The European Commission’s Expert Groups as an Information System

Abstract

Information is a prerequisite of governance, affecting the decisional premises and shaping the substance of political decisions. The nature of information systems, the organized production, distribution, and use of information, reflects ideas about what kinds of information are deemed relevant, necessary, and appropriate to base decisions on (Blichner and Olsen 1989).¹ For public administration, expertise, and the pursuit of professional, non-partisan, and impartial information is fundamental to the formulation and execution of public policy and a key source of bureaucratic authority (Olsen 2010, 180–181). Highly specialized administrative structures are sustained by expertise and the ‘authority of ideas’ (Simon 1997 [1976/1945], 136). Yet political-administrative systems show considerable variation in how expertise is defined and used, in how expert concerns and information are balanced with other competing decisional premises, and in the ways in which experts are engaged in policy formulation and implementation (Gornitzka 2003; Jasanoff 2005; Kogan et al. 2006). For EU policy-making the role of expertise has been especially prominent, but contested (Boswell 2008; Keohane et al. 2009; Majone 1996, 1999; Radaelli 1999). The European Commission has been the centre of attention in this debate. The key executive institution of the EU, the Commission administration, lives with multiple images about governance and various ideas about how to balance professional, political, and other concerns (Trondal 2010).