WHY STRONG COORDINATION AT ONE LEVEL OF GOVERNMENT IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH STRONG COORDINATION ACROSS LEVELS (AND HOW TO LIVE WITH IT): THE CASE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
| Published date | 01 September 2016 |
| Author | JARLE TRONDAL,MORTEN EGEBERG |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12236 |
| Date | 01 September 2016 |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12236
WHY STRONG COORDINATION AT ONE LEVEL OF
GOVERNMENT IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH STRONG
COORDINATION ACROSS LEVELS (AND HOW TO LIVE
WITH IT): THE CASE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION
MORTEN EGEBERG AND JARLE TRONDAL
The European Union (EU) inherited ‘indirect administration’ from classical international organiza-
tions: policies adopted by the international organization are subsequently to be implemented nation-
ally by member states themselves, and not by bodies owned by the international organization. This
arrangement has often led to legislation being incorporated and applied rather differently across
countries. In order to harmonize implementation practices within the EU, we have witnessed a
development from ‘indirect administration’ to more‘direct administration’ in the sense that national
agencies work closely with the European Commission, EU agencies and sister agencies in other
member states, partly bypassing national ministries. Thus, stronger coordination across levels may
counteract strong coordination at the national level. This ‘coordination dilemma’ seems to have been
largely ignored in the literatures on EU network governance and national ‘joined-up government’,
respectively. The ambition of this article is twofold: rst, the coordination dilemma is theoretically
and empirically illustrated by the seeming incompatibility between a more direct implementation
structure in the multilevel EU administrative system and trends towardsstrengthening coordination
and control within nation states. Second, the article discusses organizational arrangements that may
enable systems to live with the coordination dilemma in practice.
THE COORDINATION DILEMMA
‘Better coordination’, meaning creating more consistency among decisions horizontally
as well as vertically, is usually a stated goal in modern political-administrative systems.
Recent administrative doctrines have shared a near universal agreement on the desirability
of ‘better coordination’. What is often not realized, however, is the impossibility of com-
bining strong coordination of implementation processes at one level of government with
strong coordination across levels. In orderto illustrate our argument, we use the multilevel
European Union (EU) polity as our case in this article.
The EU inherited ‘indirect administration’ from classical international organizations:
policies adopted by the international organization are to be implemented nationally by
member states themselves, and not by bodies owned by the international organization
(Hofmann 2008). Such an arrangement, characterized by relatively weak coordination
across levels, is compatible with strong coordination at the national level. However, at
the same time, this has often led to legislation being incorporated and applied rather
differently across countries (Treib 2014). In order to harmonize implementation practices
within the EU, we have witnessed a development from ‘indirect administration’ to more
‘direct administration’ in the sense that national agencies work closely with the European
Commission (Commission), EU agencies and sister agencies in other member states,
partly bypassing national ministries (Egeberg and Trondal 2009a; Egeberg et al. 2015).
This partial de-coupling of national agencies from ministerial departments shows that
stronger coordination across levels may counteract strong coordination at the national
Morten Egeberg is at the Department of Political Science and the ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of
Oslo, Norway. Jarle Trondal is at the Department of Political Science and Management, University of Agder, Norway
and the ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Norway.
Public Administration Vol.94, No. 3, 2016 (579–592)
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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