Documents the struggle of the European Commission to maintain its autonomy in a complex institutional setting and adverse political environment.

This book examines the struggle of the European Union bureaucracy to maintain its autonomy in an increasingly complex institutional setting and adverse political environment. Using an original survey of nearly two hundred top European Commission officials, it shows that the Commission is a coherent organization that shares a common culture of supranationalism. The European Union's multicephalous structure of political authority limits the capacity of European politicians to curb the autonomy of the Commission but tends to undermine the legitimacy of the organization, which finds itself under persistent political attacks. These attacks inadvertently help the organization bolster its defenses against the external threats and trigger internal legitimation processes that reinforce the devotion of its employees to its institutional mission. The rich survey data show how Commission bureaucrats establish themselves as the 'custodians of Europe'. The book helps disentangle the complexity of the Commission and makes a contribution to the study of international bureaucracies, a topic that has received little attention.

"This book examines the struggle of the European Union bureaucracy to maintain its autonomy in an increasingly complex institutional setting and adverse political environment. Using an original survey of nearly two hundred top European Commission officials, it shows that the European Union is a coherent organization that shares a common culture of supranationalism. The European Union's multicephalous structure of political authority limits the capacity of European politicians to curb the autonomy of the Commission but tends to undermine the legitimacy of the organization, which finds itself under persistent political attacks. These attacks inadvertently help the organization bolster its defenses against the external threats and trigger internal legitimation processes that reinforce the devotion of its employees to its institutional mission. The rich survey data show how Commission bureaucrats establish themselves as the "custodians of Europe." The book helps disentangle the complexity of the Commission and makes a contribution to the study of international bureaucracies, a topic that has received little attention"--

An in-depth case study of the evolution of one of the most important EU's institutions.

As the demand and necessity for greater international and transnational cooperation increase, the bureaucratic bodies of international organizations are receiving ever more scholarly attention. However, the relevance of International Public Administrations (IPAs) for global policy-making remains neither empirically nor theoretically well understood, and yet little systematic knowledge is available about the influence international bureaucracies may have on policy-making. What makes international bureaucracies influential? Are the sources of their influence on policy-making comparable to that of national public administrations? Is there a need to reflect on other factors than known from the analysis of national bureaucracies or for re-assessing the impact of traditional factors of influence in multilevel constellations? Is there a systematic link between intra-organizational structures and the behavior of the personnel of international bureaucracies and the policy output of their organizations? What are the effects of international bureaucracies’ role for particular policies or policy constellations? The different contributions in this volume address these questions from different conceptual perspectives and focus on different tools of administrative governance. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

This book applies established analytical concepts such as influence, authority, administrative styles, autonomy, budgeting and multilevel administration to the study of international bureaucracies and their political environment. It reflects on the commonalities and differences between national and international administrations and carefully constructs the impact of international administrative tools on policy making. The book shows how the study of international bureaucracies can fertilize interdisciplinary discourse, in particular between International Relations, Comparative Government and Public Administration. The book makes a forceful argument for Public Administration to take on the challenge of internationalization.