The Public Administration Turn in Integration Research

This article highlights how the study of public administration is brought back into the study of European integration and European Union (EU) governance. The public administration turn in integration research has brought generic insights into the broader field of public administration but has also brought theories, concepts and hypotheses from public administration into the field of integration research. The purpose of this overview is less to provide a complete picture of the public administration turn in integration research, but rather to reveal the varied and rich research agendas, and to stimulate further research. This public administration turn highlights (i) the impact of the formal organisation of core-executive institutions such as the European Commission; (ii) the conditional autonomy of sub-ordinate administrative units such as EU-level agencies; (iii) the integration of multilevel administrative systems through collegial structures such as EU-level committees; and (iv) the external penetration and differentiated impact of EU-level institutions on domestic public administration. The lack of systematic knowledge about the impact of administrative structures within EU-level and domestic public administration is thus steadily reduced. A later version of this article has been published in Journal of European Public Policy, September 2007, Vol. 16, No. 6, pp. 960-972