Use and Limitations of the Principal-Agent Model (1): Theoretical and Methodological Challenges

Abstract

This panel is the first of two panels addressing the applicability of the principal-agent (PA) model to contemporary EU politics. Both proposed panels contain draft papers that will be published as an edited volume (foreseen for early 2017), but that still require feedback and fine-tuning at the time of the Trento conference. All papers will be based on a common framework and template provided by the book editors (and panel chairs), which guarantees a high level of cohesion in the panel. The PA model is a popular analytical framework to study political processes in the EU. Despite of the model’s attractiveness in the study of the EU, more and more questions are being asked on the contemporary relevance of PA analysis. With its exclusive focus on hierarchical, dyadic relations, the PA model seems ill-equipped to study an empirical reality where EU decision-making is increasingly characterized by large, horizontal networks among a plethora of public and private actors. This observation does not imply that the hierarchical relations have become an anomaly in the current political system. What it does imply is that it has become increasingly complex to study a specific hierarchical relation in isolation from the web of relations in which it is embedded. The proposed panel provides answers on the major questions on the applicability of PA to the study of EU politics today. This first panel introduces the main challenges and presents the main questions PA scholars need to address in order to remain relevant. These questions are of a theoretical, normative and methodological nature. It also presents competing views on the politics of delegation in the EU and assesses the utility of the PA model in that regard.

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