a frame is important, because the catalogue of categories of the European Union (EU) polity developed so far fails to acknowledge its administrative dimension. Given that the ongoing political transformation in the EU implies ever more administrative interaction between political levels in order to coordinate, manage and implement policies, this administrative dimension becomes ever more imp…

EU Committee governance and the emerging community administration

Political Leadership and Bureaucratic Autonomy: Effects of Agencification

Submitted version of an article published in the journal: Governance Published version available from Wiley-Blackwell: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0491.2009.01458.x 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 t…

Conclusion

How pre- and post-recruitment factors shape role perceptions of European Commission officials

Individuals' role perceptions are central guides to their behavior and choices as members of an organization. Understanding organizational dynamics thus requires knowledge about the determinants of such role perceptions, as well as whether—and when—organizations can influence them. This article brings forward a theoretical framework allowing for both prerecruitment (extraorganizational) and post-recruitment (intraorganizational) determinants of individuals' role perceptions, and examines its empirical implications using a large-N data set of temporary officials in the European Commission. We find that intergovernmental and epistemic role perceptions are strongly linked to pre-recruitment fa…

Two faces of internationalisation of administrative policy : between government innovation and transgovernmental imitation

Whereas domestic public policy is increasingly penetrated by international governmental organisations, domestic government institutions seem less adaptive. This puzzle triggers the following question: To what extent is the internationalisation of domestic administrative policy moulded by domestic government? Put more starkly, how intimate relationships exist between domestic government decision-making and domestic policy? The paper outlines one organisation theory perspective emphasising a tight coupling of ministerial decision-making and administrative policy, and one supplementary perspective advocating a loose coupling of government decision-making and administrative policy through trans…

Differentiated integration and disintegration in the European Union : State-of-the-art and ways for future research

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series Following the United Kingdom (UK)’s vote to leave the European Union (EU) on 23 June 2016, the process of European integration is now at a critical juncture. Leaving aside Greenland’s departure from the European Community in 1983 – because of its political union with Denmark, Greenland has been recognized as one of the Overseas Countries and Territories of the EU –, the United Kingdom is the first member state in the history of European integration to engage in a process of disintegration which may ultimately see…

Theoretical Approaches to Crisis: An Introduction

This chapter sums up the key arguments made in this section of the Handbook. The nine chapters discuss essential EU integration and International Relations approaches and how they study, understand, and explain crisis’ putative impact on the EU: Liberal Intergovernmentalism, Classical Realism, Neo-realism, Neofunctionalism, Institutionalism, Organizational Theory, Cleavage Theory, Social constructivism, and Deliberative Theory. For this purpose, each chapter sets out the theory’s basic assumptions before addressing the following questions: (1) How does each theoretical perspective expect crisis to influence EU institutions and policies? What are the causal mechanisms to account for continui…

The Legitimacy Crisis: An Introduction

This section examines how the crisis of democratic legitimacy shapes the prospects for further integration. All the authors find evidence for ‘muddling through’ by the EU in response to its legitimacy crisis. Raube and Costa Reis show how the Commission and European Parliament took incremental steps of starting infringement proceedings against Hungary and Poland in response to breaches in the rule of law by elected populist governments, yet partisanship undermined the EU’s response. Holst and Molander discuss the democratic pitfalls of technocratic decision-making in response to crisis and detail the kinds of reforms needed to enhance accountability and citizen nonexpert participation in po…

After hierarchy? : integration and differentiation within Scandinavian Central Administrations

This study demonstrates that the differentiated organisatational constellation of the European Union (EU) contribute to a differentiated penetration of domestic government decision-making processes. The question posed is how different EU institutions, notably the European Commission and the Council of Ministers, accompany a differentiated level of hierarchical decision-making processes within domestic central administrations. To account for this differentiated impact, this study outlines two theoretical approaches: one ‘administrative integration approach’ claiming that different EU institutions have a differentiated impact on domestic hierarchical governance, and one ‘administrative robust…

The OECD civil servant: Caught between Scylla and Charybdis1

ABSTRACT Civil servants in international secretariats are exposed to numerous, cross-cutting and, at times, conflicting pressures and expectations. The secretariat of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is no different. This study reveals a fundamental ‘misfit’ between external demands and internal dynamics in the OECD Secretariat. On one hand, the OECD analysts are employed on the basis of merit. Compared to the employees in the central administrations in many OECD member states, the OECD personnel are very competitive in terms of experience and academic skills. Thus, the OECD Secretariat can be seen as a veritable powerhouse of idea generation, data collection…

