The article concerns the role of the organizational cultures of two of the European Commission’s Directorate-Generals, respectively Energy and Climate Action, for the policy coherence within EU energy and climate policy.
An important insight from the article is bureaucratic organizations address policy issues on the basis of inherent causal beliefs (about the consequences of a given action) and normative beliefs (about what is desirable), and that this in turn affects the degree of policy coherence.
Skovgaard studied how DG Energy and DG Climate Change addressed both the EU’s greenhouse gas target for 2020 and its and the energy efficiency target. DG Energy preferred regulatory policy instruments and treated climate change as one objective among many including affordable energy, while DG Climate Action preferred market-based instruments and treated climate change as the top priority.
The analysis shows that deliberation was possible when disagreement between organizations was rooted in differing causal beliefs, while hierarchical imposition was used when disagreement was rooted in differing normative beliefs.