Merit-based recruitment boosts good governance: how do European Union agencies recruit their personnel?
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852317691342 |
| Published date | 01 June 2019 |
| Date | 01 June 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Review of
Administrative
Article
Sciences
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
Merit-based recruitment boosts
2019, Vol. 85(2) 247–263
! The Author(s) 2017
good governance: how do
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub.com/journals-permissions
European Union agencies recruit
DOI: 10.1177/0020852317691342
journals.sagepub.com/home/ras
their personnel?
Morten Egeberg
University of Oslo, Norway
A
˚ se Gornitzka
University of Oslo, Norway
Jarle Trondal
University of Agder and University of Oslo, Norway
Abstract
Studies show that public administrations that practise merit-based recruitment of their
personnel are significantly less marked by corruption than administrations that do not
recruit in this manner. While we know a lot about how EU member states score with
regard to the degree of merit-based recruitment within their administrations, and also
how the European Commission administration performs in this respect, recruitment
practices within the increasing number of European Union regulatory (decentralized)
agencies seem to remain a white spot in the literature so far. In this article, we make a
first step in mapping recruitment practices within the secretariats of such agencies. We
also investigate if it matters whether a European Union agency is located in a country
marked by a non-meritocratic administrative culture or not. The article shows that
European Union agencies seem to overwhelmingly apply meritocratic instruments when
hiring people, regardless of their location.
Points for practitioners
This article argues and shows that recruitment based on merit enhances good and non-
corrupt governance. The case in point is European Union agencies. The data presented
illuminate that these agencies generally apply meritocratic instruments when hiring
administrative staff. The study also shows that recruitment practices are not affected
by the geographical location of European Union agencies. These agencies tend to
Corresponding author:
Jarle Trondal, University of Oslo – ARENA – Centre for European Studies, Box 1143, Blindern, Oslo 1143,
Norway.
Email: jarle.trondal@uia.no
248
International Review of Administrative Sciences 85(2)
practise the common merit-based European Union standards regardless of their loca-
tion since agencies are components of the European Union administration.
Keywords
European Union agencies, good governance, institutional approach, meritocracy,
organizational approach, recruitment
Introduction
It has been shown that public administrations that practise merit-based recruitment
of their personnel are significantly less marked by corruption than administrations
that do not recruit in this manner (Dahlstro¨m et al., 2011). Civil servants who are
recruited and promoted due to their skills and merits rather than on patronage –
political party affiliation, friendship or kinship – tend to embrace values of integrity
more than others (Pedersen and Johannsen, 2015). Moreover, good living condi-
tions and social well-being in general tend to characterize societies governed by
‘impartial’ public bureaucracies (Rothstein, 2012). Against this backdrop, it is
interesting to note that the merit principle is perceived to be in crisis in a
Western country such as the US (Ingraham, 1995; Kettl, 2015). While we know
a lot about how European Union (EU) member states score with regard to the
degree of merit-based recruitment within their administrations (Bach et al., 2015;
Dahlstro¨m et al., 2015; Kopecky et al., 2012), and also how the European
Commission (Commission) administration performs in this respect (Balint et al.,
2008; Fusacchia, 2009; Murdoch et al., 2014), recruitment practices within the
increasing number of EU regulatory (decentralized) agencies remain a white spot
in the literature (Busuioc et al., 2012; Egeberg and Trondal, 2016). This article
makes a first step in mapping recruitment practices within the secretariats of such
agencies, while also investigating if it makes a difference whether EU agencies are
located in countries marked by a non-meritocratic administrative culture or not.
From the start, the administration of the Commission has recruited its new-
comers mainly through a merit-based system. The so-called concours, which consist
of highly competitive exams based on written and oral tests, embody such a system.
However, the appointment of top officials has historically been a rather contentious
issue since it is inherently linked to the grand debate on a federal or an intergov-
ernmental Europe (Coombes, 1970). To federalists, an independent career civil
service was regarded as an essential prerequisite to the evolution of a genuinely
supranational executive. To intergovernmentalists, on the other hand, the notion of
a self-contained, zealous body of ‘eurocrats’ was not particularly inviting.
