Operationalizing the European administrative space as a bottom-up concept

The hierarchical organizational concepts of top-down, and bottom-up may serve to inform how administrative practices ought to be evaluated against policy goals. In the 2000s leaders of EU began to see European integration no longer as a peace project, but as a promising adaptation strategy to globalization. United States and China were perceived to be regions with more dynamic economies, while EU was starting to lag behind. EU’s fragmented and complex governance was and is blamed. However, despite a broad consensus that it is a major policy issue, agreement between EU members is nowhere to be found. On the contrary, challenges to the existing level of integration are mounting. This leads us to a conclusion that further top-down common values and consensus based integration is unlikely. This article aims to explore the possibilities of operationalizing a bottom-up concept of European Administrative Space, whereby it would become possible to measure national public management principles and practices not only against their effectiveness in achieving stated policy goals, but in terms of their compatibility with similar process across Europe. Such evaluation may yield better data on the benefits and costs of EU integration not only at the macro-economic level of analysis, but at the organizational level of public agencies. The analysis in this study utilizes two key concepts: convergence and isomorphism. Convergence is a concept we relate to the top-down type of Europeanization, while isomorphism as its name implies should occur without hierarchical co-ordination. The key research question for this paper therefore is what elements of international administrative integration isomorphism achieve in place of convergence? [...]