This paper seeks to investigate the extent to which individuals, rather than the institution or country they represent, or even the decision-making rules, matter and determine EU policy. Can ambitious individuals wield influence over policy outcomes by virtue of their personality, background, reputation, personal contacts, networks, bargaining skills and strategies? This paper builds on research on bargaining and socialisation, policy networks, policy entrepreneurs, policy windows, role perceptions and the EU’s new diplomatic service but also literature on bureaucratic autonomy, administrative behaviour of international bureaucracies, political leadership, political psychology, management and organisational behaviour studies and Foreign Policy Analysis. The paper will first provide a systematic overview of what is known about the role of individuals in policy-making more broadly speaking and what we know about the means of influencing policy output in the EU’s decision-making system. It will then undertake an investigation of two empirical cases: foreign policy and energy policy.
