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The environment of national agencies has changed considerably in recent years as they increasingly become engaged in European Union networks. This article contributes to a growing body of literature on those networks and their effect on executive politics at the national level by asking whether and how the EU involvement of national agencies affects the agencies' autonomy in policy formulation. We develop an analytical model for explaining the effect of EU involvement on agency autonomy. Analyzing data from a comprehensive survey of federal agencies in Germany, we find that EU involvement has a positive effect on national agencies' policy autonomy. Moreover, we find a somewhat stronger effect of agency involvement in sectoral networks on autonomy than in intergovernmental networks, which is attributed to information asymmetries between ministries and agencies. Yet this effect is weaker than initially expected, which can be explained by a considerable degree of overlap between different types of EU involvement.
Es gibt seit einigen Jahren eine internationale politik- und verwaltungswissenschaftliche Diskussion zu strukturell verselbständigten Behörden außerhalb der Ministerialverwaltung („Agencies“). Ausgangspunkt ist die Beobachtung, dass bei der Ausgestaltung der Steuerungsbeziehungen zwischen Ministerien und Behörden erhebliche Unterschiede festzustellen sind, die sowohl zwischen Behörden eines Landes als auch im internationalen Vergleich bestehen. Tobias Bach untersucht am Beispiel Deutschlands und Norwegens, wie sich nationale Reformverläufe einerseits und organisatorische Merkmale wie Struktur und Aufgabe andererseits auf Steuerungsbeziehungen auswirken. Die empirische Analyse stützt sich auf standardisierte Erhebungen, die im Rahmen des internationalen Forschungsnetzwerkes COBRA („Comparative Public Organization Data Base for Research and Analysis“) durchgeführt wurden.
Organisation und Steuerung zentralstaatlicher Behörden. Agenturen im westeuropäischen Vergleich
(2010)
Organisation und Steuerung nachgeordneter Behörden – mittlerweile auch Agenturen genannt – zählen in der internationalen Verwaltungsforschung wie auch der Verwaltungspraxis seit einigen Jahren zu den vieldiskutierten Themen. Dieser Band resümiert die neueren Forschungserkenntnisse zu nachgeordneten Behörden in Deutschland, Großbritannien, den Niederlanden und Schweden. Die AutorInnen diskutieren zentrale Argumente der Reformdebatten sowie die Errichtung, das institutionelle Design und die Aufgaben dieser Behörden. Rechtstraditionen, Politikstile sowie aufgabenspezifische Merkmale liefern wichtige Erklärungsbeiträge für die Entwicklung und Position nachgeordneter Behörden in diesen Ländern. Ebenso wird ergebnisorientierte Steuerung über Leistungsvereinbarungen, Leistungsindikatoren und Berichtswesen in den Untersuchungsländern unterschiedlich umgesetzt. Im Ergebnis zeigt sich, dass auch in Deutschland erste Schritte sichtbar werden, sich vorsichtig einer »neuen Steuerung« zu nähern. Der internationale Vergleich bietet zahlreiche Anhaltspunkte, welche Probleme und Möglichkeiten mit der Organisation und Steuerung moderner Behörden verbunden sein können.
This article examines the influence of Europeanization on the relationship between ministries and agencies at the national level. The core argument is that the differentiated nature of the international environment (with policy development often transferred to the international level and policy implementation left at the national level) transforms national agencies into policy-developing actors that shape policies without being directly influenced by their national political principals. The increasingly common involvement of national agencies in European policymaking processes thereby increases these agencies' policy-development autonomy but does not change their role in policy implementation. We examine this argument by testing an innovative hypothesis—the differentiation hypothesis—on a combined data set of German and Dutch national agencies. Our empirical findings support the hypothesis in both countries, suggesting that similar effects can be expected in other contexts in which semiautonomous agencies are involved in transnational policymaking.
This article reports the results of a comparative analysis of the human resources management (HRM) autonomy of government agencies in Germany and Norway. Whereas the academic literature largely focuses on ministry–agency relations in countries where agencies have been only recently established, these two countries have a long tradition of delegation to agencies outside ministerial departments. However, although sharing a broadly similar administrative tradition, each country differs with regard to the management reform trajectory. This allows an empirical test to be carried out of the effects of management reforms on HRM autonomy, drawing on survey data. The article also discusses the literature on how task characteristics and formal agency structure supposedly affect agency autonomy and puts these claims to an empirical test. The empirical analysis reveals cross-country differences, a somewhat limited effect of task characteristics, and a clear effect of formal structure on de facto HRM autonomy, especially in the German context.
