ADMINISTRATIVE INTEGRATION ACROSS LEVELS OF GOVERNANCE Integration through Participation in EU Committees Jarle Trondal Dissertation Submitted to the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Social Science, University of Oslo, in Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of doctor rerum politicarum, February 2001. ii Preface The current study raises two main questions: (i) How well integrated are the national central administrations of European nation-states and the administrative apparatus of the European Union (EU)? And, (ii) how should we account for processes whereby national systems and the EU administrative apparatus become increasingly intertwined, intermeshed, and interlinked? Processes of administrative integration across levels of governance are suggested as one important indicator of European integration. European integration is not only about the functional spill-over processes at the EU level, nor has it only to do with grand bargains amongst the EU member-states. European integration also has to do with the vertical blurring of governance levels in Europe. How distinct are the decision-making processes of the EU machinery and the decision-making processes of the various European nation-states? In the current study, administrative integration is seen as synonymous with the general blurring of governance levels. The current study goes largely beyond the neo-functionalist versus intergovernmentalist distinction. The base-line explanatory framework underpinning the current study is institutional. Administrative integration reflects, arguably, the organizational structures embedding national civil servants. Most national government officials have several simultaneous organizational affiliations. However, some of these affiliations are primary to these officials, others are considered more secondary. In the current study, national governmental structures are considered primary to national civil servants, providing cognitive schemes, guidelines for assessing appropriate behaviour, codes of conduct, as well as cues for action. These primary institutional affiliations affect not only the calculation of strategic rationality of the actors, but also contribute to constituting the very identities and role perceptions of the actors. EU institutions are considered the secondary institutional affiliations to those national civil servants studied here. The research focus is directed towards the EU committees located at the very intersection of the EU bureaucracy and the central administrative apparatus of European nation-states. Arguably, national civil servants participating on EU committees may supplement pre-existing identities, role conceptions and codes of conduct with new ones, or iii they may change the very mix between different behavioural patterns and role conceptions. Furthermore, those national officials attending EU committees with high frequency and for protracted periods of time might arguably construct new supranational senses of belonging and role perceptions. As such, administrative integration is phrased: “integration through participation in EU committees”. The current study grapples with questions raised by neo-functionalists in the 1950s and 60s, and by intergovernmentalists in the 1970s, 80s and 90s. Amongst those questions raised by these theoretical approaches, two central questions stand out. Do national officials participating in EU decision-making processes evoke supranational role conceptions? Second, are national decision-making processes becoming less tightly co-ordinated, ultimately blurring the distinction between foreign policy and domestic policy? Both these questions are at the forefront of the current study. The central question posed is: Do national civil servants attending EU committees evoke supranational allegiances and do they have co-ordinated mandates and instructions when attending these EU committees? Administrative integration reflects processes whereby national officials evoke supranational role perceptions and processes whereby the co-ordination and gate-keeping roles of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are considered less important. The current study reflects a research endeavour that has lasted for about three years. I can still remember the moment when the research idea was born. A colleague (Morten Egeberg) and I were visiting The European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA) in the fall of 1997. More or less coincidentally we got to know Guenther Schaefer at EIPA, one of the leading scholars on comitology. After five minutes of talking we had developed a joint research project, of which this dissertation is one spin-off. Prior to our visit at EIPA, Morten and I had been interested in processes of Europeanization of national government institutions and decision-making processes. At that time, Guenther Schaefer held a course in “comitology” at EIPA for national civil servants. We soon reached the consensus that EU committees could be an adequate testing-ground for hypotheses on Europeanization of national central administrations. Also, EU committees could be seen as the very institution through which administrative integration across levels of governance occurred. Hence, the idea was born. Several of the empirical observations presented in the current study have been presented at national, Nordic and international workshops in political science. A draft version of Chapter 1 iv was presented at an ARENA seminar April 4, 2000. Two of the current chapters have been published in slightly different versions elsewhere: Chapter 5 has been published as ‘Multiple Institutional Embeddedness in Europe: The Case of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish government officials’, Scandinavian Political Studies, 2000, Vol. 23, No. 4: 311-342. This article builds on the same empirical data as the current study. A slightly different version of Chapter 6 has been co-published with Frode Veggeland as ‘Access, voice and loyalty. The representation of national civil servants in EU Committees’, ARENA working paper, 2000 No. 8. Without the encouragement, help, criticism, support and friendship of many people, this dissertation would never have been initiated, much less completed. Foremost, I would like to thank Tom Christensen and Morten Egeberg for recruiting me to academia. Without their encouragement for continued studies I would probably never have started an academic career. Second, I would like to give my gratitude to Morten Egeberg for being my tutor all the way from the beginning to the end of this research endeavour. For me, he represents an ideal scholar: Never satisfied with established truths, always in the search for new fields of empirical studies, constantly trying to suggest new ways of approaching the study of public administration and European integration. Moreover, he has become a good friend throughout these years. Second, I would like to thank Johan P. Olsen, Ragnar Lie, Kristin Eikeland Johansen and the ARENA programme (The Norwegian Research Council) for hiring me and for giving me all the scholarly and financial support needed for completing this study. ARENA has also given me ample possibilities for developing my research ideas in a multi- disciplinary milieu. I would therefor like to thank all researchers at ARENA today, and all those who have been at ARENA in the past. Additionally, I would also like to thank the Department of Political Science at the University of Oslo for giving me financial and scientific support. I would also like to acknowledge others who have been instrumental in fulfilling this study: Svein Andersen, Jan Beyers, Carl Brønn, Peggy Brønn, Simon Bulmer, Jeffrey T. Checkel, Knut A Christophersen, Erik Oddvar Eriksen, Andreas Føllesdal, Leif Helland, Torbjörn Larsson, Jeffrey Lewis, Per Lægreid, James G. March, Guenther F. Schaefer, Adriaan Schout, Ulf Sverdrup, Frode Veggeland, Hans Robert Zuna and Morten Øgaard. v Last but not least, Ingvill and Bettina have helped keep my feet on the ground when needed, and clarified the important values in life. Jarle Trondal Oslo, February 2001 vi Table of Contents Preface……………………………………………………………………….… iii List of Tables…………………………………………………………………... xiii List of Figures……………………………………………………………….…. xvii List of Abbreviations…………………………………………………………... xvii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION: SEIZING A MIDDLE GROUND BETWEEN INTERGOVERNMENTALISM AND NEO-FUNCTIONALISM Introduction………………………………………………………………….…. 1 Towards a two-dimensional model of administrative integration……………... 2 The intergovernmentalist – neo-functionalist controversy…………………….. 8 An intergovernmental account……………………………………………. 8 A neo-functional account…………………………………………………. 11 Bridging the intergovernmentalist – neo-functionalist divide by introducing arguments from organization theory………………….………………………... 14 Research design………………………………………………………………... 22 Overview of the study..………………………………………………………… 28 Notes…………………………………………………………………………… 30 CHAPTER 2 TOWARDS A FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS A THEORETICAL ACCOUNT ON PRINCIPLES OF ORGANIZATION Introduction…………………………………………………………………….. 33 Towards an organization theory argument…………………………………….. 37 A cognitive perspective: EU committees as agents of transformation…… 39 Accounting for the sectoral-territorial dimension: On principles of organization……………………………………………………………..... 41 Accounting for the sectoral-territorial dimension: On institutional compatibility……………………………………………………………… 50 vii Accounting for the sectoral-territorial spectrum and the national- supranational dimension: On length and intensity in cross-level participation……………………………………………………………….