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Assessing the Added Value of an EU Agency for Aviation Safety1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2011

Adriaan Schout
Adriaan Schout*
Affiliation:
European Studies, Clingendael Institute
*
dr. adriaan schout European Studies Programme, Clingendael Institute, PO Box 93080, 2509 The Hague, Netherlands, e-mail: aschout@clingendael.nl
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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.

Keywords

agenciesEU governancelegitimacycomitologyaviation safetyinstruments
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Public Policy , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , December 2011 , pp. 363 - 384
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

1

This is an elaborated version of Schout (forthcoming). I would like to thank Martijn Groenleer and the referees for their constructive comments.

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