The role of experts in the internal legitimation of European non-majoritarian bodies: compared study between the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European External Action Service (EEAS)

Details

Supervisors

Van Ingelgom, Virginie

Faculty

Faculté des sciences économiques, sociales, politiques et de communication

Degree label

Master [120] en études européennes, à finalité spécialisée: gouvernance et sociétés européennes

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, a regulatory shift has been observed in European governance. States increasingly started to delegate their powers to non-majoritarian institutions, neither directly elected, nor directly controlled by elected representatives. These institutions progressively gained formal and informal decision-making power which raises concerns about their democratic legitimacy. Moreover, individuals tend to become a central field of research on the European governance. Progressively, being an expert does not only mean being exceptionnaly good in a specific domain but encompasses more dimensions such as economic or societal interests. Bridging these two fields of research, the objective of this study is to analyse the influence of experts in the internal legitimation of these non-majoritarian institutions. The internal legitimation is defined as the legitimation vis-à-vis national competent authorities. To be able to generalize our findings, we analyse two opposite bodies : the EFSA and the EEAS. Applying the process tracing method, we demonstrate that experts contribute to the legitimation of non-majoritarian institutions both as individuals and as a collective, built by institutions. Indeed, we show that institutions rely on different profiles and experiences to build their legitimation. Our findings allow us to argue that both experts and non-majoritarian institutions could contribute to solve both the democratic and the legitimacy crisis. Indeed, through the inclusiveness and the openess mechanisms, we demonstrate that non-majoritarian institutions could become fora of exchange between different stakeholders and therefore rely on other forms of democracy than the classical representative one. However, some limits are remaining in order for these fora to properly become fora of participative democracy.