Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/306093 
Year of Publication: 
2023
Citation: 
[Journal:] Regulation & Governance [ISSN:] 330 [Volume:] 18 [Issue:] 3 [Publisher:] John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd [Place:] Melbourne [Year:] 2023 [Pages:] 740-760
Publisher: 
John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd, Melbourne
Abstract: 
Throughout the past decades, the EU's agency landscape has continuously expanded in size and scope. In this article, we address the lack of longitudinal data on EU agencies' formal independence. We introduce a newly revised index to measure the formal independence of EU agencies from other EU institutions over time. Applying a rules‐as‐data approach we coded 206 regulations and amendments to develop a new dataset covering the formal independence of all 39 EU agencies from 1975 to 2022. This longitudinal overview provides first insights about the development of formal independence at the case and population levels. At the case level we identify frequent, albeit gradual reforms of EU agencies' independence. At the population level, we observe remarkable stability in overall independence, but find stark variation across different independence dimensions. Overall, EU‐level principals have shifted over time from controlling individual decisions to controlling the agencies' general decision‐making apparatus.
Subjects: 
EU administration
EU agencies
formal independence
principal agent theory
rules as data
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Creative Commons License: 
cc-by Logo
Document Type: 
Article
Document Version: 
Published Version

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