Under Construction @ Keele 2019 summer 2019, vol 5 issue 1 | Page 25

formation of individual interests on a national level. This is not as detrimental to the RCI line
of argument, since the point of the article is to examine why member states delegate powers
in the domain of control policy. On the other hand, Givens and Luedtke—in line with LIG—
point out that the Commission’s role is determined by member states who use the EU level
to enhance their sovereignty, depending on the level of political salience. 18 They demonstrate
this by creating and testing an incredibly rigorous model, which compromises of four stages. 19
This enables them to coherently explain variances in harmonization across national positions
(national/domestic sphere), cross-national position (intergovernmental sphere), and
between control and integration policies (EU level)—in line with LIG as a tripartite model.
Here, the authors preserve the credibility of LIG by foregrounding the importance of the 1996
Intergovernmental Conference to be the site of immigration policy-making. 20
Unlike Givens and Luedtke, Menz puts across a case of day-to-day policy-making
between that of the Commission through mobility partnerships and that of members states
through bilateral agreements made by Italy, Spain and Germany with North African
countries. 21 While this is inconsistent with RCI, it does work to his advantage since it frames
why the Commission holds the solution for collective action. That being said, Menz neglects
to explain how collective action will be achieved in the future. Because of this, his
proclamation that ‘shirking and slippage in the early years have been successfully avoided’
seems like a bit of a leap. 22 Perhaps a possible way to strengthen this claim would be to
analyse ‘principal slippage’ more comprehensively, since he bases the pursuit of bilateral
18
Givens and Luedtke, “The Politics of the European Union,” 151.
Givens and Luedtke, “The Politics of the European Union,” 152-161.
20
Givens and Luedtke, “The Politics of the European Union,” 160.
21
Menz, “The promise of principal-agent approach,” 315-320.
22
Menz, “The promise of principal-agent approach,” 315-320.
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