The Commission and national governments as partners: EC regulatory expansion in telecommunications 1979-2000

General integrationist models underline conflicts between the Commission and national governments. They cite telecommunications as an exemplar of the Commission imposing its choices on unwilling member states. However, a close examination of the development of substantive EC regulation in telecommunications shows that the Commission and national governments acted in partnership. Major conflicts concerned constitutional issues rather than substantive ones. How and why the partnership came to exist is analysed using a principal-agent framework. The article argues that formal and informal institutional controls made the Commission very sensitive to the preferences of national governments in substantive EC telecommunications regulation, resulting in partnership in developing substantive EC regulation. Four processes wherebysuch controls operated were: the participation of national governments at all stages of decision-making; incrementalism; compromises and linkages; national discretion in implementation. In contrast, effective controls and processes did not apply to constitutional issues, leading to conflict rather than co-operation between the Commission and governments.