When (and How) Do the Commission’s Preferences Matter?

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Abstract
Regulatory innovations found in the EC’s Integrated Mediterranean Programmes can best be explained by a model informed by the study of public policy and historical institutionalism. In such an approach, preferences of the Member States are potentially endogenous. They can be altered by reasoned arguments presented by Commission experts. Similarly, the Commission’s formal agenda‐setting power is found to depend more on the short time horizon of Chiefs of Government than on imperfect or asymmetric information. Both of these findings suggest limits to the general applicability of rational choice inspired principal‐agent models of the European Community.

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