Passing on the Hot Potato? An Exploration into the Commission’s Proclivity to Outsource the Analysis of the Collected Input from Public Consultations

The paper examines an understudied aspect of the EU policy-making process, namely the policy shaping that takes place after the conduct of public online consultations by the European Commission. The existing literature has analysed extensively both the design of this instrument and its use by various stakeholders (Quittkat 2011, Quittkat & Kotzian 2011, Rasmussen & Carroll 2014, Bunea 2017 among others). We have comparatively fewer insights about what happens after the consultations close (but see Rasmussen & Toshvok 2013, Chalmers 2014, and Bunea & Thomson 2015 for notable exceptions). In particular, there has been to date no systematic account of how the Commission itself processes the conflicting input from various stakeholders, thus working from dispersed policy preferences collected via its public consultations toward a coherent line of action. The paper sheds light on this question by offering a first exploratory account as to which consultation results are analysed by the Commission services (i.e. ‘in-house’), and which ones are ‘outsourced’ to external agents (e.g. consultancies). We distinguish between functional, normative, and cultural perspectives to explain this choice. Firstly, ‘outsourcing’ can be a function of administrative capacity and/or consultation scope, thus making it more likely for under-resourced DGs and consultations with a large number of submissions. Secondly, ‘outsourcing’ can be a legitimizing strategy, in the sense that analysis of consultation results by a qualified third party will appear more impartial (professional) than the in-house alternative. This makes ‘outsourcing’ more likely for controversial issues, marked by conflict between stakeholders and highly divergent expressed policy positions. Finally, the choice between outsourced and in-house analysis may be a function of different administrative (sub-)cultures in the Commission, i.e. the distinct working routines and ‘ways of doing things’ developed by DGs over time (see e.g. Cram 1994, Cini 1997). The analysis draws on a new dataset that includes all closed online consultations launched after the entry into office of the Juncker Commission (per 1 November 2014). We explore the hypotheses outlined above in a comparative fashion, differentiating between different policy areas and Commission DGs, and well as different phases of the EU law-making cycle as outlined in the 2015 Better Regulation Agenda (roadmap, (inception) impact assessment, policy initiative, Commission legislative proposal, draft implementing or delegated act).