Brexit: An Introduction

This section examines the consequences of the United Kingdom (UK)’s decision to leave the EU. Though chapters acknowledge that most will depend on the outcome of the UK–EU negotiations as Brexit will be an unpredictable case of differentiated disintegration. This section offers contributions that aim at stimulating the debate on how Brexit might be understood and analyzed. Will Brexit cause breakdown, heading forward or merely continuous muddling through? The case of Brexit serves as a research laboratory in which we can test existing theories of European integration. Are they able to explain patterns of disintegration equally to integration, or do we need new theoretical and conceptual too…

Governing European Affairs : Lessons from Norwegian Ministries

The aim of this article is to examine the role of ministerial officials in an integrated European multilevel administrative order. This study argues that organizational variables at the national level constitute a decisive filtering factor regarding how decision premises emanating from European Union (EU)-level institutions are received by domestic government institutions and officials. The study contributes to the literature in two main ways: Empirically it provides a comprehensive study of the role of Norwegian ministerial officials in the EU multilevel administrative order over a time period of 20 years (n = 3562). Secondly, it applies an organization theory approach to explain variation…

The Financial Crisis: An Introduction

This section discusses the origins of the Eurozone crisis in European Monetary Union before discussing various dimensions of how the Eurozone coped, its impact on integration, and the crisis’ implications for the future of the EU. While the authors all show that the EU’s response to the financial crisis reflected the scenario ‘muddling through,’ they have different perspectives on the future of integration post crisis. Rosen and Olsen point out that the austerity policies implemented after crisis resulted in collective protest movements across Europe. Tranoy and Stenstad highlight the failure of financial sector reforms to reset the social role of finance in a more equitable way. Caporaso a…

Introducing the Study of Nordic Cooperation

To rediscover Nordic cooperation this article develops a ‘conceptual grammar’ that provides general theoretical ‘images’ of cooperation that are systematically applied. Being supplementary analytical constructs, moreover, these images capture great variety and differentiation in Nordic cooperation. Next, this article provides a review of two sets of literature that are of particular relevance to this thematic issue. The first is a broader literature on European integration. The second is studies of Nordic cooperation. The article closes with an overview of the contributions to this thematic issue.

Governing at the frontier of the European Commission : the case of seconded national officials

Studies of executive institutions have largely dealt separately with national and international executive institutions (IEIs). This study unpacks and repacks four conflicting decision-making dynamics that unfolds at the frontier of IEIs – that is, at the institutional rim where national and international executive institutions meet, interact and collide. The empirical laboratory utilised is seconded national experts in the European Commission. The survey and interview data presented demonstrates that the decision-making behaviour of seconded national experts includes a mix of departmental (portfolio), epistemic (expert) and supranational behaviour. The suspicion early voiced by Coombes (197…

sj-pdf-1-ras-10.1177_00208523211007533 - Supplemental material for Discursive framing and organizational venues: mechanisms of artificial intelligence policy adoption

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-ras-10.1177_00208523211007533 for Discursive framing and organizational venues: mechanisms of artificial intelligence policy adoption by Frans af Malmborg Jarle Trondal in International Review of Administrative Sciences

Two worlds of change: on the internationalisation of universities

Institutional change entails balancing multiple competing, inconsistent and often loosely coupled demands and concerns, often simultaneously. This article poses the following question: How are patterns of internationalisation of research among academic staff at universities balancing two worlds of change, that is, governance by the university leadership (H1) as well as initiatives by the faculty members (H2)? This article argues and empirically substantiates that internationalisation of academic staff tends to be a balancing‐act between these two worlds of change. Whereas most universities increasingly formulate strategies for internationalisation (H1), the research behaviour of faculty mem…

The Commission’s informal agenda-setting in the CFSP. Agenda leadership, coalition-building, and community framing

This study contributes to the literature on informal governance by examining politics of informal agenda-setting in the European Commission. As a ‘hard case’, the paper examines how the European Commission exceeds limited legal Treaty provisions in foreign and security policy (CFSP). This system, where the Commission has come to play a more prominent role than stipulated in the treaties, is interpreted as a normalization of CFSP governance. Three complementary propositions on the informal agenda-setting role of the Commission are developed: agenda leadership (#1), coalition-building (#2), and community framing (#3). To illuminate these propositions, we examine their relevance across three e…

