Beyond Expertise? Legitimation Strategies in the EU Regulatory State

Regulation is the most prominent type of policy-making in the European Union (EU). In such governance mode, non-majoritarian institutions, i.e. regulatory agencies, that exclusively rely on the authority of scientific experts and technical knowledge play a crucial role. Faith in the power of expertise in the EU regulatory state is evident: the core justification for creating supranational agencies is the need for reliable information, technical assistance, expert knowledge and scientific assessments. However, the flaws of EU governance in representativeness, inclusiveness, accountability, and transparency started to undermine the EU’s legitimacy to produce binding decisions, as well as the inclinations of Member States to follow EU lead. The regulatory power of supranational regulatory agencies is increasingly challenged by multiple regulatory audiences. Scholars have observed that with technocratic legitimacy, a necessary but not sufficient condition for the sustainable EU regulatory state, supranational agencies started to draw on legitimation strategies referring to “inclusiveness”, “participation”, “transparency”, “moral implications” of regulatory processes and outcomes. However, our empirical knowledge about such changes is very limited. We know little of how regulatory agencies legitimise their activities: do they continue to exclusively refer to expert authority, do they emphasise their due processes, performative dimension by highlighting their effective conduct, or moral dimension by communicating that they act in the public interest. We also know little of how their legitimation imperatives vary over time and what explains this variance. Against this backdrop, the paper investigates the legitimation imperatives of the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and its strategies to respond to these imperatives over time. Drawing on a quantitative analysis of EFSA communication (2002-2016), this paper attempts to identify and explain the change in the long-standing equilibrium between expert authority and alternative legitimation basis in the case of EFSA.