Administrative Styles of EU Institutions

Abstract

Research on the administrative system at the level of the European Union (EU) has focused either on the macro-development of organizational structures (for example, Egeberg, 2006; Olsen, 2010) or on the micro-attitudes of administrative staff (for example, Hooghe, 2001; Kassim et al., 2013). While these aspects are commonly acknowledged in the literature, other sources of organizational variation have scarcely been explored. The latter include, in particular, patterns of organizational behavior, as they become apparent in the policy-making process with regard to the administration’s role in policy initiation, policy formulation, or policy implementation. For example, are some EU institutions more proactive in shaping the political agenda, while others play a more reactive role? Can we observe different administrative approaches with regard to either incremental or synoptic approaches to decision making? And is there variation in administrative styles of implementation?