Delegating Powers in the European Community

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Abstract
The theory of delegation developed by Epstein and O'Halloran for the US federal system is used here to generate original hypotheses on the politics of delegation in the European Community (EC). It is argued that two institutional features of the Community, namely the decision rules of the Council of Ministers and the possibility of relying on both the Commission and the member states for policy implementation are at the core of the choices of delegation of EC legislators. Using an original dataset of 158 major EC legislative acts, it is demonstrated that the Council delegates greater policy authority to national institutions if legislation is adopted unanimously or in issue areas that require specialized and technical knowledge, while it relies to a greater extent on the Commission when acts are adopted by qualified majority voting or require general managerial skills at the supranational level.

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