Abstract
Is administrative capacity a function of the size of a member state? Are former Communist member states still suffering a setback due to the flattened civil society? Does the rotation of diplomats limit the capabilities of administrations led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? These are but a few of the questions answered in this chapter. The qualitative fieldwork conducted in the member states was used to develop of a survey instrument targeting the twenty-eight member states. Drawing on the concept of network performance, the chapter introduces a series of propositions that help explain variation in administrative capacity of the member states. The resulting analysis of a sample of nineteen member states confirms many of the observations made in the qualitative fieldwork.
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Notes
- 1.
I prefer, however, to refrain from using the notion of “governance” for an additional, more pragmatic reason. Already from its inception, governance has carried many interpretations and connotations, a problem also recognised by many of its main proponents (see e.g., Börzel, 1998, 2011b; Rhodes, 1996). One such interpretation that has been used quite frequently in the literature is the focus on governance as the opposite of government (Bell & Hindmoor, 2012). In this view, governance reflects a “continuum ranging from the most dominated by the state to those in which the state plays no role” (Pierre & Peters, 2005, 11). This is at odds with the positive-sum game that characterises much of the interaction between state and society. The stronger inclusion of non-governmental players does not mark the retreat of the state (Strange, 1996) or the advent of a governance without government (Rosenau & Czempiel, 1992); rather it marks a change in the role of the state in the policy process. The state increasingly fulfils the role of a meta-governor, assessing potential weaknesses in the policy-network and seeking adequate remedies (Bell & Hindmoor, 2009; Sørensen & Torfing, 2009).
- 2.
Evidently all of the assumptions made can be subject to discussion. Nonetheless, it is important to keep in mind that the existing measures of administrative capacity all assume the existence of a central administration, thereby creating a bias vis-à-vis the many decentralised trade administrations.
- 3.
Unfortunately, no attendance records are kept of these meetings, and to collect a sufficiently representative sample of meetings would imply data-collection well beyond the time frame of this research.
- 4.
- 5.
In a configurational analysis of network performance, resource munificence did not constitute a necessary condition for network performance. That is not to conclude that resources did not play an important role, but rather that their effects are more differentiated (Raab et al. 2015, 26).
- 6.
Keep in mind, though, that overlapping competencies might also result in inefficient administrations due to the requirement of twice the amount of human resources.
- 7.
The original research ambition was to map the policy network through a comprehensive web survey in three languages. The survey was distributed among all the member states but did not result in much response. Therefore a reduced survey was conceived that enabled a more targeted inquiry. The full survey developed can be consulted in the dissertation on which this book is based (Adriaensen, 2014).
- 8.
The reason not to apply weights is simply that I have no a priori assumptions as to the value of the various sources. For the thirty-nine respondents, only two did not complete the entire list of questions regarding monitoring. Of all the listed monitoring sources, three items were not answered by all respondents. Data was imputed for these cases using all the other items as independent variables.
- 9.
The items excluded were those related to the domestic administration and those that also featured in the dependent variable. These concern items c, g, h, i , j and m from Table 6.2.
- 10.
As an extension, it may be important to note that the indicator of monitoring capacity is not correlated with the “Information” variable of Stephanie Bailer’s “Power-Skills-Information” data-set. This may be due to the temporal and topical disjoint between the current trade representatives investigated and the respondents of her survey (Bailer, 2004). This suggests—to some extent—that it was indeed sane to gather separate data and not apply existing data to new settings.
- 11.
Respondents also mentioned the importance of the Ministry of Health when Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary measures were part of the discussion. The Department of Immigration occasionally plays a role when mode 4 in services trade is being negotiated.
- 12.
As much data of the web survey proved to be unreliable (respondents’ estimates often pertained to the size of the entire ministry, not just the policy unit for trade), data on the number of staff were severely constrained. The resulting thirteen observations are quite limited for further analysis. To deal with the large number of missing observations, I extrapolated missing values by drawing on the strong correlation with (the log of) population for four additional countries.
- 13.
Only two respondents did not confirm that “having to do the same or more work but with fewer resources” represents a challenge for the administration. Lack of variation might be due to the bad formulation of the question or social desirability bias.
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Adriaensen, J. (2016). Measuring Administrative Capacity. In: National Administrations in EU Trade Policy. European Administrative Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54767-5_6
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