Commission Research

Published with Cambridge University Press, 2002:
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The Commission and the Integration of Europe-draft
The Commission and The Integration of Europe is a study of preferences, and how values and interests shape these. What kind of European Union do top Commission officials want? Should the European Union be supranational or intergovernmental? Should it promote market-liberalism or regulated capitalism? Should the Commission be an executive principal or an administrative-managerial agent? Should it be a consociational or Weberian organization? Based on 137 interviews, I examine top officials' preferences on these four questions.

I find that the Commission has difficulty shaping its employees' preferences in the fluid multi-level context of the European Union. Top officials' preferences are better explained by experiences outside than inside the Commission: party, country, and prior work leave deeper imprints than directorate-general or cabinet. Preferences are also influenced more by internalized values than by self-interested career calculation. Understanding the forces that shape human preferences is the subject of intense debate. I put forward a theory of preferences, and test it.

Table of Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Preface

Prologue

Chapters [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]

References