The European Commission as policy innovator : bureaucratic politics in perspective

Abstract

This dissertation attempts to explain how the Commission o f the European Union became such an active player in the policy-making o f the Union the last twenty years. In doing so, it provides a micro-founded theoretical framework o f involvement o f the Commission as an institution carrying out public policies. The basic premise is to understand the policy-making process as an interaction o f the top-officials o f the Commission with other purposeful societal actors at the micro-level. This interaction constitutes a multi-level game where top-officials as policy-makers contend with their own policy preferences over the policy outcomes that could be obtained, and try to maximize their utility function subject to what other players in the game pursue. Departing from corporatist and elite theories, it is argued that policy innovation can be a purposeful output pursued by bureaucrats in their attempt to reshape their policy competence (bureaucratic politics). This attempt takes part within the pattern of interaction between the various involved administrative departments and their policy clients and external suppliers. Then, in order to understand the dynamics o f the innovative activity of the administration, in our case the Commission, it is needed to see how this activity is influenced by the development o f the structure o f interaction. Which are the strategies followed by the administrative departments and which are their possibilities o f success for policy innovators under a well developed structure and an underdeveloped structure o f interaction. For this reason, the capability o f topofficials for policy innovation is tested under the case o f maritime industries (a well developed structure) and the case o f tourism (underdeveloped structure).