Nasjonale administrasjoner, eller mer korrekt, deler av nasjonale administrasjoner, har i noen grad også blitt deler av hva vi kan kalle en felles EU-administrasjon. Dette synes å henge sammen med to institusjonelle utviklingstrekk: På det europeiske nivået er det konsolideringen av...

Nasjonale administrasjoner, eller mer korrekt, deler av nasjonale administrasjoner, har i noen grad også blitt deler av hva vi kan kalle en felles EU-administrasjon. Dette synes å henge sammen med to institusjonelle utviklingstrekk: På det europeiske nivået er det konsolideringen av...

The jury is still out with respect to whether EU-level agencies act primarily as tools of national governments or not, although parts of the literature as well as the legal framework of EU agencies seem to favour the former interpretation. We argue that EU agencies which might be able to act...

The jury is still out with respect to whether EU-level agencies act primarily as tools of national governments or not, although parts of the literature as well as the legal framework of EU agencies seem to favour the former interpretation. We argue that EU agencies which might be able to act...

The paper questions the fashionable ideas, that bureaucratic organization is an obsolescent, undesirable and non-viable form of administration, and that there is an inevitable and irreversible paradigmatic shift towards market- or network organization. In contrast, the paper argues that...

Why do democracies give birth to bureaucracies and bureaucrats? How and why has a seemingly undesirable and unviable organizational form weathered relentless criticism over many years and is possibly experiencing a renaissance? Normative democratic theory, theories of formal organizations, and...

The High Authority, later the European Commission, was indeed an organisational innovation. Unlike international governmental organisations, it should from its very inception be able to act independently of national governments. Its autonomy was to be justified by its role as a promoter of the...

The relationship between the member states and the Commission is at the heart of the EU's institutional structure and at the centre of debates about the European Union. In the 1990s, the new institutionalism and the multi-level governance approach emphasised the limitations of state power in EU...

How can students of the European Union get from describing recent advances, to speculating about what are possible new directions and research agendas? How promising are terms such as “governance” and “the new governance” for improving the understanding how the Union is overned and...

To sketch an institutional approach, this paper elaborates ideas presented over 20 years ago in The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life (March and Olsen 1984). Institutionalism, as that term is used here, connotes a general approach to the study of political...