Citation

Schout A. J. Public Policy 2011; 31(3): 363-384.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2011, Cambridge University Press)

DOI

10.1017/S0143814X11000110

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Irrespective of the level of government, public officials increasingly face the challenge of evaluating and making choices between more instruments. Agencies are intended to be a new and different type of governance instrument offering prospects for stronger input from experts, greater transparency and depoliticised decisions. Using 'legitimacy' as the framework, this study compares an agency (European Aviation Safety Agency) to comitology and its predecessor (a sui generis intergovernmental regulatory network). Although EASA is often heralded as a major change, the conclusions here are that its predecessor was quite effective and that comitology has been greatly improved and could have been explored as alternative instrument. Therefore, the agency solution was neither unavoidable nor necessarily better.

Language: en

Keywords

agencies; aviation safety; comitology; EU governance; instruments; legitimacy