Jarle Trondal is professor in the Department of Political Science and Management at the University of Agder, Norway, and the ARENA Centre for European Studies, University of Oslo, Norway.
E-mail: [email protected]
Public Administration Review, Vol. 74, Iss. 4, pp. 545–549. © 2014 by The American Society for Public Administration. DOI: 10.1111/puar.12252.
less toward the eff ects of agencifi cation (e.g., Pollitt et al. 2004). Moreover, to the extent that this literature
has explored the eff ects of agencifi cation, organiza-tion structures, procedures, and legal capacities have served as key independent variables. A comprehensive understanding of agencifi cation needs to bring several literatures together. Government Agencies contributes to rebalancing an overly legal bias in much of the agency literature.
Th is book review asks three sets of questions:
1. What is agencifi cation? 2. What explains agencifi cation?
3. What implications does agencifi cation yield?
What Is Agencifi cation?
Historically, ministerial portfolios have been arranged either as “integrated ministries,” meaning that a ministerial portfolio constitutes a unitary organiza-tion, or as vertically specialized structures, meaning that a portfolio is split into a ministerial, or cabinet-level, department, on the one hand, and one or more separate agencies, on the other (Verhoest et al. 2012, 3). Over time, agencies seem to have been moved out of and into ministerial departments, often in a cyclical manner (Aucoin 1990; Hood and Jackson 1991; Pollitt 2008; Verhoest, Bouckaert, and Peters 2007). By an “agency,” we mean an administrative body that is formally separated from a ministerial, or cabinet-level, department and that carries out public tasks at a national level on a permanent basis, is staff ed by public servants, is fi nanced mainly by the state budget, and is subject to public legal procedures. Agencies are supposed to enjoy some autonomy from their respective ministerial departments in regard to decision making (Verhoest et al. 2012). However, the respective ministers normally keep the political responsibility for agencies’ activities (cf. Pollitt and Talbot 2004). “Agencifi cation” thus signifi es a transfer
of government activities to bodies vertically special-ized outside ministerial departments. Related to the NPM movement, governments across continents have
Koen Verhoest, Sandra Van Th iel, Geert Bouckaert, and Per Lægreid, eds., Government Agencies: Practices and Lessons from 30 Countries (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 496 pp. $170.00 (cloth), ISBN: 9780230354357; $54.00 (paper), ISBN: 9780230354364.
O
ne persistent theme in public administration is whether a government portfolio should be organized as an integrated ministry or as a dual organization composed of a ministerial department and one or several semidetached agen-cies (Verhoest et al. 2012). “Agencifi cation” has been high on the agenda of administrative policy makers for two decades, partly because of the New Public Management (NPM) wave. Two decades of NPM reforms have made the agencifi cation phenomenon highly topical and attracted considerable scholarly attention. After at least two decades of agencifi cation research, it is time to take stock. Our starting point for doing so is Government Agencies: Practices and Lessons from 30 Countries, edited byKoen Verhoest, Sandra Van Th iel, Geert Bouckaert, and Per Lægreid. Essentially, this book off ers a state-of-the-art account of agencifi cation. One ambition of this book review is to bring two literatures together that are often mutu-ally ignorant: public administration and European studies. Whereas most studies on agencifi cation have ignored this, the book under review represents an attempt to advance research along this line. Still, the European dimension receives scant attention in this study. Th is book review highlights a broader set of implications of agencifi cation, particularly with respect to (1) political steering and autonomy and (2) the rise of multilevel administration.Students of agencifi cation have focused on the causes of agencifi cation as well as its consequences (e.g., Christensen and Lægreid 2006; Lægreid and Verhoest 2010; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004; Pollitt et al. 2004). One noticeable bias in this literature is that the vast majority of the “agencifi cation” scholarship is geared toward administrative history, reform, and change and
Agencifi cation
Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors
Jarle Trondal
(see Radin 2012, 17). According to a functionalist account, agencifi cation is a response to collective action problems. Th e principal–agent model is often the analytical expression of this functional logic, together with the notion of transaction costs (see Tallberg 2003, 25). Th e benefi ts of agencies “lie in the reduction of political transaction costs, by providing solutions to collective-action problems that prevent effi cient political exchange” (Tallberg 2003, 26). Contingent events may help explain institutional change and the timing of organizational birth (see March and Olsen 1989; Pierson 2004). Decisions to create agencies have been motivated by the need to respond to particular circumstances of the moment and, in some cases, to crises. Finally, the creation of agencies can also be seen as a trend in public policy and as a fashionable idea within the realms of public management (see Christensen and Lægreid 2006). Meyer and Rowan (1977, 343) emphasize the importance of cultural rules within wider institutional environments that take the form of “rationalized myths.” Th ey are myths because they are widely held beliefs whose eff ects “inhere, not in the fact that individuals believe them, but in the fact that they ‘know’ everyone else does, and thus that ‘for all practical purposes’ the myths are true” (Meyer 1975, 75). Delegating tasks to “independent” agencies was increasingly popular in domestic politics across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development area in the late 1980s and therefore was likely to appeal to many national governments.
