Explaining the Accountability of Independent Agencies: The Importance of Political Salience

Abstract

Independent agencies are exempted from the accountability mechanisms inherent in the ministerial hierarchy. To compensate for this, politicians incorporate all kinds of information and reporting requirements into the statutes of the organizations. However, the degree to which this occurs varies considerably, which raises the question: Why are some agencies are made more accountable than others? This study examines the impact of political salience on degrees of accountability, controlling for other potential explanations. Using original data on 103 independent agencies in the Netherlands, the analysis demonstrates that salience has a twofold effect. First, agencies dealing with more salient issues are made more politically accountable. Second, agencies whose statutes are written when the issue of accountability is more salient are also subject to higher degrees of accountability. Other explanatory factors are the number of veto players and the legal basis of the organization.

Varieties of accountability: How attributes of policy fields shape parliamentary oversight

“…However, these studies often ignore that parliamentary oversight might vary across policy fields, since policy fields differ in their institutional settings, involved actors, and available resources. Indeed, several studies for the European Union show that accountability varies across agencies and policy areas (Egeberg & Trondal, ; Font & Pérez Durán, ; Hanretty & Koop, ; Koop, ). Given the different natures of policy fields, this study considers the question of why members of parliament (MPs) aim to oversee some policy fields more frequently than others.…”

Las agencias públicas en España: tensiones entre autonomía y rendición de cuentas

“…Estudios recientes defienden que las agencias pueden ser independientes y rendir cuentas al mismo tiempo (Maggetti et al, 2015). Además, otros estudios han afirmado en la misma línea que las agencias pueden aumentar voluntariamente su rendición de cuentas con el fin de aumentar su legitimidad, especialmente cuando los temas de que se ocupan tienen más visibilidad (Koop, 2011). Asimismo, las agencias pueden tratar de aumentar su rendición de cuentas con el fin de mejorar los apoyos de que disponen, tanto de carácter político como entre sus clientelas y audiencias (Bianculli et al, 2015).…”

“…Una mejor comprensión de esta relación se considera como un aspecto clave para entender los obstáculos que ha afrontado el proceso de agencificación en España, dada la fuerte tradición jerárquica y centralista de la Administración pública española. Asimismo, este artículo espera también poder contribuir de forma más general a identificar patrones específicos de relación entre autonomía y rendición de cuentas en las agencias públicas en el caso de agencias formalmente no independientes, como contribución a la literatura comparada sobre esta cuestión (Koop, 2011;Guidi, 2015;Maggetti et al, 2015).…”

Expertise and Power: Agencies Operating in Complex Environments

“…These multiple actors may also have authority over different aspects of the principal's relationship. Koop (2011) finds that an increased number of principals involved in setting the agency's terms leads to greater problems of achieving compromise, a higher tendency for less detailed legislation and more opportunities for discretion.…”

“…First, there is the question of how salient (the degree of importance given an issue by policy makers) the policy is that the agency is acting upon; the more politically salient the policy, the more likely principals will invest in monitoring and steering (Koop, 2011). Second, agency policy autonomy may depend on the stage that the policy is at: the acts of agenda setting, policy formulation, policy decision, policy implementation and policy monitoring may attract varying degrees of principal attention (Bach et al, 2012).…”