Abstract
The article examines what drives national regulators’ attitudes towards and engagement with EU regulatory co-ordination as facilitated by EU agencies and offices. It suggests that a bureaucratic politics perspective can counteract shortcomings of explanations conventionally advanced in the EU governance literature by showing that national regulators’ attitudes towards co-ordination are driven by the aim to protect their turf. This is empirically demonstrated by a comparison of attitudes to co-ordination across maritime safety and food control authorities in the United Kingdom (UK) and Germany that draws on original document analysis and semi-structured interviews with British, German and European Union (EU) officials. UK and German food control authorities have a positive attitude towards EU co-ordination, but the maritime safety authorities contest it. While the food control authorities use EU co-ordination to enhance their bureaucratic turf vis-à-vis lower-level authorities, the maritime safety authorities perceive EU co-ordination to threaten their established position in the International Maritime Organization.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1116-1134 |
Number of pages | 19 |
Journal | Journal of European Public Policy |
Volume | 24 |
Issue number | 8 |
Early online date | 2 Aug 2016 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 22 Aug 2017 |
Keywords
- EU agencies
- food controls
- maritime safety
- national regulators
- regulatory co-ordination