Agencies

The autonomy of government agencies in Germany and Norway: explaining variation in management autonomy across countries and agencies

“…The empirical analysis demonstrates that additional income (other than through budget allocations) and a higher degree of formal management autonomy (as indicated by the legal type) lead to higher levels of de facto management autonomy. These findings resonate with the works of Verhoest et al (2010) and Pollitt et al (2004), showing that both national contexts and agency characteristics matter for explaining variation in de facto autonomy of agencies. Moreover, the analysis indicates that structural characteristics such as legal type may interact with context characteristics.…”

“…The importance of task for ministry-agency relations is emphasized in a growing number of empirical studies (Bach, 2010;Do¨hler, 2007;Gains, 2003;Painter and Yee, 2011;Pollitt et al, 2004;Verhoest et al, 2010). There is no single theory of how agency tasks affect patterns of ministerial control and agency autonomy, but rather a collection of middle-range assumptions (Pollitt, 2004).…”

Independent agencies: more than a cheap copy of independent central banks?

“…Although the emergence of agencies within the government structure is not new (Pollitt et al 2004), the current development is characterized by the emergence of a number of unprecedented features. The first is the acceleration at which they have been spreading (the ''unbundling of government'', Pollitt et al 2004). A second new phenomenon is the proliferation of regulatory agencies in the economic sphere.…”

“…IRAs are at one extreme of a continuum, ranging from agencies with maximum independence, over semiautonomous, to non-autonomous agencies (for an overview and classification, see Pollitt et al 2004;Vibert 2007). The discussion as to why some agencies have been granted more independence than others, as well as to whether independence should be granted in the first place, falls outside the scope of this paper.…”

“…While delegating specific policy or monitoring responsibilities to agencies is not new (Majone 1993(Majone , 1999Pollitt et al 2004), the rise of independent regulatory agencies (IRA) is a rather new phenomenon.…”