European Union Foreign Policy after the Treaty of Lisbon:Chartering the Contours of the European External Action Service

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series The EU’s newly established diplomatic service, the European External Action Service (EEAS), has attracted research interest from several sub-disciplines in political science and law. Two gaps in the contemporary literature, however, persist: i) a lack of empirical data on the establishment and organisation of the service, and ii) a dearth of theoretical research programmes that aim at ‘contextualizing’ the EEAS within broader conceptual debates in international relations, public administration, and law. This rese…

Governing European Affairs

Abstract The aim of this article is to examine the role of ministerial officials in an integrated European multilevel administrative order. This study argues that organizational variables at the national level constitute a decisive filtering factor regarding how decision premises emanating from European Union (EU)-level institutions are received by domestic government institutions and officials. The study contributes to the literature in two main ways: Empirically it provides a comprehensive study of the role of Norwegian ministerial officials in the EU multilevel administrative order over a time period of 20 years (n = 3562). Secondly, it applies an organization theory approach to explain …

The organisational dimension of executive authority in the Global South: Insights from the AU and ECOWAS commissions

The growing importance of executive authority at the international level has fuelled scholarly debate about the level of autonomy enjoyed by international public administration (IPA), that is, the executive arms of international organisations. Insights from IPAs in the West or Global North, such as the European Union, have largely shaped these debates, whereas data from IPAs in the Global South are largely missing in the discussion. This article seeks to remedy this imbalance and contribute to an organisational-theory-inspired conceptualisation of IPA autonomy: We draw insights from survey data from the commissions of the African Union (AU) and the Economic Community of West African States …

Bureaucratic structure, geographical location and the autonomy of administrative systems. Evidence from the European External Action Service

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series Formulating and implementing public policy in Europe has historically been a prerogative of national administrations. This paper explores how these prerogatives may have become challenged with the ‘autonomization’ of the European Union’s (EU’s) foreign affairs administration (The European External Action Service (EEAS)). The ambition of this paper is two-fold: First, to assess how independent EEAS personnel are when making decisions, thus measuring actor-level autonomy. Secondly, to account for actor-level autono…

Differentiation in the European Union in Post-Brexit and -Pandemic Times

Paid open access

Domestic Agencies in an Emergent European Executive Order

Abstract This article poses the following question: who is in control of domestic agencies when they are handling domestic ‘EU affairs’ broadly speaking? The article demonstrates that domestic agencies are primarily steered by their parent ministry, being largely ‘single‐hatted’. This observation does not render ‘double‐hatted’ agencies implausible — as for example when domestic agencies practise EU legislation — generating a compound European executive order. The empirical analysis benefits from a large‐N elite survey among 1452 domestic agency officials. This article contests claims that the ‘agencification’ of domestic government systems as well as their involvement in an emergent Europe…

How supranational are intergovernmental institutions? : assessing the socializing power of council working parties

THE ORIGINS OF COMMON ACTION CAPACITIES IN EU FOREIGN POLICY. Observations on the recruitment to the European External Action Service (EEAS)

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series The Treaty of Lisbon introduced significant institutional changes for European Union’s (EU’s) external relations administration, notably the establishment of the European External Action Service (EEAS). Beside staff transferred from the Council Secretariat-General and the European Commission, the EEAS’ workforce is set to consist of approximately 33 per cent officials temporarily assigned from member-states by June 2013. This paper analyses to what extent and under what conditions the recruitment practice of memb…

Norsk Europaforvaltning. Et organisasjonsteoretisk perspektiv på departementenes EU-arbeid

Formålet med denne studien er å belyse departementsansattes rolle i europeisk flernivåforvaltning i tidsperioden 1996 til 2016. Studien argumenterer for at organisatoriske variabler på nasjonalt nivå er avgjørende for hvordan premisser fra EU-institusjonene blir fanget opp og innlemmet i norsk sentralforvaltning, og i siste instans i offentlig politikk. Artikkelen gir to viktige bidrag. For det første presenteres unike data fra norske departementsansattes rolle i europeisk flernivåstyring over en tidsperiode på 20 år (N=3562). For det andre bidrar studien med et organisasjonsteoretisk perspektiv for å forklare faktisk atferd blant «eurokrater» i norske departementer. Artikkelen belyser gene…

