How can interdepartmental coordination in political-administrative systems be organized effectively? This question has vexed scholars for more than a century. Max Weber’s answer was simple: Hierarchy. However, real-world government systems are not organized as one big hierarchy, but as parallel hierarchies, or equal-ranking ministries. Coordination in such systems must be negotiated, but this is less efficient than hierarchical coordination because actors can veto changes even though they are pareto-optimal. Coordination is a collective good, and it is not always in individual managers’ self-interest to contribute to its provision. In light of the basic nature of this
challenge, we know surprisingly little about how political-administrative systems handle it in practice. This paper presents a study of interdepartmental coordination in an entire political-administrative system, the EU Commission. It is based on hard evidence on almost 6,000 cases and indicates that coordination is primarily driven by concerns of administrative turfs.
