The role of EU funding in EU member states: building administrative capacity to advance administrative reforms

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPSM-01-2022-0008
• Published date: 04 October 2022
• Date: 04 October 2022
• Pages: 1-19
• Subject Matter: Public policy & environmental management,Politics,Public adminstration & management
• Author: Vitalis Nakrošis,Sorin Dan,Rasa Goštautaitė

The role of EU funding in EU

member states: building

administrative capacity to advance

administrative reforms

Vitalis Nakro

sis

PPMI, Vilnius, Lithuania and

Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

Sorin Dan

University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland, and

Rasa Go

stautait_

e

PPMI, Vilnius, Lithuania

Abstract

Purpose –Despite the growing volume of European Union (EU) investments into reforms and public

administration, how EUsupport contributes to administrative reform and capacity building at domestic level is

still unclear. The article explains the EU’s influence, domestic politicisation and previous administrative

capacity on organisational change whilst implementing European Social Fund-financed projects during the

programming period 2014–2020.

Design/methodology/approach –By going beyond the EU-centred approach and based on different

strands of the new institutionalism, the authors offer three explanations on the influence of EU support. The

authors performed the qualitative content analysis of 29 case studies and matched the implementation of the

projects with the authors’explanations.

Findings –The authors’research results indicate that progress in the implementation of the projects was

determined by domestic factors rather than EU conditionalities. The influence of domestic politicisation was

found to be mixed, but higher levels of initial administrative capacity provedto be most important to achieving

organisational change.

Research limitations/implications –The authors’judgement of the project implementation and their

success was based on the information provided in the case studies at the time of implementation.

Practical implications –The authors’research points to the essential need for the initial and gradual

development of administrative capacity to achieve good reform results.

Originality/value –Based on the different logics of the new institutionalism, we developed specific

mechanisms for organisational change. The authors’research results deepen the understanding of how

politicisation positively or negatively shapes reform implementation, as well as how pre-existing

administrative capacity and further development of pre-existing administrative capacity dynamically

occurs through a process of socialisation and learning.

Keywords Politicisation, Administrative reform, European Social Fund, Administrative capacity building,

EU conditionality

Paper type Research paper

The role of EU

funding

1

The authors would like to thank the experts of the project “Progress Assessment of ESF Support to

Public Administration”(PAPA) who contributed to data gathering, analysis and writing of the case

studies used in the preparation of this article. The authors also thank the three anonymous reviewers of

this article.

Funding: The original study “Progress Assessment of ESF Support to Public Administration”

(PAPA) benefited from the financial support of DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the

European Commission.

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0951-3558.htm

Received 8 January 2022

Revised 23 May 2022

20 August 2022

Accepted 13 September 2022

International Journal of Public

Sector Management

Vol. 36 No. 1, 2023

pp. 1-19

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0951-3558

DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-01-2022-0008

1. Introduction

European public administrations are facing a number of profound challenges, including fast

technological change, demographic changes and skills shortages, an increasing complexity of

policy issues, the green transition, and increasing pressures on public finances (European

Commission, 2021a,b). Some of those issues could be addressed by investing European Union

(EU) or national money to improve the performance of public administration.

EU institutions have provided support to administrative reforms, administrative capacity

building and improving the management of EU funds through different funds of EU

Cohesion policy and sectoral programmes (European Commission, 2021a,b, p. 19). For

instance, in 2014–2020, a total of 17 beneficiary countries received about EUR 4.2 billion from

the European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) under their thematic objective 11

“enhancing institutional capacity of public authorities and stakeholders and efficient public

administration”. In a new programming period unprecedented resources will be allocated to

EU Member States under the “NextGenerationEU”package that will, amongst other things,

support investments into reforms and public administration.

There is a growing body of empirical evidence and case examples on the use of EU support

in EU Member States. For instance, the European Commission publishes various reports and

studies on progress in the implementation of various programmes and initiatives (e.g.

European Commission, 2021a). However, there is still little knowledge on the implementation

of EU interventions in the field of public administration and governance.

Also there are mixed academic findings on the results of external support. Some previous

Europeanisation research has identified significant effects of EU funding on national policies

(Bachtler et al., 2014;Van Gerven et al., 2014). Furthermore, EU conditionality was found to

provide a window of opportunity and legitimacy for furthering national administrative

reform (MacCarthaigh and Hardiman, 2020). At the same time, it was recognised that the EU’s

influence can result in unintended consequences that go against its original intent (T€

or€

ok,

2020). However, other studies have revealed only weak links or even no links at all between a

significant amount of EU support used for upgrading the governance capacity of individual

countries, on the one hand, and the performance of their public administrations, on the other

hand (Chardas, 2012;Featherstone, 2015;Hajnal et al., 2018).

Furthermore, the existing studies remain under-theorised on the causal mechanisms of EU

support on organisational change, with the association amongst different drivers of EU support

and the results of these interventions not clearly understood. To assess organisational change, it is

necessary to go beyond programme theories or intervention logics (Nakro

sis, 2014) because such

approaches usually focus on the central role of EU institutions, the technical aspects of

implementation and external pressures of normative nature. Therefore, they sometimesneglect the

important characteristics of national political and administrative contexts, as well as the interests,

preferences and beliefs of domestic actors (Mastenbroek and Kaeding, 2006;Surubaru, 2017). Since

public management reforms depend on various contextualfeatures and the degree of politicisation

at national level (Common and Gheorghe, 2019;Hagemann, 2019;Pollitt and Dan, 2011), it is

important to understand their influence on the implementation of EU interventions in public

administration and governance. Such causal mechanismscanbecapturedbythelogicof

consequentiality from the rational choice strand of the new institutionalism (Hall and Taylor, 1996).

Government effectiveness and administrative capacity building are increasingly

recognised as an important condition for the successful absorption of EU funds, especially

in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Incaltarau et al., 2020;OECD, 2020). For the

study of EU interventions aimed at capacity building and administrative efficiency this raises

an interesting causality dilemma of “the chicken or the egg”. This is because a certain level of

administrative capacity should be put in place first to ensure the effective implementation of

reform and capacity-building projects. Therefore, it is necessary to explore how the pre-

existence of administrative capacity can shape the subsequent implementation of EU

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