Cautious communicators: Strategic communication of European Union commissioners in regulatory decision-making

Moritz Müller, Caelesta Braun and Bert Fraussen
Additional contact information
Moritz Müller: Institute of Public Administration, 4496Leiden University, Netherlands
Caelesta Braun: Institute of Public Administration, 4496Leiden University, Netherlands

European Union Politics, 2022, vol. 23, issue 3, 509-528

Abstract: The bureaucratic reputation literature stipulates that bureaucracies strategically aim to maximize reputational benefits and minimize reputational damages through targeted communication strategies. Departing from this assumption and using an extensive dataset on the media coverage of 54 legislative acts, we examine the conditions under which commissioners appear in the news and which communication strategies they pursue. Our analyses show that commissioners are more likely to appear in news coverage in the context of technically complex issues. We find that if a regulation is less politically conflictual, they are more likely to promote the commission's policy preferences, whereas they adopt a more passive style of communication in the face of political conflict. The findings further our understanding of regulatory policymaking by explaining bureaucratic behaviour through a communicational lens.

Keywords: Bureaucratic reputation; EU Commission; public communication; policymaking processes; regulatory governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14651165221090743 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:eeupol:v:23:y:2022:i:3:p:509-528

DOI: 10.1177/14651165221090743

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in European Union Politics
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().