EUROPEAN COMMISSION OVERLOAD AND THE PATHOLOGY OF MANAGEMENT REFORM: GARBAGE CANS, RATIONALITY AND RISK AVERSION
| Published date | 01 June 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2006.00010.x |
| Author | ROGER P. LEVY |
| Date | 01 June 2006 |
Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 2, 2006 (423–439)
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
EUROPEAN COMMISSION OVERLOAD
AND THE PATHOLOGY OF MANAGEMENT
REFORM: GARBAGE CANS, RATIONALITY
AND RISK AVERSION
ROGER P . LEVY
Prior to the EU resignation crisis (the fall of the Santer Commission in 1999), it had
long been argued that the European Commission was suffering from managerial
‘ overload ’ . The incoming Prodi Commission embarked on a programme of admin-
istrative and managerial reform under the leadership of Commission Vice President,
Neil Kinnock. Central to this programme were the objectives of improving manage-
rial capacities and bolstering legitimacy in order that the Commission would be
better able to discharge its expanded responsibilities. Using the model of governmen-
tal overload developed in the 1970s and 1980s, this article quantifi es the impact of
the reforms and argues that the overload problem has been aggravated rather than
diminished. In this context, the rationale of the reform project is explored with refer-
ence to theories of public policy decision making.
INTRODUCTION
In EU lore, it is axiomatic that the European Commission has suffered from
increasing overload. The conventional wisdom is that, over the years, the
Commission picked up new responsibilities in different policy areas without
the matching increases in available resources to develop and manage them.
By the time of the fall of the Santer Commission in March 1999, tasks had
outstripped capacity to the point where many were convinced that the man-
agement system in key areas had broken down irretrievably. The two reports
by the Committee of Independent Experts (CIE) both documented these
failures and suggested a comprehensive programme of management reform
(CIE 1999a, b). The reforms that were subsequently embarked on from March
2000 and championed by Commission Vice President Neil Kinnock (hence-
forth referred to as ‘ the Kinnock reforms ’ ), were supposed to come to the
rescue and revitalize the Commission ’ s services.
Nevertheless, a view is emerging from within the Commission that
the reforms themselves represent just another addition to the overload
problem. Rather than mitigating the effects of overload, then, they have
been characterized as an extra burden. There is evidence to suggest that the
reform process has been imposed from the outside, without regard to the
Roger P. Levy is Professor of Public Management, Caledonian Business School, Glasgow Caledonian
University.
424 ROGER P. LEVY
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006 Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 2, 2006 (423–439)
Commission ’ s real tasks and addressing an agenda which has little to do
with these tasks ( Kassim 2004a; Peterson 2004 ).
This paper seeks to address two interrelated issues, one specifi c and the
other more general. The fi rst is to analyse and quantify the implementation
of the reform actions from an overload perspective. If it is the case that re-
form is adding to the overload problem, then the Commission ’ s performance
will get worse rather than better, the opposite to the stated intentions of the
reformers. This raises questions about the rationality or otherwise of the
reforms and connects with broader theoretical debates about the nature of
decision making in public policy and public management reform (see, for
example, Dunleavy 1991; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2000; Barzelay 2003 ). This is
our second concern and we return to it in the latter part of the paper.
DEFINING THE OVERLOAD PROBLEM
Insofar as it refers to the mismatch between the number of tasks and the
resources available to carry them out, the notion of overload has long since
become part of everyday discourse. Yet it is worth recalling that the concept
of governmental overload developed in the specifi c circumstances of crises
that affl icted western democratic states in the 1970s. While sharing the
Marxist view that the state was in ‘ crisis ’ (for example, see O ’ Connor 1973 ),
the original proponents of the overload model within the so-called Trilateral
Commission came at this from a completely different direction and reached
different conclusions. Rather than to insinuate a connection with late
monopoly capitalism and its ailments, theories of overload argued that the
root of the problem was ever bigger government per se , and the attendant
public expectations that created, along with the spread of increasingly com-
plex networks of dependency typical of modern societies ( King 1975; Rose
1984 ). In summary, there were three dimensions to the overload concept – the
absolute level of governmental workload, the number and complexity of
dependency relationships, and the level of governmental legitimacy.
King argued that as the state expanded through the development of inter-
ventionist welfare and economic policies, so citizen voters held governments
responsible for solving an ever greater range of problems. As the size and
scope of government grew, the law of diminishing returns set in. State action
became less effective for each additional increment of increasingly unsus-
tainable spending and taxation. Public expectations were raised to levels
which could not be fulfi lled, the result being a decline in the legitimacy
of both the government of the day and the state itself. With the growth in
activity, even hitherto stable policy areas started to fail, either because of
inadequate technology, insuffi cient resources or an increase in the number
of dependency relationships ( King 1975 , pp. 288 – 90).
Borrowing from the organization theory literature (see, for example,
Crozier 1964 ), it can be seen that dependency relationships were a function
of an ever more sophisticated division of labour in which key groups of
workers or resource holders had the ability to bring whole areas of national
To continue reading
Request your trial