The Engines of European Integration: Delegation, Agency, and Agenda Setting in the E.U.

By Mark A. Pollack. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. 512p. $80.00 cloth, $29.95 paper.

This is the most systematic attempt yet at applying agency theory to the European Union. Mark Pollack's enterprise consists of a two-step strategy. First, he uses both Robert Keohane's theory of international regimes and studies of congressional organization to predict the functions that are likely to be delegated to supranational institutions: monitoring compliance, filling incomplete contracts, providing expert and credible regulation, and setting the formal legislative agenda. He then reviews the various types of mechanisms adopted by the principals to control agency behavior and the ways in which their establishment is motivated by policy conflict and by underlying demands for expertise and credibility. The discretion that agents enjoy in the exercise of those delegated functions should vary with different degrees of informational and distributive pressures. Second, Pollack introduces propositions about the preferences of supranational actors and the conditions under which they are more likely to achieve their objectives.

The first part of the theory is tested in the next three chapters. Both cross-policy and issue-specific powers and control mechanisms of the Commission, the Court of Justice, and the Parliament are systematically reviewed. The expectations of principal-agent theory are strongly corroborated with regard to the first two supranational institutions, while only the Parliament's supervisory power over the Commission could be explained in such terms (i.e., as an institutional check). Norms of democratic legitimacy account for the delegation of budgetary and legislative functions. However, the considerable cross-policy variance in the exercise of those powers reveals the careful calculation made by member states of the consequences of such delegating decisions.

These chapters consist primarily of theoretically informed and carefully argued literature reviews and of systematic and detailed analyses of Treaty provisions. Some of these reviews, such as the ones on comitology, administrative law, and budgetary powers, are particularly rewarding, with insightful comments, including those on the works of this reviewer. Others are more familiar, such as those on the Court of Justice and legislative powers. Novel techniques for measuring discretion and ranking procedural preferences are applied to the Treaty, and there is an interesting case study on the creation of the securities committee. Apart from the reviews, the empirical added value of these chapters is mostly a theoretically guided analysis of the Treaty. This is an extended application of the arguments in Pollack's pathbreaking article, “Delegation, Agency, and Agenda Setting in the European Community” (International Organization 51 [Winter 1997]: 99–134). It may be less valuable for those who know the Treaty inside out.

In the second part of the book, Pollack investigates whether the Commission and the Court are “pro-European” or “competence-maximizers” and whether these institutions are more likely to achieve their objectives when they enjoy greater discretion. He selects six cases studies that feature open conflict between these supranational actors and the member states and that vary in terms of powers (i.e., agenda setting, implementation, and adjudication), the key independent variable (i.e., the degree of control and, consequently, of agents' discretion), and issue areas (i.e., market liberalization and social regulation). He finds support for both claims. More specifically, the Commission tries systematically to increase its own policy prerogatives and, generally, the Court prefers an expansive interpretation of legislative provisions. As shown in the Cassis de Dijon and Barber jurisprudence, the Court has indeed been very expansive in interpreting the Treaty, at least up to the times when the member states have managed to limit judicial discretion through Treaty amendments. If the procedures overseeing implementation are not too intrusive, the Commission can also influence policy outcomes considerably, as shown in the case of the merger-control regulation, the de Havilland merger and the RECHAR Community initiative of the structural funds. In this latter case, however, a sunset clause associated with the provisions delegating authority works in favor of member states wanting to curtail the Commission's activism. Finally, agenda-setting power, when combined with an oversight committee, as in international trade negotiations, and a norm of consensual decision making in the Council, as in the Uruguay Round and the working-time directive, allows the Commission limited room for maneuvering.

None of these claims is entirely new, and these case studies have already been the object of intense academic scrutiny (including, of course, Pollack's earlier works and, probably, with the exception of the analysis of the post–Barber Protocol jurisprudence and the working-time directive). Nevertheless, this should take nothing away from the theoretically informed and methodologically rigorous examination carried out by Pollack. Thanks to the careful research design, he manages to exert considerable leverage through within-case analysis, process tracing, and pairwise comparisons of similar cases. He could have taken his analysis two steps forward. First, he could have produced novel propositions on how the interaction among the Commission, the Court, and nonstate (or noncore executive) actors affects agents' behavior and choices of delegation. When are these supranational institutions more likely to support one another's actions? How does the strategic interaction with societal actors play out in the delegation-control game? Second, his theoretical framework is static but the empirical analyses are longitudinal. Pollack touches upon one frontier of this field of research, namely, the study of the dynamics of delegation. He could have introduced specific propositions about this dynamics, as those related to the asset value of agencies (i.e., on how past decisions of delegation necessarily condition new ones). For instance, in the case of the merger-control regulation, the Commission's existing competencies in competition policy have strengthened its agenda-setting power even with the requirement for unanimous Council decisions. This has not been the case with structural policy because, on top of the sunset clause, the implementation game played with subnational authorities differs substantially from the game played with companies.

This would probably have taken Pollack too far away from his project and, most likely, it would have been hard to produce hypotheses unifying both bureaucratic and judicial behavior. It should be the attention of future research. Nevertheless, The Engines of European Integration is a valuable starting point. Anyone contributing to the study of the Europe Union should take serious notice of this book.