Agencies

Definition

Agencies are the organizational emanation of administrative decentralization in the public sector by which large monolithic core departmental bureaucracies are “unbundled” into smaller executive organizations that operate at a distance from the center of government. There are many descriptions of the administrative species “agency” in the international literature, such as “nondepartmental public bodies,” “quangos,” “nonmajoritarian [Page 43]institutions,” “quasi-autonomous public bodies,” and “arm's-length agencies,” only to name some. For reasons of clarity, the term agency will be used throughout this entry. There is, however, a variation in the interpretation of the concept “agency” in different countries. Some argue that what an agency is, and what functions it does, may vary considerably across national cultures, legal systems, and political systems.

Although the definition of an agency, or the way in which “agencies” are conceptualized, may differ from country to country, there are some common features by which agencies can be characterized:

In the literature, the distinction is made between internally autonomous agencies and externally autonomous agencies. Internally autonomous agencies have a quasi-autonomous status within the central governmental department. These agencies are often labeled as “ministerial agencies,” as they do not have a legal personality of their own (they are part of the legal person of the government, the ministry, or the department). This implies that the hierarchical relationship with the minister remains unchanged and that the minister remains responsible for the organization. Internally autonomous agencies do have extended managerial flexibilities, however, compared with the core governmental organizations (from which their “autonomous” status is derived). Examples of internally autonomized agencies are the Next Steps Agencies (United Kingdom [UK]), the Agentschappen (the Netherlands), or many federal agencies in the United States. Externally autonomous agencies are often labeled as “nonministerial agencies” because of their own legal personality and the fact that they are structurally detached from the core of the governmental apparatus. In most cases, the legal personality implies that agencies are controlled and steered by an intermediary body (like a board of governors). The existence of a board implies that the ministerial responsibility toward the agency decreases and often is only political in nature. Examples of externally autonomous agencies are the so-called nondepartmental public bodies (UK), the zelfstandige bestuursorganen (ZBOs; the Netherlands), or the independent administrative institutions (Japan).

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