Agencification revisited: trends in consolidation of central government administration in Europe
| Author | Dawid Sześciło |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0020852320976791 |
| Published date | 01 December 2022 |
| Date | 01 December 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Agencification revisited:
trends in consolidation of
central government
administration in Europe
Dawid Sze
sciło
University of Warsaw, Poland
Abstract
Agencification was one of the main pillars of the New Public Management reforms in
Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. The strong increase in the number of agencies and the
extension of their autonomy (especially with regard to independent regulatory agen-
cies) significantly changed the organizational architecture of governments. However,the
review of organizational reforms implemented over the past two decades in European
administrative systems demonstrates a trend towards the rationalization and consoli-
dation of the agency landscape. This article provides insight into major forms and
patterns of consolidation, including comprehensive, cross-sectoral agency rationaliza-
tion initiatives and more selective reforms regarding specific policy areas or types of
government functions. It also explores the background of the consolidation reforms,
confirming that economic pressures affecting governments in the era of austerity played
a crucial role in redefining the position of agencies in governments’ organizational
set-up.
Points for practitioners
Agencies remain the main vehicle for policy implementation across Europe but the
trend towards de-agencification emerged in the decade of the 2010s, represented by
both comprehensive, cross-sectoral initiatives reducing the agency stock, and consol-
idations in specific policy areas or covering agencies of specific types. De-agencification
was triggered by the 2008 global financial crisis that increased the pressure on the
reduction of administrative expenditure. To a lesser extent, it was a reaction to
Corresponding author:
Dawid Sze
sciło, University of Warsaw, Faculty of Law and Administration, Obozna 6, 00-332 Warsaw, Poland.
Email: dawid.szescilo@uw.edu.pl
International Review of Administrative
Sciences
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852320976791
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2022, Vol. 88(4) 995–1012
International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
the adverse effects of agencification, such as coordination and steering problems, or the
ambiguous impact of agencification on the efficiency of the public administration.
Keywords
agencification, consolidation, public management
Introduction
The consolidation versus specialization debate is one of the long-standing topics in
the history of administrative thought (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2004). In the last
decades of the 20th century, the pendulum swung towards specialization.
Agencification, resulting in dismantling large, multifunctional bodies of public
administration, became one of the key words describing the transformation of
the organizational set-up of public administration from the 1980s (Overman and
van Thiel, 2016), and one of the most frequently adopted and far-reaching ele-
ments of the New Public Management (NPM) agenda (Moynihan, 2006). It
reflected one of the core NPM strategies, that is, what Hood (1991: 5) described
as a ‘shift to disaggregation of units in the public sector’. It also enabled the
dissemination of other NPM-inspired organizational reforms, for example,
enhancing managerial autonomy and introducing performance contracts as a
main tool for steering the government’s administration (Ongaro et al., 2012).
However, organizational reforms introduced in many European countries over
the past 10–15 years may demonstrate the emergence of an opposite trend, namely,
the consolidation of the agency landscape by abolishing or merging government
bodies. While claims about ‘de-agencification’ rarely appear in the literature (see
MacCarthaigh, 2014; Randma-Liiv et al., 2011), the scale and direction of orga-
nizational reforms in recent periods definitely provokes questions about the poten-
tial revision of the previously enthusiastic approach towards agencification. This
article, based on a review of the literature and government documents, aims at
identifying the key trends and patterns in agencies’ consolidation, as well as explor-
ing the rationale and nature of this process. In the first part of the study, a sum-
mary of the agencification process in Europe is provided. Subsequently, the
consolidation reforms are grouped into two major categories: comprehensive con-
solidation initiatives and more selective reforms that focus on specific policy areas
or types of government function.
Agencification and the shift towards autonomous government
While detailed understanding of the nature and scope of this process differs among
scholars, the broad definition of agencification is rather clear. Agencification, in
general terms, is a form of vertical specialization of government bureaucracies by
996 International Review of Administrative Sciences 88(4)
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