Post-Lisbon Policy-Making in the European Commission: Juncker’s Politics of (Re-)Structuring Intra-Commission Policy Formulation Processes

Administrations play an important role in policy development. Consequently, politicians should be interested in designing ‘their’ administrations according to their policy aims. Theoretical contributions of political and administrative science suggest a bureaucracy’s inner structure and working routines to noticeably pre-determine both the leeway for political steering and – maybe even more remarkably – the kind of policies (e.g., consistency, comprehensiveness) that can actually be developed. However, more frequently than not administrations appear to develop sticky inner lives and resist politico-administrative reform attempts. Following the first post-Lisbon elections to the European Parliament with the newly ‘Spitzenkandidaten’ system, Juncker seems to have taken the chance of higher legitimacy of his post and initiated wide-ranging inner-institutional reforms. The pressing (theoretical and empirical) question is whether and how this power source can be used politically and whether the stated causal relation between an administration’s structure and political leeway can be confirmed. This paper examines this recent and important case of political steering endeavour via politico-administrative reform: The Juncker Commission’s inner policy formulation process is analysed and compared to the Barroso Commission across three different policy areas (e.g., internal market). The insights of more than thirty in-depth interviews with Commission insiders of all hierarchical levels are complemented with document and observable behaviour analyses to allow cross-validation. The Juncker reform seems to constitute a case of successful political attempt to structure the EU’s administration in accordance with its political principal’s aims. Based on recent presidentialization literature, the paper outlines potential causal determinants for the reform success.