The European Commission, Expert Groups, and the Policy Process

Demystifying Technocratic Governance

Julia Metz

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137437235
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book challenges the assumption that policy makers' work with advisory committees is emblematic of technocratic governance. Analyzing how and why the European Commission uses expert groups in the policy process, it shows that experts not only solve technical problems, but also function as political devices and negotiators in modern governance.

1

Introduction

Expert knowledge is an essential prerequisite of modern governance across jurisdictions and levels of government. In order to be able to respond adequately to today’s societal problems, enlightened policy making must decidedly rest on a sound knowledge basis. Traditionally, the monopoly over expert knowledge in the policy process has been held by government bureaucracies. This was asserted most vehemently by Max Weber, who saw the expert bureaucrat with his or her uncontested monopoly over expert knowledge as being indispensable to modern government (Weber, 1925/1978, pp. 956–1005). The only challenge Weber saw to bureaucrats’ superior expertise in the policy process were ‘private economic interest groups’ with their specialist knowledge (Weber, 1925/1978, p. 994).

Today, policy making often relies on a dispersed knowledge basis, and bureaucrats share their monopoly on knowledge in the policy process with a wide variety of other actors. Having to deal with ever more complex problems and intervening in more and more areas of citizens’ everyday lives, government bureaucracies are often overwhelmed by the task of finding adequate solutions to problems. They frequently have to rely on external advisors in order to acquire the knowledge they require for sound policy making (Haas, 1992). This is a particularly contentious issue in modern governance, given that governments’ incorporation of external advice into the policy process invokes a fundamental trade-off between effective and inclusive governance (Dahl, 1994). While effective governance – understood as the delivery of policy outputs that successfully solve the problems of citizens – is clearly welcomed by the people, the intense recourse of governments to ‘unelected’ advisors is often met with skepticism. Citizens fear that where policy makers work (too) closely with external advisors in the policy process, the importance given to political and democratic considerations may diminish. Putting it bluntly, where technocracy – the rule of expertise – prevails, the role of democracy – the rule of the people – may decrease.

This is particularly true for the political system of the European Union, which needs to find appropriate solutions to complex, multilevel problems. Most prominently, the EU’s core bureaucracy, the European Commission (henceforth referred to as Commission), has to struggle with its image as a technocratic body whose decisions rest solely on the rule of expertise at the expense of citizens’ concerns (Radaelli, 1999b). The Commission does, indeed, formally hold a technocratic mandate, which is to prepare and execute European legislation on the basis of impartial expertise. However, the body is notoriously understaffed and therefore relies strongly on the assistance of external experts. Today, the Commission’s work is constantly accompanied by external advisors, and the Commission itself can be said to be surrounded by a ‘mushrooming parallel administration of EU-level agencies and EU committees’ (Trondal, 2010, p. v).

Among the advisory bodies that continually assist the European Commission are about 1,000 ‘expert groups’ comprising more than 30,000 experts (see Chapter 3). These expert groups are a part of the EU committee system and are considered to be inherently technocratic; they are seen as ‘reinforc[ing] the image of technocratic governance that is usually associated with the European Union’ (Christiansen and Larsson, 2007a, p. 8). This view has been strongly shaped by an influential study that dubbed committees as problem-solving ‘negotiation arenas’ (Joerges and Neyer, 1997). They are viewed as fora where national experts engage in ‘supranational deliberation’. Here, transnational experts meet, exchange their views and knowledge, and sound out formal decisions. As informal (technocratic) bodies, such committees thus alleviate formal (political) decision making, which helps European decision makers to ‘escape from deadlock’ in the EU multilevel system (Héritier, 1999) and consequently promotes European integration (Joerges and Neyer, 1997). This book, however, will argue that seeing expert groups purely as technocratic bodies risks overlooking the degree of influence they may have on the content of EU policies, which often involve very political choices (Hartlapp et al., 2014). A naïve view of Commission expert groups as being no more than technocratic bodies similarly contrasts with case-study insights and media reports that allude to their political influence on European legislation – an issue that has lately also become a source of public discontent and mistrust (Mahony, 2008; Nielsen, 2012).

Case studies have pointed to the influential role of expert groups on the Commission’s food-safety regulation prior to and during the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis in the late 1990s. In this case, the Commission was accused of obscure consultation practices and the use of biased advice from its expert groups. Thus, the Commission’s mismanagement of the BSE crisis was viewed as being closely associated with its own expert groups (Vos, 2000). The criticism led the Commission to revise its consultation practices and, in 2001, to issue its widely discussed White Paper on European Governance (Commission of the European Communities, 2001b). A more recent example of an influential expert group that was publicly attacked in the media is the ‘de Larosière’ Group on Financial Supervision in the EU. In November 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, Commission President José Manuel Barroso created this expert group with a view to obtaining advice on the creation of a new, more stringent regulation for financial supervision in the EU.1 However, the de Larosière Group attracted public attention mainly due to its membership, which was biased toward the financial industry and was thus said to be ‘drawn from the same institutions that helped cause the crisis’ (Willis, 2009).2 Accordingly, critical voices portrayed the European Commission as a ‘captive’ of industry-dominated expert groups (ALTER-EU, 2009). This example indicates that the Commission also has other, more political, interests when working with expert groups beyond its merely technocratic ‘problem-solving’ concerns. Thus, although expertise unquestionably is an important driver of the Commission’s policy work, it may also mask political ambitions inside Europe’s central agenda-setting institution.