However, by imposing several strict procedural requirements on appointment pro-
cesses, it seems as if the appointments of top officials have become considerably
‘objectivized’ and depoliticized. The room for national governments, or commis-
sioners and their cabinets, to actually intervene in order to ‘restore the geographical
balance’ among senior posts has thus been significantly curbed (Balint et al., 2008;
Egeberg et al.
249
Egeberg, 2006: 37–40; Fusacchia, 2009). However, since the EU executive today
also includes more than 30 regulatory agencies in addition to the Commission, it
also becomes vital to map their recruitment practices in order to know more about
the conditions for ‘good governance’ in the EU.
However, in the end, ‘good governance’ in the EU not only depends on the
quality of the EU’s own administration. ‘Good governance’ also relies on how well
member state bureaucracies perform. With regard to merit-based recruitment,
probably, then, a key condition for non-corrupt behaviour, countries in the
north-west of Europe tend to come closer to meritocracy than countries in the
south-east (Dahlstro¨m et al., 2015). The EU has, however, employed several instru-
ments to enhance the meritocratization and, in general, professionalization of
national administrations where needed. First, during accession negotiations, the
Commission may have claimed administrative reforms in such a direction as a
condition for membership in the EU. However, the sustainability and effectiveness
of such reforms subsequent to accession have been seriously questioned
(Dimitrova, 2010). Second, as part of the EU’s regulatory policy, EU legislation
may have contained rather concrete requirements concerning the organization of
national agencies. Research has shown that such measures have made national
agencies more professional over time. Such specific (acquis) rules seem to result
in a stronger and more enduring impact compared to the much weaker influence of
the EU’s political conditionality (Nakrosis and Bankauskaite-Grigaliuniene, 2014).
Third, the Commission has built networks for benchmarking and learning com-
posed of member state officials in charge of administrative policy and human
resource management (Demmke, 2015). In addition to the aforementioned instru-
ments, it could be that EU agencies, given that they practise merit-based recruit-
ment themselves, might contribute to spreading good governance through
exemplary behaviour. After all, they constitute nodes within more than 30 regula-
tory networks, each composed of agencies from 28 member states (Busuioc et al.,
2012; Ossege, 2016).
Although it seems well documented that merit-based recruitment in general
benefits public governance, parts of the literature on bureaucratic recruitment
have nevertheless pointed to an inherent tension between meritocracy, on the
one hand, and ensuring a proper balance in terms of social, ethnic or gender
composition, on the other hand (Meier and Capers, 2012). The tension between
meritocracy and democracy also come to the fore when the well-educated dominate
political venues (Bovens and Wille, 2009). With regard to the EU administration in
particular, a recurring issue has been how to reconcile a merit-based recruitment
system with an overall geographical representativity, which is an issue that has
come to the fore at every enlargement of the EU (Ban, 2013).
EU regulatory agencies are all located outside Brussels. Most are situated in
member states that score relatively high on merit-based recruitment, but some find
themselves within countries that score low in this respect (see the fourth section).
The second section outlines two theoretical arguments from which we derive two
partly competing expectations concerning the extent to which merit-based
250
International Review of Administrative Sciences 85(2)
recruitment actually takes place: seen from a closed organizational perspective, EU
agencies will (as EU bodies) practise merit-based recruitment according to the EU’s
administrative policy regardless of their geographical location; seen from an open
institutional perspective, on the other hand, recruitment processes may become
affected by the prevailing administrative culture of the country within which an
EU agency is embedded. Thus, in EU agencies placed in countries marked by a
non-meritocratic administrative culture, merit-based recruitment might come
under pressure (see, e.g., Verheijen, 2012: 599). To shed light on actual recruitment
processes, we draw on EU agency documents, complemented by interviews (cf. the
third section on method). The empirical findings are presented in the fourth section
before we draw a preliminary conclusion in the fifth section.
Theory: Two arguments
...
To continue reading
Request your trial