Public Administration and the Study of Political Order: Towards a Framework for Analysis

The contribution of this study is two-fold: First, it outlines a conceptual framework on political order; and secondly, it offers empirical illustrations on the case of Nordic cooperation. Taken together, the article makes a plea for public administration scholarship in the study of political order. Political order consists of a relatively stable arrangement of institutions that are fairly formalized and institutionalized. A common political order, moreover, entails that relevant institutions: (i) are fairly independent of pre-existing institutions; (ii) are relatively integrated and internally cohesive; and (iii) are reasonably able to influence governance processes within other institutio…

The public administration turn in integration research

This article highlights how the study of public administration is brought back into the study of European integration and European Union (EU) governance. The public administration turn in integration research has brought generic insights into the broader field of public administration. The purpose of this overview is less to provide a complete picture of the public administration turn in integration research, but rather to reveal the varied and rich research agendas, and to stimulate further research. This public administration turn highlights (i) the impact of the formal organisation of core-executive institutions such as the European Commission; (ii) the conditional autonomy of sub-ordina…

Integration Through Participation Introductory Notes to the Study of Administrative Integration

When aiming at studying the interconnectedness of administrative systems - and in particular the integration of domestic governance systems and the institutions of the European Union - at least two variables are important to address: (i) the intensity and frequency of cross-level interaction and participation amongst the members of these systems, and (ii) the principles of organization being uppermost at both levels of governance. This article argues that in order to measure administrative integration, particular emphasis should be attached to the way these variables impact upon the organization members individually. Put more precisely, I argue that studies of administrative integration sho…

Agencification

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series One persistent theme in public administration is whether a government portfolio should be organized as an integrated ministry or as a dual organization composed of a ministerial department and one or several semi-detached agencies. ‘Agencification’ has, partly due to the New Public Management (NPM) wave, been high on the agenda of administrative policy-makers for two decades. Two decades of NPM reforms have made the agencification phenomenon highly topical and this also attracted considerable scholarly attention.…

European integration and the administrative state. A longitudinal study on self-reinforcing administrative bias

The study demonstrates how the EU contributes to a self-reinforcing administrative bias due to domestic-level organizational factors. Strong European integration without membership reinforces a politico-administrative gap and this gap expands over time. The paper applies an extreme case of high integration without formal EU membership represented by Norway. The findings suggest that the EU contributes to reinforce the administrative state through strong unintended assimilation effects. Thefindings are probed by a novel and comprehensive longitudinal data-set consisting of a large-N single case (N= 3562) questionnaire study among government officials at three points in the Norwegian central …

The Compound Machinery of Government: The Case of Seconded Officials in the European Commission

textabstractThis 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 …

The Migration Crisis: An Introduction

In 2015, the EU and its member states struggled to coordinate, communicate, and cooperate on the migration crisis as the chapters in this section show. Schilde and Wallace Goodman point out that while border security contains examples of deeper integration, asylum management policy has followed the scenarios of breaking down and muddling through. All the authors highlight the Dublin convention as particularly ill-devised and thus paving the way for the refugee crisis. Bosilca finds evidence for breaking down in addition to minimal reforms of border security policy that constitute muddling through. Crawford argues that the migration crisis provides evidence both of muddling through and headi…

Dynamics of agency governance: Evidence from the Nuclear safety sector

Public organizations are compound bodies characterized by competing endogenous dynamics of governance. This study makes two main contributions. First, it contributes to an organizational approach to studies of public policy and administration by conceptualizing compound agency governance. Second, by determining how variation in agency governance reflects endogenous organizational factors. Based on a study of the Norwegian Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (DSA), two observations are highlighted: Firstly, DSA staff are torn between two competing behavioural logics: A governmental and a transnational logic. Moreover, portfolios of core state powers are more closely monitored by parent m…

Ambiguities in organizations and the routines of behavior and change

Purpose– The aim of this article is threefold: the primary aim is conceptual by outlining two ideal-typical ideas about organizational life. These models offer rival ideas about how organizations balance seemingly conflicting patterns of behaviour and change in everyday life. The second ambition of the article is to outline a theoretical approach of organizational life arguing that even fairly loosely coupled organizations may be profoundly patterned by everyday routines as much as by ambiguity. The third and final ambition is to offer empirical illustrations from organizations that are often considered as archetypes of loose coupling and ambiguities: jazz orchestras and university organiza…

