With a little help from my friends: How agencies use stakeholders to bolster their authority

Regulatory agencies provide input in the policymaking efforts of their principals. As agencies often have greater expertise compared to ministries, the European Commission and other executives, the latter rely on agencies for technical advice. Increasingly, however, agencies also test the political waters for proposed policies and collect insights by consulting with stakeholders in developing their proposals to principals. This is puzzling given the classic distance between agencies and politics. Nonetheless, engaging with stakeholders may provide agencies with the tools to improve the input they provide to their principals and convince their principals of the soundness of and support for it. This paper assesses the efforts and effect of agencies using stakeholder engagement to convince principals of their policy advice. We focus on the procedure of developing EU implementing and delegated acts. EU Agencies often provide input for these acts before the European Commission expresses their preferences. We study whether the amount and kind of stakeholders that EU agencies have involved in developing their drafts have an effect on whether and how quickly the European Commission takes their drafts on board. Furthermore, we show whether salience increases these effects. Our study contributes to the literature on (EU) agency authority and reputation as we show whether ties with a broader stakeholder audience provide agencies with the tools to add weight to their decision-making power. Furthermore, we contribute to the study of stakeholder engagement by showing what benefits and pitfalls certain stakeholder engagement setups may result in for public organizations.