Higher Seminar with Brigitte Pircher associate professor in Political Science: EU politics, EU institutions, policy-making, EU law and its implementation, social policies, internal market at Södertörn University.

This seminar presents the SUPA project (“Sustaining Public Administration in Modern Democracies”), which investigates how public administrations in advanced democracies can respond to increasing administrative overburdening. As rule growth continues while administrative capacities stagnate, public sectors face growing implementation challenges, leading to suboptimal policy outcomes and inconsistent service delivery. SUPA aims to strengthen public sector resilience by pursuing two goals: improving decision-making to reduce administrative burdens and reforming administrative structures to better manage rule growth. The project analyzes these issues in six European countries and the EU using qualitative and quantitative methods. A key focus is the policy instrument of regulatory offsetting, which abolish existing rules when introducing new rules. While often framed as a technical solution, regulatory offsetting is inherently political, as it involves prioritizing which policies to retain or eliminate. The seminar presents first findings on rule growth, administrative adaptation, and the political dynamics underlying regulatory offsetting.
Brigitte Pircher, associate professor in Political Science, studies EU politics, EU institutions, policy-making, EU law and its implementation, social policies, and the internal market. She is work package leader in the EU Horizon funded project SUPA (Sustaining Public Administration in Modern Democracies). She has previously held research positions at Copenhagen Business School, Linnaeus university, and the University of Vienna, and has also worked in the European Parliament as head of office and policy adviser.