Ex post legislative evaluation in the European Union: questioning the usage of evaluations as instruments for accountability
| Author | Stijn van Voorst,Ellen Mastenbroek,Pieter Zwaan |
| Published date | 01 December 2016 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852315598389 |
| Date | 01 December 2016 |
| Subject Matter | Special issue: Accountability in the post-Lisbon European UnionSpecial Issue Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2016, Vol. 82(4) 674–693
Ex post legislative evaluation in
! The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852315598389
the usage of evaluations as
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instruments for accountability
Pieter Zwaan
Radboud University, The Netherlands
Stijn van Voorst
Radboud University, The Netherlands
Ellen Mastenbroek
Radboud University, The Netherlands
Abstract
Evaluations may perform a key role in political systems as they provide a basis for
parliaments to hold their executives accountable. This is equally the case in the
European Union. Yet, several factors may work against the usage of European Union
evaluations for accountability purposes. Members of the European Parliament work
under great time pressure and executives may have little incentives to produce high-
quality evaluations. This article therefore addresses the question of to what extent and
when Members of the European Parliament use ex post legislative evaluations. We
present an analysis of 220 evaluations, studying how many were referred to in parlia-
mentary questions. Our main finding is that 16% of the evaluations are followed up
through questions. However, the parliamentary questions hardly serve accountability
aims. Members of the European Parliament mostly use evaluations for agenda-setting
purposes. The main variable explaining differences in the usage of evaluations is the level
of conflict between the European Parliament and Commission during the legislative
process.
Points for practitioners
This article studies the usage of ex post evaluations of European Union legislation by
Members of the European Parliament for accountability purposes by analysing European
Parliament questions. It shows that MEPs ask different types of questions, referring to
ex post evaluations. Most of the questions reveal forward-looking rather than
Corresponding author:
Pieter Zwaan, Radboud University, Nijmegen, 9108, 6500 HK Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Email: p.zwaan@fm.ru.nl
Zwaan et al.
675
backward-looking motives, aimed at agenda-setting and policy change instead of
accountability. It concludes that variance in parliamentary questions about the follow-
up of evaluation outcomes can be explained by the level of conflict between the
European Parliament and Commission during the legislative stage.
Keywords
accountability, European Union, evaluation, legislation
Introduction1
In response to concerns about the democratic deficit of the European Union
(EU) and the lack of accountability of its institutions, increasing attention has
been paid to the accountability of the European Commission. When the Santer
Commission resigned in 1999 after allegations of fraud and mismanagement, this
increasing attention was followed by action: the succeeding Prodi Commission
implemented serious reforms to increase the Commission’s accountability (Wille,
2010: 194).
To increase its political accountability, the Commission has become more tightly
connected to the European Parliament (EP) (Curtin, 2007). Various reforms have
provided the EP with a range of instruments to hold the Commission accountable
(Wille, 2012: 387), even though the executive powers of the Commission are limited
as it is not in charge of the day-to-day implementation of EU policies. The
Commission is, however, responsible for initiating and formulating new policies
and for monitoring and enforcing implementation, as well as evaluating EU
policies.
The increasing powers of the EP have been followed by stronger demands on the
Commission to submit reports about EU policies to the EP (Curtin, 2009: 256–
257). Especially promising in this respect are ex post evaluations of EU pro-
grammes and legislation. Most legislation adopted nowadays includes a require-
ment for an evaluation, focusing either on the implementation process or actual
impacts (Bussmann, 2010: 280).2 In theory, these evaluations provide rich infor-
mation on the fulfillment of policy goals and the responsibilities of actors involved
(Corbett et al., 2011: 318–319).
Despite the theoretical potential of ex post evaluations for political accountabil-
ity, existing research indicates that the EP does not actively use EU programme
evaluations. A study by the Commission demonstrates that ‘most evaluations are
used only by the officials [administrators] directly involved in the implementation
of the interventions that are evaluated’ (EPEC, 2005, quoted in Stern, 2009). A
recent study of the evaluation of the LIFE programme found that usage mainly
takes place in the Commission, and not in the EP (Højlund, 2014). Also, Bauer
(2006: 723) suggests that the Commission uses evaluations mainly to support its
own decision-making; evaluation can help the Commission ‘to improve agenda
setting and policy drafting’.
