Leiden University Student Repository

Kleinhout, Nienke (2023)

Expertise of Top Civil Servants in the EU Agency for Cooperation of Energy Regulators: To what extent hiring practices lead to epistemic communities

Master thesis | Public Administration (MSc)

This research has examined to what extent the hiring practices of the EU Agency for Cooperation of Energy Regulators (ACER) contribute to the creation of an epistemic community. Classifying this group of employees as an epistemic community requires a shared knowledge base and degree of socialisation, which practically means a large degree of overlap in knowledge, normative beliefs, and interests. The results do not indicate that ACER has a preference for hiring individuals with the same type of expertise, degree of socialisation, or shared interests, which means that ACER’s hiring practices are not responsible for the possible formation of an epistemic community. This could alleviate societal concerns about sub-optimal decisions being made by an organisation that they have no direct control over and adds a new perspective on the external factors of norm internalisation

expertise

epistemic community

ACER

Author

Kleinhout, Nienke

Faculty

Faculty of Governance and Global Affairs

Specialisation

International and European Governance

Supervisors

Christensen, J.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en