Europeanization of sea-level bureaucrats: a case of ship inspectors’ training

How is the EU utilizing national bureaucracies, this paper asks. It reports findings from semi-structured interviews with ship inspectors and their superiors about international training efforts aimed at harmonizing inspections. The maritime sector, with its highly institutionalized global rule-making, may constitute an unlikely case for EU co-optation of national bureaucrats for historical, institutional and economic reasons, but by examining the work of ‘sea-level bureaucrats’ we see how the EU builds executive capacity at the lowest level of national bureaucracies and gain insight into some hitherto under-researched mechanisms of implementation and compliance in European governance. We find evidence of Europeanization of inspections, adding to the body of evidence suggesting a new international, multilevel administrative order with stronger traits of direct implementation is emerging.