Reorganizing for Europe? Structural choices in European governments

Research on EU policy-making and implementation has highlighted the crucial importance of national administrations as the primary interface between European rules and domestic governance. Yet we know surprisingly little about how the organizational structures of member state administrations evolve in response to EU integration, policy cycles, and changing competencies. This paper addresses that gap by examining the long-term trajectories of structural change within ministerial portfolios, including ministerial departments and delegated agencies, in four European states, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Norway, from the postwar period to the present. Drawing on a novel longitudinal dataset of formal organizational restructurings, the study conceptualizes administrative adaptation as a process that may occur both explicitly, through the creation or strengthening of units with an EU-related mandate, and implicitly, through restructuring in sectors undergoing deeper communitarization such as environment, competition, energy, consumer protection, and digital regulation. The paper advances three analytical arguments. First, as EU competencies expand, national administrations face increasing functional pressures, that is new coordination demands, heightened regulatory complexity, and intensified multi-level interactions. These pressures create incentives for governments to reorganize internally to ensure compliance, enhance expertise, or manage cross-sectoral spillovers. However, these reorganizations may be uneven: some governments internalize EU requirements quickly, while others compartmentalize or buffer them within specialized units, thereby minimizing their system-wide impact. Second, structural adaptation is not merely functional but also strategic. National executives may use administrative restructurings to influence how EU policies are shaped, negotiated, and implemented. Governments seeking to enhance their influence in Brussels may strengthen EU-facing coordination hubs, bolster regulatory agencies, or centralize European affairs portfolios. Conversely, governments wary of EU impulses onto national policies may diffuse responsibilities, fragment implementing structures, or situate EU-related tasks in politically insulated units. The study therefore expects to find systematic variation in the direction and intensity of organizational change depending on governments’ political orientation toward European integration. Third, the paper argues that the effects of EU integration on domestic administrative structures are sectorally differentiated. In areas characterized by deep communitarization and dense regulatory oversight (e.g., environment, competition, consumer protection), organizational reforms should cluster more visibly and around the same time across member states. By contrast, in less integrated areas, such as education, culture, or social policy, structural change may not be shaped by EU influence. This sectoral differentiation allows us to test whether EU-driven adaptation remains confined to particular sectors. Empirically, the paper compares the evolution of administrative structures in the four cases, each representing a distinct administrative tradition and relationship to the EU, ranging from Germany and France as co-founders to the UK’s historical ambivalence toward EU integration, and Norway as an EEA member that hence offers a unique test of EU influence absent formal membership. By tracing how and where changes occur, our paper identifies patterns of convergence, divergence, and strategic insulation in the national structural adaptation to EU governance.