Transnationale Netzwerke nationaler Behörden haben vor allem innerhalb der Europäischen Union (EU) in den letzten beiden Jahrzehnten erheblich an Bedeutung gewonnen. Die Forschung dazu konzentriert sich jedoch überwiegend darauf, Arbeitsweise und Einfluss dieser Netzwerke auf europäischer Ebene zu untersuchen. Der Artikel untersucht administrative Netzwerke aus der bisher vernachlässigten Perspektive nationalstaatlicher Behörden. Er leistet dabei einen Beitrag zu zwei zentralen Forschungsfragen: Zum einen wird die Behauptung zunehmender europäischer Einbindung empirisch untermauert. Zum anderen wird für vier wichtige deutsche Regulierungsbehörden ein Mapping der Einbindung und institutionellen Verfestigung europäischer Verwaltungsnetzwerke durchgeführt. Dabei wird gezeigt, dass es typische Muster der Netzwerkbildung gibt und dass unterschiedliche Formen von Netzwerken oftmals nebeneinander bestehen bleiben.
A key claim in bureaucratic reputation literature is that reputation has several dimensions. This presents agencies with a difficult choice concerning which dimension(s) they should emphasize in the management of their reputation. This paper analyzes how regulatory agencies manage their reputation through communicative responses to public judgments, based on a singlecase study of the German financial regulator BaFin. Our theoretical argument underscores the importance of different reputational dimensions for regulatory agencies that simultaneously considers their distinct reputation reserves. Our main finding was that BaFin prioritizes responses to public judgments targeting reputational dimensions that are central to its mission and for which the agency has a weak reputation, as opposed to judgments targeting dimensions that are central to its mission and for which it has a strong reputation, or judgments targeting peripheral dimensions. The paper demonstrates the importance of agency missions for reputation management and suggests directions for further research.
This chapter studies decision-making behaviour of independent regulatory agencies. Theoretical accounts of delegation to regulatory agencies emphasise that losses of political accountability of regulators are traded off against potential gains in regulatory efficiency. The theory of credible commitment suggests that independent (non-majoritarian) regulatory agencies are more effective in regulating markets than organisations under direct political control. However, independent regulatory agencies operate in a political context and need to demonstrate their benefit to a diverse set of stakeholders, including elected politicians. We are hence confronted with a ‘paradox of autonomisation’ according to which more autonomous public organisations have to take into consideration external demands to a greater degree than less autonomous organisations. Independent regulatory agencies will thus be subjected to high …
This chapter seeks to bridge existing research on the politicisation of top civil servants and the roles of ministerial advisers by proposing a new conceptual approach for the comparative analysis of executive policy-making. We conceive of the executive triangle as a set of interdependent relationships between ministers, civil servants, and advisers. Those relationships may take different forms, depending on the distinct tasks performed by each actor and their roles in policy-making, which define mutual expectations. Thus understood, the executive triangle is an institution performing particular functions in policy-making (such as assessing policy alternatives, anticipating political support, and coordinating with other actors both inside and outside government). Those functions are performed by actors within the triangle and reflected in their roles and their direct and indirect relationships. The chapter conceptually explores such a system-perspective on the executive triangle; sketches analytical dimensions for understanding similarities and differences of executive triangles across contexts; provides empirical illustrations of variations of the executive triangle in Europe; and develops a research agenda using this concept to better understand the roles of ministers, ministerial advisers, and top civil servants in executive policy-making in a comparative perspective.
This article investigates perceived accountability patterns of national agencies’ chief executives in four countries with a Rechtsstaat tradition and tests theoretical expectations about potential tensions between managerial reforms and administrative values using survey data (N = 453). All countries combine old and new forms of accountability requirements, while legal and financial accountability have not been replaced with results accountability. Switzerland and the Netherlands score highest on results accountability, though in combination with legal and financial accountability, which are dominant in Germany and Austria. Nation-specific characteristics seem more important for core values of public administration than generic characteristics of the Rechtsstaat model.