Parliamentary Administration in EU Affairs: Assistants or Advisors?

Abstract

While much of the literature related to the Europeanization of domestic political institutions has focused either on ministerial bureaucracies or on the role of national parliaments in controlling decisions-making on the European level, the role of parliamentary administrators has been mostly overlooked. Similarly, much on the literature on bureaucratic politics focuses either on the executive or the parliamentary control of the bureaucratic level of the executive. Only a narrow US-focused strand of literature has analysed the role of parliamentary administrations in the work of parliaments. This strand of literature, as well as recent empirical research on European cases, show, however, that parliamentary administrations are not just paper-pushers but play a central role in linking administrative and political realms. Based on the potential impact of administrators on parliamentary work, they suggest that these actors need to be taken into account as a group in its own right. The aim of this panel therefore is to take stock of the new field of research into the role of parliamentary administrations in EU affairs and to assess the degree of bureaucratization of EU affairs scrutiny. In particular, it is guided by the question whether administrators act merely as assistants, organizing meetings, forwarding documents, or if they can play a more substantial role in EU affairs scrutiny. In order to address this question, it is taking a comprehensive approach that brings together theoretical conceptionalization with strong empirical research and covers all levels of parliamentary scrutiny of EU affairs, including the parliaments of legislative regions, national parliaments and the European Parliament.

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