What Drives Policy Community Building among EU Agencies? Analysing Public Communication on Climate Policy

Agencies typically have narrow mandates, and their activities are driven by an effort to protect their turf. A scenario where agencies endorse each other in public communication and actively support positions of their counterparts hence would merit attention. Building on the public administration literature on mission orientation, task type and reputation management of bureaucratic organisations, we develop novel hypotheses that establish a relationship between agency characteristics and their engagement in policy community building. We study European Union agencies’ social media communication on climate policy as a crucial case. Our analysis shows that agencies are strategic in their public communication. Agencies operating in areas newly linked to climate, such as security, are more likely to engage in climate policy community building for reputation-building purposes. Agencies that hold a formal mandate in climate, on the contrary, are more likely to demonstrate a turf-protecting behaviour abstaining from amplifying public communication by other agencies.