“Framing the European Commission’s Role: From Autonomy to Influence”

Cini, Michelle. (1999) “Framing the European Commission’s Role: From Autonomy to Influence”. In: UNSPECIFIED, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

While the application of agency theory to the EU case has explained the conditions under which supranational autonomy occurs, it fails (or rather, does not seek) to account for the conditions under which the supranational institutions influence policy outcomes. This is because it focuses exclusively on the relationship between member states and the EU institutions, ignoring other external and internal factors which may be of relevance. Yet the principal-agent model does focus our attention of the issue of supranational agency and, in the case of this paper, on the agency of the European Commission. This is important. However, there is a danger that such a focus on agency could draw attention away from the particular institutional attributes of the Commission. It is argued in this paper that an understanding of both agency and structure and the relationship between them is necessary if Commission influence is to be fully comprehended and a theory of Commission influence constructed. Hay and Wincott’s recent contribution to this debate (1998) is particularly interesting as it focuses attention on the concept of ‘strategy’ (combining and integrating notions of strategic action and strategic context), providing a useful starting-point, if not a solid theoretical base, for case-study research.

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