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Information, Commitment and Consensus: A Comparison of Three Perspectives on Delegation in the European Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2010

Abstract

Three perspectives on delegation in the European Union are presented in this article. The transaction-costs perspective focuses on information asymmetries between policy makers and implementers. According to the commitment perspective, policy makers delegate authority as a solution to commitment problems. The consensus-building perspective views the decision to delegate as a trade-off between decisiveness and inclusiveness during the bargaining process. Hypotheses are derived from these perspectives regarding the amount of delegation to both the European Commission and to member states in legislation. From detailed information on eighty-six EU laws, there is some evidence for the transaction-costs perspective as an explanation of delegation to the Commission. With respect to delegation to member states, there is some evidence for both the transaction-costs perspective and the consensus-building perspective.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

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5 The number of recitals is an indicator of information intensity. Recitals state the principles and assumptions on which the law is based, and often refer to other laws to which the present one relates. The ENPI regulation contains twenty-three recitals, which is close to the average number of recitals found in our selection of laws.

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26 Although there is little empirical evidence from the existing literature, the commitment perspective suggests that the position of the agent gauges the extent to which delegation to that agent solves the commitment problem. Economic theory posits that the ‘conservatism’ as well as ‘independence’ of central banks solves commitment problems in monetary policy making. However, while empirical studies of inflation rates reveal a strong negative correlation between central bank independence and inflation, there is no evidence of a link between central bank conservatism and inflation: Berger, Helga, Haan, Jakob and Eijffinger, Silvester, ‘Central Bank Independence: An Update of Theory and Evidence’, Journal of Economic Surveys, 15 (2001), 338CrossRefGoogle Scholar. When examining delegation to the Commission, we explored interaction terms between the severity of the commitment problem, as measured by conflict in the Council, and two indicators of the policy position of the Commission. The first indicator was the Commission’s incentive to deviate and the second was a dichotomous variable that indicated whether or not the Commission took an extreme position if the issue concerned the level of harmonization of a particular policy. These interactions did not yield any significant or noteworthy findings.

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30 Sixty-nine of these acts were selected for a study of decision making in the EU of fifteen member states (see Thomson, Robert, Stokman, Frans N., Achen, Christopher H. and König, Thomas, eds, The European Union Decides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

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32 The discretion ratio for member states has an average of 18.19 (s.d. 14.79) for directives and 5.32 (s.d. 8.15) for other instruments (t = −4.64, p = 0.00). The discretion ratio for the Commission has an average of 1.59 (s.d. 3.13) for directives and 7.25 (s.d. 9.93) for other instruments. The correlation between the discretion ratio for the Commission and the discretion ratio for member states is −0.30, p = 0.01, n = 86. This negative correlation is consistent with Franchino, The Powers of the Union, pp.184–6. Note that Franchino’s measures of delegation to both the Commission and member states incorporate information on constraints while ours do not. In our data, there is an almost perfect correlation between the percentage of major provisions that give discretion to the Commission (or member states) and Franchino’s measure of delegation to the Commission (or member states): for delegation to the Commission, r = 0.99, p = 0.00, n = 86; for delegation to member states, r = 0.99, p = 0.00, n = 86.

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37 One area for future research is the extent to which and conditions under which the Commission is able to foresee the controversies that its legislative proposals raise. This is also an essential area of research for testing models of the EU’s legislative procedures, since these models assume that the Commission crafts its legislative proposals with the benefit of detailed knowledge of member states’ policy preferences.

38 The expected values in Figures 2 and 3 are based on simulations using clarify, holding the values of the other variables at their mean (for continuous) or median (for nominal) variables. See King, Gary, Tomz, Michael and Wittenberg, Jason, ‘Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation’, American Journal of Political Science, 44 (2000), 341355CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 We applied two alternative measures of the Commission’s incentive to deviate, one weighted by salience, as reported in the text, and one unweighted. We also applied six different measures of conflict in the Council: first, the measure reported in the text, which is weighted by salience and member states’ Shapley–Shubik Index (SSI) scores; secondly, a similar measure using expert judgements of member states’ capabilities rather than SSI scores; thirdly, weighted only by SSI scores; fourthly, weighted only by expert judgements of states’ capabilities; fifthly, weighted only by salience; sixthly, unweighted. All variants produced substantively the same findings. We also modelled the commitment perspective as an interaction between conflict in the Council and the Commission’s incentive to deviate, with the same result. We explored interaction terms between information intensity and both the Commission’s incentive to deviate and conflict in the Council, neither of which was significant. Adding control variables for the involvement of the EP and for the post-2004 laws did not affect the results.

40 We also experimented with different measures of conflict in the Council (see previous note), all of which indicated that conflict has a positive effect on delegation to member states when the unanimity rule applies. Adding control variables for the involvement of the EP and for the post-2004 laws did not affect the results.

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42 Bendor and Meirowitz, ‘Spatial Models of Delegation’, pp. 304–5. We also find no evidence that conflict in the Council leads to more delegation to the Commission, which might be expected on the basis of Epstein and O’Halloran’s model in Delegating Powers, p. 75.

43 Pollack, The Engines of European Integration.

44 Majone, ‘Two Logics of Delegation’.

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