Johan Adriaensen – författare

This book studies the relationshipbetween administrative capacity and a member state’s influence in the EuropeanUnion. More specifically, it studies member states’ ability to exert controlover the European Commission during trade negotiations. But what determinesadministrative capacity and how do member states ensure their preferences aredefended during trade negotiations? A combination of qualitative fieldwork and survey-analysisprovides the answer. Interviews in Belgium, Poland, Estonia and Spain offer aprivileged insight into the functioning of national trade administrations andits effects on their behavior in the Council of Ministers. Through survey data,these findings are further corroborated. The book is aimed at a readershipinterested in EU decision-making, negotiation theory, comparative publicadministration and the international political economy of trade.

This book assesses the use and limitations of the principal-agent model in a context of increasingly complex political systems such as the European Union. Whilst a number of conceptual, theoretical and methodological challenges need to be addressed, the authors show that the principal-agent model can still provide deeper insights into a wide range of political phenomena. Through an empirical analysis of multiple principal-agent relations in the EU, covering a variety of policy fields and political actors, the volume refines our theoretical understanding of the politics of delegation and discretion in the EU. It will appeal to scholars in interested in EU politics and policy, public administration and governance, and international organisations.The chapter ‘Multiple principals preferences, different types of oversight mechanisms, and agent’s discretion in trade negotiations’ is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.