Diplomats without a flag: The institutionalization of the delegations of the commission in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries

This article deals with the evolution of the status and role of the delegations of the European Commission in Africa from the 1960s onwards. Starting from an institutionalist approach, it tries to show to what extent this evolution reflects the bureaucratization of the external service (in the Weberian sense of a rational and professional civil service) in parallel with that of the administration of the Commission as a whole. It envisages the current reform of the external service as a new step in the construction of a mature European bureaucracy. © 2006 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.