Supranational activists or intergovernmental agents? Explaining the orientations of senior commission officials toward European integration

Since the inception of the European Community (EC)/European Union (EU), the European Commission has been the engine of European integration, but studi es have failed to account for how office holders in the commission conceive authority in the EU. The author explains variation in supranationalist and intergovernmentalist views among top commission officials using 140 interv iews and 106 mail questionnaires undertaken between July 1995 and May 1997. Officials' views are greatly influenced by prior state career and previous political socialization, with former state employees and nationals of larg e, unitary states leaning to intergovernmentalism and those without former state experience and from federal systems to supranationalism. partial conf irmation of a principal-agent logic is found in that officials in powerful commission services favor supranationalism only if prior socialization pred isposes them to such views. Thus, the results support socialization theory, but they are inconclusive for principal-agent arguments.