In essence, selective case-study evidence and media reports suggest that Commission expert groups are far more than technocratic deliberation arenas or impartial providers of factual data. Although we can expect Commission expert groups to play an important role in shaping EU policies, we lack systematic insights into the Commission’s daily work with its expert groups in the EU policy process. This book aims to close this research gap by challenging the myth that Commission expert groups are purely technocratic bodies and asking: How does the European Commission use its expert groups in the policy process? And, which factors explain variation in the Commission’s usage of expert groups?

These questions are addressed by analyzing systematically how the European Commission uses expert groups in the preparation of European legislation and identifying the relevant factors that help to explain variation in the Commission’s usage of expert groups. It presents a theory-driven investigation, conceptualizing the relationship between the Commission and its expert groups as being defined by resource exchanges. Empirically, Commission expert groups are analyzed at the systemic level, at the level of single-case studies, and across policy sectors. The combined quantitative and qualitative evidence reveals that the label ‘Commission expert group’ conceals a broad variety of different bodies, and that they are used by the Commission in various ways. It supports the core argument that Commission expert groups are anything but further evidence of European technocracy. The ‘rule of expertise’ is not the only principle when the Commission consults with expert groups.

On the contrary, the European Commission’s work with expert groups in the EU policy process is equally often driven by political concerns. Actors in the Commission seek not only expert knowledge but also influence and power; they anticipate political decision making and are aware of the political implications of their decisions. Thus, the game that is played behind the veil of technocratic governance is often also a political one. This book therefore corroborates recent research that portrays the European Commission as moving away from a merely technocratic bureaucracy to a more political executive in European governance (Kassim et al., 2013; Wille, 2013; Hartlapp et al., 2014; Hartlapp, 2015).3 More precisely, it epitomizes how technocratic and political concerns are intricately entwined in the process that leads to the formation of European legislation.

1.1

Expert groups: What do we know from the literature?

European Commission expert groups are formally defined as:

[C]onsultative entities set up by the Commission or its services, comprising at least six public and/or private-sector members, which are foreseen to meet more than once. (European Commission, 2010b, p. 3)

Expert groups are thus advisory bodies affiliated to the European Commission, to which they lend their expertise throughout the policy process – from policy initiation to formulation, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation. They are a distinct type of EU committee, alongside a wide range of other ‘committees’ that exist at the EU level: the formal ‘grand’ committees, such as the Social and Economic Committee and the Committee of the Regions; the working groups of the Council of the European Union (Council) and the European Parliament (EP) committees; and the 300 comitology committees that formally advise the European Commission and the Council in the policy-implementation phase.

European Commission expert groups are comparable to governmental advisory committees at the national level, which have long existed and derive from various traditions of policy-advisory systems (Christiansen and Kirchner, 2000a). In the policy-advisory systems of national governments, advisory committees are seen as fulfilling the role of ‘knowledge brokers’ between policy makers and actors in their environment (Craft and Howlett, 2013, p. 188; similarly for the EU, see Böhling, 2014; Dreger, 2014, p. 7). In the UK, the so-called Royal Commissions, for example, are considered to be among the oldest expert committees (Bulmer, 1993). In the United States, the Federal Advisory Committees, of which more than a thousand exist today, advise at the federal level; in other words, they advise the President or Congress (Zegart, 2004; Ginsberg, 2010). The Scandinavian countries also have a long tradition of involving expert groups in the policy process (Olsen, [1983] 2000, pp. 166–8). Whereas the Anglo-American traditions originated from the concept of pluralistic interest intermediation (e.g., for Canada, see Brown-John, 1979), in Scandinavia the system of ‘organized democracy’ was based on the idea of ‘integrated participation’ (Olsen, [1983] 2000, p. 166). Also in continental corporatist states, such as Germany, expert committees that assist the national executive bodies have existed since the early nineteenth century and still play an important role in the policy process (Weingart and Lentsch, 2008; Krick, 2013a).

Similar to many forms of governmental advisory committees at the national level, Commission expert groups involve a broad array of actors, ranging from representatives of institutions – such as public authorities (national, regional, or local), civil society, or industry – to independent experts. This varied membership is related to the European Commission’s broad definition of expertise. The Commission itself specifies that ‘[e]xpertise may take many forms, including both scientific knowledge and that derived from practical experience. It may also relate to specific national or regional situations. Expertise may be brought to bear at any stage in the policy-making cycle, although different forms of expertise may be needed at different stages’ (Commission of the European Communities, 2002, p. 6). Because all of these different forms of expertise are vital for policy work, the Commission turns to a wide variety of actors it considers ‘experts’. As Robert (2012, p. 430) notes, this broad definition ‘makes it possible for anyone whose skills can be used for the building of public action to be considered as an expert’.

As will be shown in Chapter 3, the shape, size, and composition of Commission expert groups can vary substantially. Notwithstanding their diversity, an important common characteristic of these groups is that they only give advice to the Commission and (as opposed to comitology committees) do not have any formal powers in the European policy process. Expert groups are created and managed at the administrative level of the Commission’s Directorates-General and are therefore organized in line with the Commission’s sectoral structure. Since 2005, the European Commission has provided publicly accessible information on its around-1,000 current expert groups in an online register.4 Despite their large number and the increased public concern about them, little systematic knowledge exists about the actual role of Commission expert groups in the EU administrative system and in the policy process.

However, Commission expert groups form part of the EU administrative space, to which a growin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Tables and Figures
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A Relationship of Resource Dependencies
• 3 A Bird’s-Eye View
• 4 Technical Advice United with Political Agenda Setting
• 5 Powerfully Shaping the Commission’s Research Agenda
• 6 A Reality Check and Clearing House
• 7 Accumulating Political Ammunition
• 8 A Cross-Sectoral View
• 9 Conclusion: Technocratic Governance between Myth and Reality
• Appendix
• Notes
• References
• Index