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Article Article October 26th, 2017
Legitimacy

Why EU agencies are political entrepreneurs

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EU agencies are using comms and stakeholder teams to boost their legitimacy #FindingLegitimacy

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Entrepreneurial approaches to gaining legitimacy can be applied at any level #FindingLegitimacy

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Legitimacy needs an active, not a passive approach, says @Woodpoliticshef #FindingLegitimacy

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The European Union (EU) is rarely far from the headlines - particularly in the Brexit-dominated landscape of the UK, where I am based. Its complexities and performance are a source of endless fascination and controversy among the political class, media and populace alike.

The EU allocates many of its everyday operations to decentralised agencies. From the European Food Safety Agency and the European Banking Agency to the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), such bodies carry out much of the EU's day-to-day policymaking and implementation.

Traditionally, these agencies build their legitimacy by interacting with professionals in their fields of expertise - air companies, food scientists, clinicians, lawyers, and so on. More recently, however, they have invested in communications and stakeholder teams to improve how they manage their legitimacy. From my research, I found that they do this in four ways, based on their policy goals as agencies but also (and importantly) on the political pressure they experience.

  1. “Technical-functional”

When public managers don't have many resources and their task is relatively small, they adopt a “technical-functional” approach. This means that they rely on others to spread their message, and stick to making sure their agencies work well internally.

At the EU level, agencies take a technical-functional approach when they have tight budgets and are under the political radar. The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound), for example, relies on “multipliers” - by which it means scientific and policy stakeholders in the member states - to disseminate its research on living and working conditions in Europe. It has achieved legitimacy by having a distinctive message for those “multipliers”, and it can rely on them to absorb that message and communicate it to others.

The uptake is impressive. Despite only having around 100 staff and a small budget, Eurofound's reports were referenced 627 times in peer-reviewed journals in 2016, compared to only 27 citations in 2007.

  1. “Insulating”

The “insulating” approach tends to work best for managers who have a major task that is potentially politically controversial and who have greater access to money and staff. A good example is aviation. The EU's aviation agency, EASA, has the huge task of making sure that Europe's skies - some of the busiest in the world - are kept safe. In practice, they do this by working closely with the aviation industry. They do not engage in widespread media campaigning, but instead focus on responding nimbly to any legitimacy challenges that might arise - by issuing press releases quickly and providing all relevant factual information, for example.

This approach can create a sense of remoteness, but it has enabled EASA to gain a solid reputation, while avoiding the risks of being inundated with information and requests for intervention. In 2015, a stakeholder survey showed that three-quarters of respondents were satisfied with EASA's certification process, and over 80 percent agreed that the process is communicated effectively and that the certification team are fair to applicants. Overall, 75 percent of respondents have a positive perception of EASA's work.

  1. “Network-seeking”

“Network-seeking” takes the opposite approach. It involves connecting with new partners and building relationships through conferences, on social media, or by engaging with the public. It's perhaps closest to the Centre for Public Impact's idea of what finding legitimacy means: working from the bottom up to achieve policy goals.

The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) is a case in point. Since its creation in 2007, it has become highly influential, with its Gender Statistics Database gaining almost 86,000 views in its first ten months of existence, thanks to the EIGE's active attempts to seek out relevant networks. Despite having only 50 members of staff, the EIGE was the fourth most “liked” EU agency on Facebook in 2011, and it now reaches over 1.1 million people on Twitter. This can be ascribed to its dynamic approach of connecting with the various groups researching gender issues throughout Europe and beyond.

  1. “Politicised”

The final approach is where managers recognise that they need to fight their ground on a political field. In the EU, stakeholder managers in the areas of food and medicine realise that their jobs are important - because they have an almost direct regulatory role - and so they could be open to political attack if a crisis occurs.

On a day-to-day level, they are often pressurised and lobbied by all kinds of interest groups, pressure which they need to resist. Given that they have the necessary resources available, they go out of their way to be proactive and assert their credibility and independence in the public sphere. They hold numerous conferences for all kinds of stakeholders, and have a clear media and public presence. This approach isn't for everyone, but for public managers feeling the heat from interest groups, politicians and the media, it's often the most viable option.

The EU's medicines agency, the EMA, has wholeheartedly adopted this strategy, regularly going above and beyond what is required of it in terms of providing information to stakeholders, for example through press releases, conferences and consultations. Their stakeholder survey results show that this approach is working. The vast majority of its partners and stakeholders view the EMA as being both objective and authoritative.

This view has held good despite controversial episodes such as the recent sodium valproate scandal, where questions were asked about why the potentially harmful epilepsy drug was given to pregnant women, resulting in birth defects. EMA led an inquiry into the scandal, recently streaming evidence sessions live on their website for the first time ever.

The impact of being entrepreneurial

These entrepreneurial approaches to gaining and defending legitimacy are fluid. They can be applied at any level, although managers at some levels are more exposed to politics than others, so managing legitimacy will require more or less “active” types of entrepreneurship.

The key, then, is that managing legitimacy needs an active rather than a passive approach, and public managers should think of themselves as political entrepreneurs responsible for managing legitimacy. This enables them to take on board the Centre for Public Impact's view that legitimacy isn't simply given to them. It needs to be worked for and earned, and this requires public engagement.

What is legitimacy to you? Where do you see legitimacy working well? How governments work with citizens to build legitimacy is a big question for CPI. 

Find out how to get involved in our Finding Legitimacy project 

 

FURTHER READING

Written by:

Matthew Wood
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