Delegating Powers in the European Community

Abstract: This article uses the theory of delegation of Epstein and O’Halloran, developed for the US federal system, to generate original hypotheses on the politics of delegation in the European Community (EC). It argues that two institutional features of the Community, namely the decision rules of the Council of Ministers and the possibility of relying on both the Commission and the Members States for policy implementation, are at the core of the choices of delegation of EC legislators. Using an original data set of 158 major EC legislative acts, it demonstrates that the Council delegates greater policy authority to national institutions if legislation is adopted unanimously or in issue areas that require specialized and technical knowledge, while it relies to a greater extent on the Commission when acts are adopted by qualified majority voting or require general managerial skills at the supranational level. Results also show that national administrators are the main providers of policy expertise, while the informational role of the Commission appears to be secondary, though not negligible. Finally, these findings qualify propositions on the relation between veto players and bureaucratic autonomy and on that between conflict within the legislature and delegation outcomes.