Policy coordination is widely described as a form of network governance. Accordingly, the deepening of integration in specific policy domains goes hand in hand with the creation or strengthening of networks, staffed with national administrative actors. Network governance takes various forms and spans from the invention of Comitology in the agricultural sector in the 1960s to the so‐called third wave of agencification in more recent years. These networks become important players in their respective policy domains, influencing decision‐making and implementation and even their own institutional development. Empirically, networks show a great deal of variance with regard to their specific design, their degree of institutionalization and the amount of influence they can exert on policy‐making. However, we lack profound knowledge on the determining factors of this variance. The aim of this panel is twofold. On the one hand, we ask why networks take a specific design. On the other hand, we want to know how specific network features produce particular policies and why some networks are more influential than others. To investigate into the design and effect of different types of EU network governance, we welcome papers which conceptualize networks as dependent as well as as independent variable.