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... Show morehe 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. Show less
Answers to the question of why bureaucrats interact with interest groups are important to understand how much influence these two sets of actors can exert on public decision making. Yet, to date,... Show moreAnswers to the question of why bureaucrats interact with interest groups are important to understand how much influence these two sets of actors can exert on public decision making. Yet, to date, scholars have seldom systematically researched bureaucratic motives to grant interest groups access to policy making. As a result, we cannot properly determine how the precise nature of interactions between these two influential sets of actors in public decision making varies across cases and over time.This study is an attempt to systematically explain why and when bureaucrats interact with interest groups. It develops a new explanatory model that integrates different explanations of bureaucracy-interest group interactions. The empirical analyses are based on a true mixed-method design and include the development of a novel database of Dutch national interest groups.This books shows that giving access to interest groups is not only a matter of strategic choices that are based on a cost-benefit analysis. Rather, and in short, bureaucrats’ interactions with interest groups are a matter of deliberately picking and choosing what they need from these groups, strategically anticipating what future consequences of interactions will entail, or (un)consciously following a path of interactions carved out by past experiences and choices. Show less
