Regulatory networks and regulatory agencification: towards a Single European Regulatory Space

The European regulatory space has been expanding rapidly since the 1990s. The double movement towards a single market on the one hand and a Single European Regulatory Space on the other is evident almost everywhere. A new regulatory architecture is emerging and is expressed in the extension of regulatory capacities beyond the European Commission via two major forms of institutionalization: agencies and networks. This paper explores the politics and architecture of the institutionalization and administrative rationalization of the EU regulatory space and demonstrates (a) how agencies replace networks in a process that might best be called 'agencification'; (b) how agencies compete with networks and are often able to create, employ, and control them, creating what might best be called 'agencified networks'; and (c) how networking empowers agencies creating a new type of regulatory organization that might best be called a 'networked agency'.