Managing the house: the Presidency, agenda control and policy activism in the European Commission

Abstract:

Although the importance of international organizations is well-established, the specific contribution made to their policy outputs by administrative as opposed to political actors is rarely investigated.

Still less attention is paid to how intra-organizational factors within international administrations affect the latter’s capacity to influence those outputs. Even in the case of the European Union, where the European Commission’s power over decisional outputs has been a long-standing interest, this issue has not been fully explored. Scholars have focused on horizontal factors, but have not addressed how vertical relations affect the Commission’s policy activism and therefore its influence on EU outputs.

By examining how the transformation of power relations within the Commission has changed as a consequence of the strengthening of the Commission Presidency, this contribution fills that lacuna. Showing how a strong President has been able to control the Commission’s output, it demonstrates the importance of vertical relations as a variable.