Dr. Esther Versluis

Associate Professor European Regulatory Governance

Esther Versluis is Associate Professor European Regulatory Governance at the Department of Political Science, Maastricht University.

Esther holds a PhD in public administration  (‘Enforcement Matters. Enforcement and Compliance of European Directives in Four Member States' ) of the University of Utrecht (2003), for which she received the ‘Van Poelje prize' by the ‘Dutch Association for Public Administration'. Esther's research concentrates on questions related to European regulatory governance. She is specialized in the European policy process, and, amongst others, analyzes the implementation of European (risk) regulations on the national level. Her PhD shed light on the ‘black box' of practical implementation of European legislation and it demonstrated the European Union's ‘compliance deficit'. Currently, her research interests concern solutions to overcome this deficit. Amongst others, Esther concentrates on the potential role for the European Commission and specialized European agencies in ensuring rule compliance. In addition, she analyzes the role of EU agencies as risk regulators. In 2011 Esther worked as a Fulbright visiting scholar at Cornell University to further explore the role of experts and expertise in EU (risk) regulation.

Esther is the Director of Studies of the MA European Public Affairs; a practice-oriented MA program (in cooperation with the European Institute of Public Administration, EIPA in Maastricht) geared towards equipping students with tools to understand and analyze European policy-making. Furthermore, she teaches various modules within the Bachelor and Master European Studies. She is especially involved in courses on European integration history and theories, EU policy analysis, Europeanization and European public administration.