IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jcmkts/v59y2021i3p625-642.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Commission in EU Policy Preparation

Author

Listed:
  • Jens Blom‐Hansen
  • Roman Senninger

Abstract

Since the heyday of Jacques Delors, the Commission has been challenged by the rise of the European Council, the empowerment of the European Parliament and the creation of European agencies. However, while many scholars agree about the direction of change, there is disagreement about the extent to which the Commission's position has declined. A number of studies are sceptical, and we join this sceptical line. Our contribution is to focus on the Commission's role as a maker of both legislative and executive rules (implementing and delegated acts). These rules are all decided under complex inter‐institutional procedures. But the Commission possesses the right of initiative in all procedures. We investigate how the Commission can use this first‐mover advantage to influence EU policy. We establish a framework for understanding what strategic options the first‐mover advantage entails and provide a first empirical illustration with a qualitative analysis of ten selected Commission proposals.

Suggested Citation

  • Jens Blom‐Hansen & Roman Senninger, 2021. "The Commission in EU Policy Preparation," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 59(3), pages 625-642, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:59:y:2021:i:3:p:625-642
    DOI: 10.1111/jcms.13123
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.13123
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/jcms.13123?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Morten Egeberg & Jarle Trondal, 2017. "Researching European Union Agencies: What Have We Learnt (and Where Do We Go from Here)?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(4), pages 675-690, July.
    2. Moser, Peter, 1997. "A Theory of the Conditional Influence of the European Parliament in the Cooperation Procedure," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 91(3-4), pages 333-350, June.
    3. Haas, Peter M., 1992. "Introduction: epistemic communities and international policy coordination," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 46(1), pages 1-35, January.
    4. Pollack, Mark A., 2003. "The Engines of European Integration: Delegation, Agency, and Agenda Setting in the EU," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199251179.
    5. Henry Mintzberg, 1978. "Patterns in Strategy Formation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(9), pages 934-948, May.
    6. McKelvey, Richard D., 1976. "Intransitivities in multidimensional voting models and some implications for agenda control," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 472-482, June.
    7. Neill Nugent & Mark Rhinard, 2016. "Is the European Commission Really in Decline?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 54(5), pages 1199-1215, September.
    8. Claudio M. Radaelli, 2018. "Halfway Through the Better Regulation Strategy of the Juncker Commission: What Does the Evidence Say?," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(S1), pages 85-95, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Buket Oztas & Amie Kreppel, 2022. "Power or Luck? The Limitations of the European Commission's Agenda Setting Power and Autonomous Policy Influence," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 408-426, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Buket Oztas & Amie Kreppel, 2022. "Power or Luck? The Limitations of the European Commission's Agenda Setting Power and Autonomous Policy Influence," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 408-426, March.
    2. Dirk Junge & Thomas König, 2007. "What's Wrong With Eu Spatial Analysis?," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 19(4), pages 465-487, October.
    3. Moser, Peter, 1999. "The impact of legislative institutions on public policy: a survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 1-33, March.
    4. Büthe Tim, 2010. "Engineering Uncontestedness? The Origins and Institutional Development of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 12(3), pages 1-64, October.
    5. Rik Joosen & Asya Zhelyazkova, 2022. "How Do Supranational Regulators Keep Companies in Line? An Analysis of the Enforcement Styles of EU Agencies," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(4), pages 983-1000, July.
    6. Christophe Crombez & Pieterjan Vangerven, 2014. "Procedural models of European Union politics: Contributions and suggestions for improvement," European Union Politics, , vol. 15(2), pages 289-308, June.
    7. Dermot Hodson, 2019. "The New Intergovernmentalism and the Euro Crisis: A Painful Case?," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 145, European Institute, LSE.
    8. Sandrino Smeets & Alenka Jaschke & Derek Beach, 2019. "The Role of the EU Institutions in Establishing the European Stability Mechanism: Institutional Leadership under a Veil of Intergovernmentalism," Journal of Common Market Studies, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(4), pages 675-691, July.
    9. Claude Paraponaris, 2017. "Plateformes numériques, conception ouverte et emploi," Post-Print halshs-01614430, HAL.
    10. Xueyan Dong & Jingyu Gao & Sunny Li Sun & Kangtao Ye, 2021. "Doing extreme by doing good," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 38(1), pages 291-315, March.
    11. Andrew B. Whitford & Derrick Anderson, 2021. "Governance landscapes for emerging technologies: The case of cryptocurrencies," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(4), pages 1053-1070, October.
    12. CHEN, Helen S.Y., 2020. "Designing Sustainable Humanitarian Supply Chains," OSF Preprints m82ar, Center for Open Science.
    13. Luigi Curini & Paolo Martelli, 2009. "Electoral Systems and Government Stability: A Simulation of 2006 Italian Policy Space," Czech Economic Review, Charles University Prague, Faculty of Social Sciences, Institute of Economic Studies, vol. 3(3), pages 305-322, October.
    14. Denise M. Keele & Susan DeHart, 2011. "Partners of USEPA Climate Leaders: an Event Study on Stock Performance," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(8), pages 485-497, December.
    15. Eichengreen, Barry & Ghironi, Fabio, 1997. "European Monetary Unification and International Monetary Cooperation," Department of Economics, Working Paper Series qt10d518tg, Department of Economics, Institute for Business and Economic Research, UC Berkeley.
    16. Weck-Hannemann, Hannelore, 1989. "Protectionism in direct democracy," Discussion Papers, Series II 79, University of Konstanz, Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 178 "Internationalization of the Economy".
    17. Jeanie Bukowski, 2017. "A “new water culture†on the Iberian Peninsula? Evaluating epistemic community impact on water resources management policy," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 35(2), pages 239-264, March.
    18. Deniz Aksoy, 2010. "Who gets what, when, and how revisited: Voting and proposal powers in the allocation of the EU budget," European Union Politics, , vol. 11(2), pages 171-194, June.
    19. Mateos-Garcia, Juan & Steinmueller, W. Edward, 2008. "The institutions of open source software: Examining the Debian community," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 20(4), pages 333-344, December.
    20. Catherine Long, 2017. "Delegated Service Authority: Institutional Evolution of PEPFAR Health-Based Program Implementing Units in Tanzania," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 8(3), pages 303-312, September.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jcmkts:v:59:y:2021:i:3:p:625-642. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0021-9886 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.