This paper contributes to the ongoing debate between principal-agent theory and the concept of deliberative supranationalism regarding the functioning of the EU committee system by analysing regulatory policy-making in the BSE case. The BSE crisis can be seen as a critical instance for committee...

Over the past five decades the European Parliament (EP) has moved from being a largely consultative assembly to being a genuine co-legislature. The growth in the EPs powers was accompanied by a revaluation of its Standing Committees. It is in these committees, the legislative backbone of the EP,...

The aim of this article is twofold. First, I review the political science literature on delegation and control and apply the control side of agency theory to the activities of the Commission. Second, I test McCubbins and Pages (1987) propositions on the determinants of control. I then conclude...

This paper applies a principal-agent model of delegation, agency and agenda setting to the 1996 intergovernmental conference and the Treaty of Amsterdam, in order to understand both the delegation of powers to supranational organizations in the new Treaty, and the efforts of such organizations...

In the second half of the nineties, a number of EU Member States went through intense public controversies over agro-food biotechnology. These controversies occurred almost synchronously, brought about parallel issue-framings and actor-constellations, led national governments to adopt...

This paper is essentially a translation of a comment in German (Joerges 2000) on a series of articles in which Rainer Schmalz-Bruns (1998, 1999a, 1999b) developed a concept of legitimate governance beyond the constitutional state, which he called deliberative supra-nationalism and contrasted...