Knowing How to Make European Policies Work: Administrative Expertise and the Practical Implementation of EU Waste Shipment Regulations

This paper analyzes the impact of administrative expertise on the practical implementation of EU policies. Previous research has seen administrative expertise primarily as a resource that shapes the capabilities of implementers to put a policy into practice by focusing on training systems and other forms of knowledge exchange that provide implementers with the required technical knowledge to fulfil their tasks. In contrast, comparatively little research has been devoted to the role of administrative expertise as a factor that shapes the willingness of implementers to execute a given policy. This paper sheds new light on this second effect of administrative expertise. We argue that implementers’ beliefs about the nature of the problems to be tackled and their understanding of effective solutions to these problems are an integral part of administrative expertise. The willingness of implementers to execute a given policy, in turn, is likely to depend on the extent to which the policy is in line with their existing understandings of effective and desirable courses of action. This may be shaped by policy legacies and administrative cultures, by the involvement of implementing actors in the formation of the policy, by the involvement of implementers in EU-level or transnational expert forums, and by their views on the legitimacy of implementation guidelines emanating from such forums. The paper illustrates the empirical relevance of these theoretical propositions by presenting first results from a project that analyzes the practical implementation of the EU’s policy to restrict transports of hazardous waste from, to, and across Europe in France, Germany and the UK.