Mobilizing Experiential Knowledge in the Multi-Level Polity of the EU

In the European Union (EU), a large share of the implementation burdens lies with implementing agencies within the member states. European policies are re-interpreted in domestic bureaucratic activities. It is exactly in the day-to-day activities of these bureaucratic organizations, and the accompanying tiny details, that the implementation of EU policies takes place in practice. The experiences of these agencies offer valuable insights about the functioning of EU policies and relevant information for the further developments of EU policies. In particular with an eye on the practicability of EU legislation, an often criticized aspect of EU legislation. Moreover, this practical expert knowledge provides domestic implementing agencies with an important strategic resource to assert influence on the policy process. However, domestic implementing agencies are mainly studied as part of a top-down process. Their role in how policies are shaped is underexposed in EU studies. As a first step, it is important to understand how these actors organize the feedback of their experience into the EU policy process. In the multi-level polity of the EU, it is a recurring question at what levels and through which channels different actors mobilize their resources is order to obtain access to the policymaking process, with a chance of influencing EU policymaking. A variety of actors has been studied in this regard, such as lobby organizations and interest groups, social movements, regions, and other subnational authorities. The strategic mobilization of implementing agencies, however, has not yet been addressed. In this paper, we aim to answer how this feedback of practical experiences from implementing agencies is organized in the European Union? Through which channels are domestic implementing agencies able to upload or mobilize their experiences? And how can we explain the use of these channels? Therefore, we turn to the case of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). In this policy domain, domestic implementing agencies have organized themselves in a transversal network, in order to share their expertise directly with the European Commission, bypassing their member state governments. However, not all agencies employ this channel. Via Qualitative Comparative Analysis the paper further explores under which conditions domestic implementing agencies in the CAP may be expected to use such a direct strategy of uploading their expertise. Hereby this paper makes the following contributions to the literature: i) increase our knowledge on how practical experiences from the implementation of EU policies enter the EU policymaking process; ii) highlight the role of domestic implementing agencies as actors in this process; and iii) add to the broader literature of interest representation and policy feedback in the EU.