Use and Limitations of the Principal-Agent Model (2): The Politics of Discretion in the EU

Abstract

This panel is the second 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 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 second panel addresses the challenges related to the study of the ‘politics of discretion’ (the tug-of-war between principal and agent after delegation has taken place) in the EU. Discretion is understood as the freedom enjoyed by the agent in the execution of a delegated task. The panel identifies the main explanatory factors for a particular level discretion and pays particular attention to strategies agents can use to maximize their discretion.

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