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International Review of Administrative Sciences 82(4)
Yet, these findings on the limited usage of evaluations by the EP could relate to
the fact that existing research on evaluation usage in the EU focuses on programme
evaluations, which mostly focus on the fate of individual programmes and projects
in particular member states (Højlund, 2014: 436). Given the EP’s role as a legisla-
tor, the situation could be different for evaluations of a more regulatory nature,
focusing on the fate of EU legislative policies in the member states. The idea that
parliaments are more interested in ex post legislative (EPL) evaluation would be in
line with the finding of Bussmann (2010: 280–282) that parliaments increasingly
want to know how the legislation they enact is carried out by the executive. At the
same time, it must be noted that Impact Assessments (IAs), which can be seen as ex
ante legislative evaluations, are not often used by the EP either: Poptcheva (2013:
4–5) found that out of 12,000 EP Committee documents in the 2004–2009 parlia-
mentary term, only one document explicitly referred to a Commission IA. A study
by the European Court of Auditors (2010: 21) came to similar conclusions.
The scant existing literature thus suggests that the EP hardly uses ex post pro-
gramme evaluations and IAs. This article changes perspective, turning to the ques-
tion of to what extent and under which conditions the EP uses EPL evaluations to
hold the Commission politically accountable. To answer this question, we analyse
the extent to which Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) ask questions
based on EPL evaluations. We do so for a period of roughly three parliamentary
terms. This way, we seek not only to add to the literature on EU evaluation usage,
but also to develop the quantitative knowledge base for understanding account-
ability in the EU, which is currently rather weakly developed in the literature
(Brandsma, 2013b).
Accountability in the EU
Bovens (2010: 947–948) distinguishes between authors who view accountability as a
virtue of individual actors versus authors who view accountability as a mechanism
that structures the relation between several actors. In studies of EU accountability,
the second view is most common and often linked to a political concept of account-
ability based on the principal–agent (P–A) paradigm. Several EU scholars define
accountability as a social relation in which an agent is held to account for his
actions to a principal (cf. Curtin, 2007, 2009; Curtin et al., 2010).
In the EU political system, several P–A relationships exist. Most prominently,
the member states act as a collective principal that delegates power to the
Commission and the Court of Justice (Pollack, 1997: 203). Increasingly, though,
the Commission is also seen as an agent of the EP (Curtin, 2007; Proksch and
Slapin, 2010). This P–A relationship is central to this article.
Accountability, from a P–A perspective, is an important ex post mechanism for
a principal to cope with the risk that the agent deviates from the principal’s inten-
tions and interests (Blom-Hanssen, 2005: 631; Curtin, 2007: 525; Pollack, 1997:
108), in addition to administrative procedures and mechanisms that limit the scope
of the agent’s activity ex ante.
Zwaan et al.
677
According to Curtin (2009: 257) a proper accountability mechanism
requires three steps: first, the principal must have sufficient information about
the fulfillment of responsibilities by the agent (Stufflebeam and Shinkfield, 2007:
163). In general, legislatures have an information deficit vis-a-vis the executive
given their lack of expertise and resources (Brandsma, 2013a: 4). Partly, they can
compensate for this by acquiring general information about the executive’s prefer-
ences, allowing them to properly judge information they receive from the executive
on specific issues. In the case of the EU, this is more difficult because the executive
is not directly linked to the legislature through political ties. Accordingly, infor-
mation exchange between the legislature and executive takes place in a formalized
way, for example, through parliamentary questions or EP committee meetings
(Proksch and Slapin, 2010). Over time, the EP has strengthened its general infor-
mation rights (Brandsma, 2013a: 5). The Commission must submit myriad reports
to the legislature, including evaluations (Curtin, 2009: 256–257). The 2010 Inter-
Institutional Framework Agreement, which describes the Commission’s responsi-
bilities towards the EP,3 includes a number of principles on the exchange of
information.
Second, the agent must be given the chance to explain...
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