Accountability and EU Agencies Institutional Design

The creation of more than thirty EU specialized agencies over the last two decades has rapidly transformed the configuration of EU executive politics. Agency designers have entrusted these non-majoritarian bodies with varying types of powers in a wide number of regulatory fields with the expectation of enhancing the credibility of commitments and the efficiency of policies and regulation. At the same time, agency designers have also incorporated formal accountability provisions with the purpose of enhancing information, discussion and sanction arrangements as ex post control mechanisms of agency activities. Based on documentary analysis covering thirty EU agencies, this paper conducts a comprehensive quantitative study exploring the institutional and political triggers of formal accountability in agency design. The paper is structured as follows. The first section offers the main theoretical and conceptual debates in which this study is grounded, the main hypothesis and the data and methods employed in the analysis. The following section aims at mapping out agencies formal accountability provissions whereas the third section assesses several institutional and political conditions accounting for variations on agency design as regards accountability arrangements. The paper ends with some concluding remarks and an assessment of the expected empirical theoretical contribution.