Implications of Agencifi cation
Implications of agencifi cation are noticeable with respect to (1) political steering and autonomy and (2) the rise of multilevel administration. Government Agencies is particularly interested the fi rst type of eff ects and largely ignores the latter. Th is bias in the study of implications of agencifi cation, however, is prevalent in agencifi cation studies. Before proceeding, we should emphasize that the sheer number of agen-cies across countries should not, in itself, matter with regard to the eff ects of agencifi cation. Th ese eff ects are arguably conditioned by particular organizational forms, not by the statistical distribution of these forms.
A recent study (Egeberg and Trondal 2009) shows that agency offi cials pay signifi cantly less attention to signals from executive politicians than their counter-parts in ministerial departments. Th e relationship is a robust one: it holds when controlling for the type of tasks, the amount of public debate, and contestation and offi cials’ rank. Last, but not least, the fi ndings are highly consistent across time. At the agency level, the more modest attention to political signals from above seems partly “compensated for” by more emphasis on user and client interests. Th us, the autonomous institution is seldom found; more autonomy gained in one relationship may be followed by more dependence established agencies at arm’s length from ministerial
departments in order to take care of certain regulatory and administrative tasks (Pollitt et al. 2004; Verhoest et al. 2004).
Agencifi cation seems fairly often accompanied by geographic relocation away from the national capital. Th is spatial dimension has largely been neglected in studies of agencifi cation. Although an old topic of administrative science (e.g., Gulick 1937), in the study of state building, party formation, and voting behavior (Rokkan and Urwin 1982), as well as the symbolic meaning of architecture (Goodsell 1977), the signifi cance of place has been largely neglected in scholarship on agencifi cation (see, however, Egeberg and Trondal 2011a).
During the last couple of decades, agencifi cation has also been observed in the European Union (EU) (Ongaro et al. 2012). Currently, more than 30 EU agencies have been established (and new agencies are pending). Apart from being geographically spread throughout the Union, EU agencies cover multiple policy areas; have various legal standings and formal powers, staffi ng, and funding provisions; and engage in a web of relations with external institutions. EU agencies have been considered weak in most terms. However, the quantitative leap of EU agencifi cation is increasingly causing a qualitative shift in terms of the establishment of EU agencies with ever-more regula-tory power and within policy domains of core state powers (e.g., economic aff airs, foreign and security aff airs). Studies show that agencifi cation at the EU level in many cases is basically about transferring action capacity from the constituent states to the EU level. For example, EU agencies seem to establish relatively stronger relationships with the European Commission than with members’ state governments. Th is seems to particularly be the case in relationship to the implementation of EU legislation and also in areas where the Commission has established admin-istrative capacities that partly overlap or duplicate the capacities of EU agencies (Egeberg and Trondal 2011b). Agencifi cation at the EU level thus seems to contribute to a consolidation of executive power of the Commission, although at arm’s length from politi-cal oversight by commissioners.
What Explains Agencifi cation?
agencies at the national level for the implementation of EU policies. In order to generate uniform imple-mentation across the EU, the commission in coopera-tion with EU agencies seems to establish partnerships with national agencies, partly circumventing ministe-rial departments. National agencies are thus becoming “double-hatted,” serving both national ministries and EU-level bodies (Egeberg 2006). Agency decoupling (from ministerial departments) at the national level makes agency recoupling across levels of governance possible. Integrated ministries would not have been conducive to such a development. Th us, recoupling (“de-agencifi cation”) at the national level would seri-ously challenge administrative integration across levels of governance (Egeberg and Trondal 2011b).
Conclusion
Few literatures have addressed the agency phenom-enon in a comprehensive fashion (Busuioc, Groenleer, and Trondal 2012; Christensen and Lægreid 2006; Pollitt et al. 2004; Verhoest et al. 2010). Government Agencies is one striking exception. One characteristic of the agencifi cation literature is the study of formal goals, resources, and structures of agencies. It stresses the constitutive rules on which agencies are based and the legal framework in which they are operating. Th e role of agencies and their potential impact has thus often been derived from their legal competences and their formal design features (e.g., Chiti 2000, 2009; Szapiro 2005; Vos 2000, 2005).
While this constitutes a necessary starting point, such approaches need to be supplemented by the study of actual practices to verify that extent to which the expected cues and patterns manifest themselves in practice. Other students of agencies look into the perceived functional necessity of agency creation or the political dominance of its principals on the agency through design. Th ey emphasize that their creation logically follows from the need for executive capac-ity or that agencies operate under a set of politi-cal constraints. Agencies are considered functional solutions addressing a perceived need by these actors or political instruments through which govern-ments act (Dehousse 1997; Kelemen 2002; Kreher 1997; Majone 1997; Yataganas 2001). Yet others see the agencifi cation process taking place as the emer-gence of a multilevel administration—primarily in a European context—but pay limited attention to the role of (individual) agencies in the increasingly com-plex European executive order (Curtin and Egeberg 2008; Egeberg 2006; Trondal 2010).
