Administrative styles in the European Commission and the OSCE Secretariat: striking similarities despite different organizational settings

ABSTRACT

With the growing importance of international institutions for global governance, international bureaucracies gain increasing influence on policy-making. Whereas for national bureaucracies specific administrative styles have been identified, this contribution explores for the first time administrative styles of two international organizations. The European Union (EU) Commission and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) represent most different cases in matters of scope, autonomy and resources. The analysis of their specific patterns of policy initiation, policy formulation and policy implementation reveals striking similarities. Both organizations have developed an entrepreneurial style in policy initiation, a strategic approach to policy formulation and a mediating implementation style. These similarities lead to a paradox of weakness in the case of the OSCE and a paradox of strength in the case of the EU. These paradoxes can be understood by taking a closer look at the specific settings in which they are operating, in particular their dependence on member state resources and political support.

KEY WORDS:

• Administrative influence
• administrative styles
• European Commission
• global governance
• international organizations
• international public administration

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to three anonymous reviewers for very helpful suggestions and comments on earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Christoph Knill holds the Chair of Empirical Theories of Politics at the University of Munich and is the speaker of the research unit ‘International Public Administration’.

Steffen Eckhard is scientific co-ordinator of the research unit ‘International Public Administration’ at the University of Munich.

Stephan Grohs holds the Chair of Political Science at the German University for Administrative Sciences Speyer.

Notes

1. One example is the expert data base POLIS, maintained by the Strategic Policy Matters Unit.

2. Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS); this includes Russia and 12 other Eastern European or Central Asian states. See http://www.cisstat.com/eng/cis.htm, accessed 1 April 2016.

3. For details on the Kirgizstan case, see http://csis.org/files/publication/051810_CSIS-IND_Task_Force_Final_Case_Study.pdf, accessed 1 April 2016.

Additional information

Funding

We gratefully acknowledge funding from the German Research Foundation under Grant FOR 1745 TP 01 GR 4365/1–1.