WHEN EUROPEANIZATION FEEDS BACK INTO EU GOVERNANCE: EU LEGISLATION, NATIONAL REGULATORY AGENCIES, AND EU REGULATORY NETWORKS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12156 |
| Author | EMMANUELLE MATHIEU |
| Published date | 01 March 2016 |
| Date | 01 March 2016 |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12156
WHEN EUROPEANIZATION FEEDS BACK INTO EU
GOVERNANCE: EU LEGISLATION, NATIONAL
REGULATORY AGENCIES, AND EU REGULATORY
NETWORKS
EMMANUELLE MATHIEU
The existing literature explains the emergence of European regulatory networks through the need
for regulatory coordination and the battle for power between policymakers. Bringing together the
Europeanization and policy feedback perspectives, this article suggests that European regulatory
networks should also be seen as the result of a morecomplex process of mutual inuence between the
European and the national levels. An in-depth case study on the telecommunications sector reveals
that the implementation of EU policies has contributed to the empowerment of national regula-
tory agencies, which, in turn, has conditioned the development of European regulatory networks.
EU policy has thus indirectly conditioned the rise of European regulatory networks by previously
transforming national administrations. Besides expanding our understanding of European regula-
tory networks, by bridging the Europeanization and policy feedback literatures, this article indicates
promising orientations for future theoretical development in both elds.
INTRODUCTION
The literature has already unveiled many facets of European regulatory networks (ERNs).
In the face of the need to ll a gap in the regulatory capacity of the EU (Dehousse 1997;
Eberlein and Grande 2005), member states’ reluctance to further empower the Commis-
sion has led to an institutional compromise in the form of ERNs (Dehousse 1997; Kelemen
2002). Since pre-existing regulatory actors such as the Commission or national regulatory
authorities (NRAs) tended to resist the delegation of powers, ERNs were endowed with
little capacity for carrying out their mandate to coordinate NRAs. Hence, because they
are generally limited to the adoption of non-binding guidelines, ERNs are often accused
of a lack of effectiveness (Coen and Thatcher 2008; Kelemen and Tarrant 2011). Although
limited, their contribution to regulatory convergence in Europe should not, however, be
underestimated as they participate in the gradual building of a ‘Community of views’
(Dehousse 1997, p. 254) and are able to achieve some degree of policy diffusion across
NRAs (Maggetti and Gilardi 2011).
This article complements this important body of knowledge by indicating that the rise of
ERNs is rooted in a process of back-and-forth inuences between the EU and the member
states. In short, I argue that ERNs proceed, at least partly, from a feedback effect of the
implementation of EU policies in the member states: the development of ERNs would have
been made possible by the prior, EU-driven, empowerment of NRAs. Although typical
of institutional dynamics in the EU, such processes of mutual inuence and adjustment
between governmental levels are ‘often bracketed’ in EU studies (Olsen 2002, p. 942).
To cut through the complexity that such an approach implies (Olsen 2002, p. 942), I
decompose the two-way causality between the EU and the national level in two distinct
unidirectional processes that I treat as separate conjectures. Hence, I rst conjecture
that – although other factors may have intervened – the EU has played an active role in
Emmanuelle Mathieu is at the German Research Institute for Public Administration, Speyer,Germany.
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 1, 2016 (25–39)
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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