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Representative bureaucracy and seconded national government officials in the E uropean C ommission
Author(s) -
Murdoch Zuzana,
Trondal Jarle,
Geys Benny
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
regulation and governance
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.417
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1748-5991
pISSN - 1748-5983
DOI - 10.1111/rego.12089
Subject(s) - representativeness heuristic , bureaucracy , representation (politics) , government (linguistics) , population , variety (cybernetics) , political science , perspective (graphical) , public administration , public relations , sociology , politics , law , computer science , psychology , social psychology , linguistics , philosophy , demography , artificial intelligence
The bureaucratic arms of modern international organizations increasingly consist of staff with ambiguous organizational affiliations. This article analyses the implications of this trend from the perspective of representative bureaucracy – using seconded national experts ( SNEs ) in the E uropean C ommission ( C ommission) as the empirical laboratory. Using a variety of datasets, we unveil C ommission SNE s' profiles (to assess their passive representativeness) and link these profiles to their role perceptions (to evaluate their potential for active representation). This illustrates that C ommission SNE s' background characteristics do not match those of their constituent population (i.e. the EU 27 population) – suggesting a lack of passive representativeness. However, we also find that SNEs from countries favoring stronger national rather than E uropean regulatory and policymaking powers are more likely to see themselves as a representative of their home country government. This suggests a potential for active representation in terms of SNE s' home country's policy preferences.