Christoph Ossege, European Regulatory Agencies in EU Decision‐Making. Between Expertise and Influence (Basingtoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 227 pp. $79.99 (cloth), ISBN: 9781137517906; $110 (paper), ISBN: 9781137517890

• Published date: 01 July 2018
• Date: 01 July 2018
• Author: Jaroslav Dvorak
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12963

656 Public Administration Review • July | A ugus t 201 8

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 78, Iss. 4, pp. 656–657. © 2018 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI:10.1111/puar.12963

In the book European Regulatory Agencies in EU

Decision-Making, author Christoph Ossege

seeks to answer a question significant to the

contemporary system of public governance: is

expertise the driving force of decision making? For

his research, the author has chosen three European

Regulatory Agencies (ERAs) that operate in the

technical area of risk regulation (14). Ossege

investigates the conditions under which ERAs

operate in order to provide high-quality expert

advice for the European Commission (EC). More

specifically, he analyzes the scientific basis of agency

operation, autonomy from external influences, and

their influence on regulatory decision making. The

selection of the agencies is based on three criteria:

similarities in the tasks of agency regulation, their

powers, and the organization of internal management

of the agencies.

Apparently, there is a lack of knowledge in this

research field, especially in the analysis of relations

between expertise and autonomy. One should admit

that there is a deficit of this knowledge in the area of

European administrative governance. The author does

not specify whether this deficit is shown in a broader

perspective, for instance, in the United States. The

main research method is 39 semistructured expert

interviews with the main stakeholders.

In order to reach the aim of the research, the

author uses the same dominant definition of the

term expertise as other researchers and refers to it as

regulatory scientific expertise (26). This way, according

to Ossege, the issues that are not scientific are not

considered to be regulatory expertise in the ERA

context. Agencies are the representatives of expert and

scientific opinion; instead of democratizing scientific

knowledge, they legitimize themselves in the eyes of

epistemic actors. When discussing the autonomy of

agencies, the author maintains that this is “a relative

concept which describes the freedom of an agency

from unreasonable external influence, i.e. political

and economic interests and private cost-benefit

calculations” (27). In addition, the boundaries of

autonomy are narrowed to exclusively scientific ones

because other types of autonomy depend on other

political actors.

Both characteristics of agency performance

significant to the decision-making process (i.e.,

expertise and autonomy) are important for the

author’s research. On the one hand, the EC may

not follow the pieces of advice of the agencies. On

the other hand, the EC will face legal consequences

if it does not have scientific justification why the

agencies are not right. A very important question

arises on who is more scientific, the agency or

the EC. The same question of being scientific is

also important for the EU member states. The

representatives of the member states participate in

the activities of agency committees; however, they

may experience mistrust at the EU level if they do

not adhere to the scientific opinion of the agency.

This implies risk for the activity of agencies. As

Ossege notes, it is probable that a certain area

of regulation will obtain exclusive attention of

politicians. Then the agency will have to balance

among political, economic, and ideological

provisions (53).

In addition, the author maintains that expert capacity

of agencies is concentrated in scientific committees,

which are the main centers of decision making (65).

Ossege clearly and consistently explains how an agency

employs external experts and how the variety of

regulatory skills manifests in the member states. It is

admitted that the experts of larger EU member states

perform more work; meanwhile, it is more difficult for

small states, even though some of them also perform a

substantial part of the expertise. These circumstances

may be useful for expert decision making because

when the expert audience is large, limited participation

is welcomed (69). The analysis of agency behavior has

been performed reductively due to political salience.

Reviewed by: Jaroslav Dvorak

Klaipeda University

Christoph Ossege, European Regulatory Agencies in EU

Decision-Making. Between Expertise and Influence (Basingtoke:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 227 pp. $79.99 (cloth),

ISBN: 9781137517906; $110 (paper), ISBN: 9781137517890

Jaroslav Dvorak is associate professor

and head of the department of public

administration and social geography at

Klaipeda University in Lithuania. He is also

visiting researcher at Uppsala University in

Sweden, Institute of Russian and Eurasian

studies. His work focuses on evaluation of

capacity building in public administration,

public service delivery models and

alternatives, and prevention of frauds in

local governments.

E-mail: jaroslav.dvorak@ku.lt