De norske departementene under EØS-avtalen : flernivådeltakelse og byråkratisk vev

Representative bureaucracy and seconded national government officials in the European Commission

The 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 po…

Advances to the study of international Public administration

As an area of research, specifying crucial conditions under which international public administration (IPA) may enjoy independence from member-state governments has become an increasingly vibrant research area. This collection responds to three as yet unresolved research tasks: (1) systematically comparing IPAs by offering large-N data across cases; (2) taking organization seriously by identifying how the organizational architectures of IPAs affect decision-making processes and subsequently the pursuit of public policy-making; and (3) examining the varied consequences of the autonomization of IPAs, notably for member-state public sector governance and for the integration of transnational re…

Towards an institutional perspective on representation : ambiguous representation in the European Commission

This study explores the multiple representational roles evoked by Commission officials. The article has a dual ambition: The first is to outline an institutional perspective on representation that seizes a middle-ground between intergovernmental and neo-functional notions of representation. The second ambition is to empirically illuminate this perspective inside the Commission. Based on survey and interview data on temporary hired officials in the Commission, The empirical observations support an institutional perspective on representation in two ways. First, Commission officials tend to evoke multiple representational roles. Hence, the uni-dimensional approaches on representation offered b…

An organisational approach to meta-governance: structuring reforms through organisational (re-)engineering

Author's accepted manuscript Accepted manuscript may not be cited. This article outlines an organisation theory approach to meta-governance by illustrating how public organisations may organise policy change and reform by (re-)designing organisational choice-architectures. First, it outlines an organisational approach to meta-governance and, second, it offers an illustrative case of meta-governance by examining how public innovation processes are shaped by organisational designs. Two arguments are proposed: (i) first, that public meta-governance is an accessible tool for facilitating policy change, and (ii) second, that meta-governance may be systematically biased by organisational structur…

NASJONAL ADMINISTRATIV SUVERENITET – MYTE ELLER REALITET?

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series 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 iverks…

Are international bureaucracies vehicles for the common good?

Presentation on department page: http://www.uia.no/no/portaler/om_universitetet/oekonomi_og_samfunnsvitenskap/statsvitenskap_og_ledelsesfag/ forskning_isl/isl_working_papers_series This paper challenges widely held claims that international bureaucracies lack the potential to profoundly shape the behaviour, roles and identities of its personnel, and that the role of international civil servants are primarily shaped by where the officials come from. It is argued and empirically suggested that international bureaucracies may possess considerable clout to shape some basic behavioural perceptions among its personnel. The rise of what is phrased as ‘actor-level supranationalism’ among internatio…

Administrative fusion : towards a European "mega-administration"?

This study offers an organisation theory approach on administrative fusion. It is argued that the differentiated organisatational constellation of the European Union contributes to a differentiated fusion of domestic core executive institutions. It is argued that the European Commission mainly activates the lower echelons of the domestic government hierarchies, notably professional experts within sector ministries and agencies. Furthermore, the European Commission arguably weakens domestic politico administrative leadership, the Foreign Office and the Prime Ministers Office. Based on a rich body of survey data this analysis reveals that multi-level interaction of administrative systems betw…

Differentiated Integration and Disintegration in the EU after Brexit : Risks versus Opportunities

Differentiation is becoming an increasingly salient feature of European integration. The multi‐faceted European crisis and the subsequent Brexit vote (paving the way for a ground‐breaking case of differentiated disintegration) have led scholars and practitioners to think about the consequences of differentiated integration. This article draws on five well‐established models of differentiation experienced by countries both inside and outside the Union: the EEA model; the Danish model of (quasi‐)permanent differentiation; the Swedish model of de facto differentiation; the instrumental model; and the British model of differentiated disintegration. It addresses the different risks and opportuni…

Differentiation, differentiated integration and disintegration in a ‘post-Brexit-era’

In contrast to the ‘ever closer Union among the peoples of Europe’ invoked in the preamble of the Treaty of Rome, Frank Schimmelfennig and Thomas Winzen ponder whether the European Union (EU) is ‘growing ever looser’. Differentiation can take various forms which are often intertwined, such as functional, institutional, spatial/territorial as well as temporal differentiation. In 1998, Petersen studied Denmark’s integration policy in what he called a ‘dilemma’ between influence capability and stress sensitivity. With the Great Recession of 2007This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book 2008, the EU entered a new multi…