European Commission of the Twenty-First Century

The European Commission is arguably the world's most powerful international administration. It plays a central role in the political system of the European Union. The Commission is a permanent presence in the life of the member states, but its influence is felt far beyond their borders. Viewed historically as the motor of European integration, the Commission is the subject of intense controversy. It is portrayed frequently as technocratic, monolithic, andunaccountable, but also as fragmented and weakly led. According to accepted wisdom, it is populated by career bureaucrats, who want only to expand the competencies of the Union and therefore their own power.This book tests these views. It asks: Who are the people who work for the organization? What are their educational and professional backgrounds? What do officials believe about the role of the Commission in the EU today and whether the Union should have more or less power? What leads them to choose to pursue a career in the Commission, and how do they navigate its complexities? How does the Barroso Commission compare to previous Commissions? How harmonious are relations between cabinets and theservices? What has been the impact on the Commission of reform and of the 'big bang' enlargement? Co-authored by an international team of researchers, this book draws on original data from the largest attitudinal survey ever conducted by independent researchers inside the Commission, as well as a structured programme of interviews with senior officials. It provides an authoritative account of the European Commission of the twenty-first century.

This large volume — an impressive joint research effort — combines many insights into politicoadministrative theory with a broad-based questionnaire to a targeted sample of some 4000 out of some 12,00014,000 officials., The European Commission has often been misrepresented by pundits, politicians, and scholars. This rigorous, dispassionate, and thorough new work finally gives us the accurate, comparative, and complex picture that we have long needed. We learn about who works in the Commission, what they do, how they work together, and how the Commission has changed in response to recent organizational reforms and in the world around it. This is a new starting point for those who need to know about the institutions of the European Union., The European Commission of the Twenty-First Century is the most comprehensive and sophisticated examination of the Commission available in the literature. This book makes a major advance in the study of the European Union and its governance capacity. Even scholars and practitioners who believe they know the Commission will gain important insights from this volume., The European Commission in Question team has had unparalleled access to administrative officials. They have used the survey and interview material exceptionally skilfully and effectively to produce an impressive account of the Commission. They sometimes challenge, sometimes support, sometimes qualify received wisdom about how the Commission works. They also make huge fresh advances in explaining the behaviour of its officials. The book is a landmark in developing our understanding of how policy-making bureaucracies work and how such bureaucracies should be studied., Based on the information gathered from a survey and interviews with more than 2000 Commission officials, this book offers a detailed and stimulating portrait of a unique institution that represents a clear innovation in Europe's political organization.

Hussein Kassim taught previously at Birkbeck, University of London, the University of Nottingham and the University of Oxford. He has held visiting positions at Arena, University of Oslo, Columbia University, New York University, the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques (Sciences Po) in Paris. He has published widely on the EU institutions, the relationship between the EU and the member states,especially France and the UK, and EU policy and administration. He is Professor of Politics in the School of Political, Social and International Studies and Co-investigator at the ESRC Centre for Competition Policy at the University of East Anglia.John Peterson previously held posts teaching international, European and American politics at the Universities of Glasgow, York, Essex, Oxford, and the University of California (Santa Barbara). He has also held visiting posts at the Universities of Vienna, California (Berkeley), Sciences Po Paris, University College Dublin, the Centre for European Policy Studies (Brussels), and the College of Europe (Bruges). He was Head of Politics/IR from 2007-10. John was a Visiting Scholar at the Instituteof Governmental Studies at UC Berkley and the Social Science Research Centure (WZB) in Berlin during 2010-11. He has published widely on international politics, European integration, and public policy. He is Professor of International Politics in the School of Social and Political Science at theUniversity of Edinburgh.Michael W. Bauer taught previously at the University of Konstanz From 1990-1996. He studied Social Sciences, German Philology and History in Mannheim, Frankfurt am Main and Vienna. He graduated 1996 with a Diploma in Social Sciences at the Humboldt-University Berlin. He was a Robert-Schuman-Fellow of the European Parliament in 1995. He holds a Masters in European Studies in Politics and Administration of the College of Europe, Bruges (1996/1997) and a PhD from the European University Institute,Florence (1997/2000). He worked for two years as an expert on the EU constitutional process for the Hessian Government (Hessische Staatskanzlei). His research interests like in comparative public policy and administration, EU institutions and politics, and the German Länder on which subjects he haspublished widely. He is Professor for Politics and Administration at the Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University of Berlin.Sara Connolly previously taught in the School of Economics at the University of East Anglia, Brunel University and the University of Oxford. She has held visiting positions at the Centre for Equality, Social Organisation and Performance at the University of Oslo and the Centre for European Studies at New York University. She has published widely on gender, pay and employment, media economics and public policy. She is Reader in Personnel Economics at the Norwich Business School and Director ofthe Diversity and Equality in Careers an