Conclusions: Understanding Heterogeneous Institutional Change in the Commission

Abstract

Institutional change has been at the heart of the Commission’s reform process since 2000. Rather than analyse whether the Kinnock reforms generated institutional change or not, this research built on the works of Kassim (2004a, 2004b, 2008), Levy (2002, 2003, 2004), Peterson (2004) and Cini (2004), which specifically discuss the Kinnock reforms and unanimously demonstrate the occurrence of change. Even though these authors might not agree on the depth of change or its ‘success’ and how to define it, they all concur that the Kinnock reforms achieved what no other reform programme of the Commission ever did: change and impact. This study therefore sought to re-situate the debate in a historical and evolutionary administrative perspective, which no other researcher had done until now, and to go beyond the observation and measurement of change in order to understand its nature, scope and dynamic as well as the consequences for the Commission as a political institution. It gives an in-depth multi-dimensional answer to the central question: what explains institutional change in the Commission since 2000?