From ‘poor parenting’ to micro-management: coalition governance and the sponsorship of arm’s-length bodies in the United Kingdom, 2010–13

Abstract

The structure of the modern state has altered dramatically in recent decades. The implicit assumptions and explicit recommendations of managerialist reform strategies led to the rapid 'unbundling' or 'unravelling' of the state across both the developed and developing world. The large-scale 'balkanisation' of multi-purpose hierarchical public bureaucracies into larger numbers of single purpose arm's-length bodies (ALBs -bodies which carry out public functions with some degree of independence from government) as part of a new 'smaller, leaner and more streamlined' approach to the business of government not only formed a core component of the dominant public management paradigm but also posed new challenges in terms of navigating multiple relationships and steering complex networks. It is in exactly this context that Tobias Bach (2013) suggests that the literature on delegation has been dominated by two related but quite distinct analytical perspectives (for a review see James and Van Thiel 2011). The first perspective focuses on why politicians delegate and offers a range of theoretical explanations and research-based rationalities (see, for example, Bertelli 2006). The second perspective, by contrast, focuses on 'actual levels of autonomy ' (Verhoest et al. 2004) or the 'de facto independence' (Maghetti, 2007) of arm's-length bodies. The current state-of-the-art in this field is represented by the various outputs generated by the CRIPO/COBRA project (Verhoest et al., 2011) that combine to offer a rich account of the existence of a common gap between 'de jure' and 'de facto' levels of autonomy.

How can performance measurement systems empower managers? An exploratory study in state-owned enterprises

“…The increasing number of mixed ownership solutions and the varying degrees of public control -from tight to loose (Bruton et al, 2015;Flinders and Tonkiss, 2015) -are rendering this accountability dimension ("administrative accountability") even more complex. In addition, SOEs are accountable to the ruling political parties -many of the representatives of which are members of the respective supervisory boards -and their currently held political ideas and voters (Estrin and Pérotin, 1991).…”

Principals and Agents, or Principals and Stewards? Australian Arms Length Agencies’ Perceptions of Arm’s Length Government Instruments

“…Empirically, we know very little about how ALAs are managed. Some case studies have been done, but for a limited number of countries (Flinders & Tonkiss, 2016 on the UK; Bertelli, 2006a, 2006b, Schillemans & Bjurstrøm, 2020and Van Thiel & Yesilkagit, 2011Pollitt, 2007, on the Netherlands andUK: andVerhoest et al, 2010, on Ireland, Flanders andNorway;Bjurstøm, 2020 on Norway). In this paper, we aim to investigate how Australian ALAs at the federal level experience and perceive the way in which they are managed by the government.…”

Conflictual Accountability: Behavioral Responses to Conflictual Accountability of Agencies

“…Central departmental control of arm's-length agencies is in principle expected to be relatively loose, leaving room for quite some discretion on the part of the agencies. In conflictual settings, however, central control may be tightened to the point where it can been called "authoritarian" (Flinders & Tonkiss, 2016).…”