The European Commission is a unique ‘laboratory’ for supranational institution building

As Morten Egeberg writes, international organisations are typically composed of representatives with affiliations to the national level. The European Commission, in contrast, is one of the few international institutions in which key actors owe their allegiances to the supranational level. Assessing the potential for the Commission to act as a ‘laboratory’ for experiments in supranational institution building, he finds that nationality plays only a minor role in influencing the behaviour of Commission staff, and is simply one of many factors influencing the actions of Commissioners.