Stable roles and agile structures: Temporal robustness in public administration networks

The pursuit of public governance by public administration institutions requires the requisite expertise, which may be in short supply. We offer a novel study of expertise mobilization in trans-governmental administrative networks and ask: How is administrative expertise shared in European trans-governmental networks, and what explains the structure of interactions and the over-time dynamics ? We answer these questions by theorizing and empirically analyzing interactions among European Union member states in the Technical Assistance and Information Exchange instrument. Established by the European Commission, its purpose is to assist member states in implementing and enforcing the EU acquis . We develop a theoretical framework on temporal robustness of administrative networks, which encompasses networks’ ability to combine stability and change over time. We demonstrate that trans-governmental administrative networks allow for the coexistence of stable roles of member states within agile network structures, even amid political perturbations and discontinuities.