Th e underlying assumption in the existing litera-ture on agencies is often that agencies do what their creators want them to do; agencies are expected to develop in ways intended by their creators. Th e foregoing observation is also largely applicable to studies of the eff ects of agency creation and design. in another relationship (Olsen 2009; Th atcher 2002).
Offi cials routinely have to cope with what might become competing expectations. However, because it is often assumed that the relationship between formal structure and actual behavior is relatively weak in this respect (e.g., Christensen and Lægreid 2006), it might be expected that changing administrative doctrines (e.g., NPM, “whole of government”) made a diff er-ence in regard to agency decision making. Th is is not the case, however: the proportion of agency personnel emphasizing political signals was not smaller in 1996 (the NPM era) than it was in 1986 (the pre-NPM period) (Egeberg and Trondal 2009). However, the more organizational capacity is available in the respective ministerial departments, the more agency personnel tend to assign weight to signals from their respective ministers (see also Verhoest et al. 2010).
Government Agencies focuses primarily on organi-zational structure and procedures as independent variables. One neglected variable is agency location. Even though geographic relocation fairly often (but far from always) seems to have accompanied agencifi -cation (e.g., in the EU), the potential eff ect of agency location has thus far escaped scholarly attention. A recent large-scale survey (Egeberg and Trondal 2011a) documents that agency site does not make a signifi -cantdiff erence for agency autonomy, agency infl u-ence, and interinstitutional coordination. Th is study focused on already semidetached, often highly special-ized agencies whose “need” for being steered, infl u-enced, or coordinated with others is relatively modest. It may thus still be possible that organizational loca-tion makes a diff erence if the research focus is directed toward bodies that are relatively more involved in the policy-making process.
Given that many decision processes are often hectic and intertwined, to be on the spot means that many actors and arenas can be reached in a relatively short time. Th us, under such circumstances, geographic proximity might be convenient. Hence, the impact of site might be conditioned by policy stage and the tem-poral dimensions of decision making (Goetz 2012). Notwithstanding missing eff ects of agency location on administrative behavior, agency locus might indeed have symbolic eff ects of importance (Goodsell 1977).
Christensen, Tom, and Per Lægreid. 2006. Agencifi cation and
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Egeberg, Morten, and Jarle Trondal. 2009. Political Leadership and
Bureaucratic Autonomy: Eff ects of Agencifi cation. Governance
22(4): 673–88.
———. 2011a. Agencifi cation and Location: Does Agency Site
Matter? Public Organization Review 11(2): 97–108.
———. 2011b. EU-Level Agencies: New Executive Centre Formation or Vehicles for National Control? Journal of European Public Policy 8(6): 868–87.
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Argument. Aldershot, UK: Dartmouth.
Kelemen, R. Daniel. 2002. Th e Politics of “Eurocratic” Structure and the New European Agencies. West European Politics 25(4): 93–118. Kreher, Alexander. 1997. Agencies in the European
Community—A Step Towards Administrative Integration in Europe. Journal of European Public Policy 4(2): 225–45. Lægreid, Per, and Koen Verhoest, eds. 2010. Governance of Public
Sector Organizations; Proliferation, Autonomy, and Performance.
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Majone, Giandomenico. 1997. Th e New European Agencies:
Regulation by Information. Journal of European Public Policy
4(2): 262–75. As delegation of tasks to independent agencies started
gaining momentum with an ever-growing number of agencies being delegated far-reaching tasks (i.e., decision making and quasi-regulatory tasks), anxiety arose at the possibility of them escaping accountability and control. Scholars have pointed to the possible consequences of placing too much power in the hands of such agencies operating at an arm’s length from tra-ditional control and appointed agency heads who can-not easily be held accountable for their actions (e.g., Curtin 2005; Dehousse 2008; Everson 1995; Flinders 2004; Shapiro 1997; Vos 2000, 2005; Williams 2005). However, most studies of agency accountabil-ity and control to date have largely focused on de jure arrangements, as provided for in the agencies’ basic acts, without delving into the de facto operation of such arrangements (but see Busuioc 2010a, 2010b).
Th e volume by Verhoest et al. contributes to rebal-ancing this overly legal bias in much of the agency literature. In that same spirit, this book review aims to bring scholarship of public administration and European studies together by highlighting a broader set of implications of agencifi cation, particularly with respect to (1) political steering and autonomy and (2) the rise of multilevel administration. Th e process of agencifi cation inside sovereign states and within the EU system accompanies profound implications for the politico-administrative order in Europe and for how we should understand it.
Acknowledgments
Th is book review was supported fi nancially by the Norwegian Research Council, the Norwegian Minis-try of Local Government and Modernisation, and a Basic Research Grant from the University of Agder, Norway.
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