Institutional Design and Formal Autonomy: Political versus Historical and Cultural Explanations

Yesilkagit, Kutsal; Christensen, Jørgen Grønnegaard

doi:10.1093/jopart/mup002

Cited by 115 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Therefore, more autonomous agencies are expected to be found in countries with strong corporatist traditions and high levels of policy conflict (e.g. multi-party coalition cabinets versus single party majoritarian cabinets as supported by Moe, 1990, but not by Christensen, 2010, and; with high levels of political uncertainty (i.e. short cabinet lifespans); strong dominance of executive government over parliament (Strom et al, 2003); dominant cabinet composition, where service delivery is highly centralized at the national level (compared to states where local governments are more involved), a view supported by Huber and Shipan (2002) but not by ; and a tradition of politicization of senior civil servants.…”

Section: The Second Set Of Open Questions: the Complex Linkages Betwementioning

confidence: 99%

Unexplored aspects of bureaucratic autonomy: a state of the field and ways forward

Maggetti

Verhoest

2014

International Review of Administrative Sciences

100

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This article first provides a selective overview of the literature on bureaucratic autonomy and identifies different approaches to this topic. The second section discusses three major sets of open questions, which will be tackled in the contributions to this special issue: the subjective, dynamic and relational nature of autonomy; the complex linkages between tasks, organizational forms, and national path dependencies on the one hand and autonomy and performance on the other hand; and the interplay between autonomy, accountability and democratic legitimacy.

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Section: The Second Set Of Open Questions: the Complex Linkages Betwementioning

confidence: 99%

Unexplored aspects of bureaucratic autonomy: a state of the field and ways forward

Maggetti

Verhoest

2014

International Review of Administrative Sciences

100

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“…Once formally created, EMA appears to have increased the autonomy it derived from its founders, whereas EFSA seems to have experienced difficulty in maintaining even the level of autonomy it was endowed with by its political parents upon establishment. On the basis of the prevailing agency literature, which often considers formal autonomy a key factor for actual autonomy and relies on designrelated proxies to gauge actual autonomy (Gilardi 2002;Egeberg and Trondal 2009;Verhoest et al 2010;Yesilkagit and Christensen 2010;Hanretty and Koop 2012), we would have expected the agencies to develop relatively similar levels of de facto autonomy vis-à-vis their political overseers, or for the more formally autonomous agency to develop a higher level of de facto autonomy. Instead, we see the opposite.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Agency Autonomy Actually: Managerial Strategies, Legitimacy, and the Early Development of the European Union's Agencies for Drug and Food Safety Regulation

Groenleer

2014

International Public Management Journal

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In recent decades, a series of regulatory agencies has been created at the European Union (EU) level. The existing literature on EU agencies focuses either on autonomy as a reason for the creation of such agencies or on the autonomy that they are granted by design. As a result, we do not know much about how EU agencies' actual autonomy comes about. This article therefore probes into the early development of two specific agencies. On the basis of document analysis and interviews with agency staff members, national experts, EU officials, external stakeholders, and clients, it explores why, in practice, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) seems to have developed a higher level of autonomy than the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), even though on paper EMA appears to be as autonomous as, or if anything, less autonomous than EFSA. The article demonstrates the importance of investigating the managerial strategies of EU regulatory agencies to understand the actual practice of their autonomy and points to legitimacy as a key condition affecting the early development of such agencies.

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“…Studies of policy co-ordination have found that national administrative traditions prevail even in policy areas which are dealt with at the supranational level (Kassim et al 2000;Metcalfe 1994). Similarly, studies of delegation and the drafting of legislation have suggested that decision-makers draw on select repertoires of standard operating procedures (Yesilkagit and Christensen 2010;Jones 2003). While administrative traditions consist of both structural and ideational aspects (Painter and Peters 2010: 6), we focus primarily on the role of administrative structures in the formalization of co-ordination, acknowledging that these reflect prevailing administrative norms and ideas.…”

Section: Administrative Structures and Co-ordinationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exploring the co-ordination of economic regulation

Koop¹,

Lodge²

2014

Journal of European Public Policy

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The literature on power dispersion in the regulatory state emphasizes the interdependence of regulatory agencies. However, this may conflict with their independence and specialization. Given this potential conflict, what provisions exist to facilitate co-ordination? And do these reflect national administrative traditions? This study explores these questions in the context of the formalization of co-ordination in economic regulation. First, we develop a new analytical framework for the analysis of co-ordination. Second, we set out how national administrative traditions may affect the formalization of co-ordination. Third, we explore the variation in co-ordination by analysing the formal relations among regulators in four countries with distinct administrative traditions -Germany, Denmark, Italy and the United Kingdom (UK). Our findings suggest that the variation may at least partially be traced back to the independence of agencies. They also stress the importance of competition authorities as focal organizations in shaping relations in the area of economic regulation.

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Institutional Design and Formal Autonomy: Political versus Historical and Cultural Explanations

Cited by 115 publications

References 18 publications

Unexplored aspects of bureaucratic autonomy: a state of the field and ways forward

Unexplored aspects of bureaucratic autonomy: a state of the field and ways forward

Agency Autonomy Actually: Managerial Strategies, Legitimacy, and the Early Development of the European Union's Agencies for Drug and Food Safety Regulation

Exploring the co-ordination of economic regulation

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