Agent or Governor? The Commission's Orchestration of National Capacities

External military and geo-economic pressures are often thought to lead to further European integration, by exposing the need for common European resources and capacities. While this ultimately depends on member states’ willingness, the Commission is generally assumed to initiate and spur on such integration – just as it is generally expected to act as an enforcer of European rules. This is because integration theories generally conceive of the Commission as an agent of member state principals, and therefore, following principal-agent theory, an actor with an institutional interest in maximizing its own autonomy, capacities, and influence. Drawing instead from competence-control theory, this paper instead proposes conceiving of the Commission as a “governor”; an actor with substantive policy interests but limited own capacities to pursue them. In order to achieve its goals, it therefore depends on mobilizing the capacities of national intermediaries. However, following competence-control theory, doing requires the Commission to relinquish (the pursuit of) strict control over such intermediaries. Counter to traditional expectations, this explains both why the Commission engages in soft coordination and orchestration of national efforts, also where this does not contribute to political integration, and why the Commission may choose to relax common rules or their enforcement. As a result, increasing policy demands for capacities and resources may lead to a strengthening of national, rather than European, efforts. After illustrating the argument on the basis of recent industrial policy initiatives, the paper draws on competence-control theory to outline the likely successes and limitations of this approach, and when it may contribute to coordination or fragmentation.