The principal-agent model (PAM) has produced valid hypotheses for conceptualizing actor relationships, but its disadvantage - as an economic concept transferred from the field of industrial organization and the theory of the firm to that of European integration - is often overlooked. This...

The desire to reform the European Commission is a recurrent theme on the agenda. Has the political failure to reach an appropriate restructuring of this institution a parallel in academic neglect of that institution? To answer this question the article looks into current research efforts on the...

During the 1980s and 1990s privatisation and deregulation movements have been shaken up the European network industries - telecommunication, electricity and railways. These reforms did affect also those parts of the public administrations in charge of managing and controlling the industries....

The desire to reform the European Commission is a recurrent theme on the agenda. Has the political failure to reach an appropriate restructuring of this institution a parallel in academic neglect of that institution? To answer this question the article looks into current research efforts on the...

Over the past 50 years, an increasing amount of political authority has been delegated to the regional government level in Europe. This paper analyses regional demands for involvement in policy-making by focusing on the preferences of top-level regional civil servants (“regio-crats”). A...

The paper explores the preferences of subnational administrative elites with respect to crucial issues of European and subnational governance. The individual preferences of top subnational officials from five European countries are ascertained, patterns are identified and the data are...

With regulation seeking to foster competition at the same time as also having to protect essential services, the authors investigate regulatory styles, costs of new regulatory functions and how firms in the new regulatory landscape access and influence regulatory authorities. The authors...