External pressure, bureaucratic politics and policy insiders: the policy shaping influence of internal coordination processes on European Commission Strategies

While coordination within the European Commission is crucial for shaping policy proposals, existing research has yet fully to explain the conditions under which these proposals undergo substantial change before they are adopted. This article analyses what explains the occurrence of substantial change in draft Commission Strategies between their introduction in the Commission’s Interservice Consultation (ISC) process and their final adoption. Using fuzzy set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) and an original dataset of 30 Strategies adopted under the first Von der Leyen Commission, we identify a number of (combinations of) conditions that explain substantial change in a draft Strategy during these internal coordination processes. The analysis shows that three specific configurations of conditions – or paths – may lead to substantial change. These relate to external pressure, bureaucratic politics and policy insider dynamics, respectively. Although these findings partly confirm the conditions that have been put forward in the literature, they also show that substantial change can be triggered by different combinations of conditions, which reflect either external or internal dynamics in coordination processes within the Commission.