Credible Governance? Transparency, Political Control, the Personal Vote and British Quangos
| Date | 01 December 2008 |
| Author | Anthony M. Bertelli |
| Published date | 01 December 2008 |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00713.x |
| Subject Matter | Article |
Credible Governance? Transparency,
Political Control, the Personal Vote and
British Quangos
Anthony M. Bertelli
University of Georgia/University of Manchester
This article claims that special-purpose independent agencies such as quangos provide an avenue for
understanding the ‘personal vote’ and political control of administrative policy making in Britain.
Quangos make policies that directly influence particularistic concerns in an MP’s constituency,generating
incentives for MPs to meddle with their independence in order to capture the personal vote. A division
of labor within the governing party relies on back-bench MPs to sound ‘fire alarms’ when their
constituents find fault with quango activities. Once the alarms are sounded, the government has the
incentive to manipulate quangos’independence, for example, by making their decision making transpar-
ent to provide information for the fire alarm mechanism in the future. This manipulation draws from the
government’s stock of political capital gained from a supportive electorate.Statistical analysis of trans-
parency in British executive non-departmental public bodies from 2002 to 2005 suggests that increases
in back-bench salience (personal vote) and public satisfaction with government (government strength)
increase the transparency by which quangos make decisions,thus decreasing their independence. Public
satisfaction with the status quo of public service provision, by contrast, decreases transparency, increasing
independence. These results suggest that far from being fully independent, quasi-governmental organi-
zations are subject to political control.
Governments have long used quasi-independent agencies for policy making
and this trend is only increasing. Parastatals, quangos (quasi-autonomous, non-
governmental organizations) and other entities are changing the landscape of
modern governance worldwide (see Talbot, 2004, pp.3–5). Quasi-government is
comprised of a set of ‘organizations which as their main task, arecharged with the
implementation of one or more public policies, and which are funded publicly
but operate at arm’s length from the central government, without an immediate
hierarchical relationship existing with a minister or a parent department’ ( Van
Thiel, 2001, p.5). A pre-eminent example of quasi-governmental agencies,Br itish
Executive Non-Departmental Public Bodies (ENDPBs) are created by parlia-
ment in legislation to implement specific public policies, but are not legally
(formally) a part of the government, operating at greater (or lesser) ‘arm’s length’
from Westminster (Cabinet Office, 2005b, p. 4; 2007, p. 2). Like public organiza-
tions, they are publicly funded through budgetary allocations, taxes or fees.
Public bodies reveal the flexibility of policy design in the organizational ‘grey
zone’ between markets and hierarchies (Greve, 1999). The Cabinet Office has
promulgated guidelines for legislation enabling NDPBs to perform policy-making
tasks and specifically addressing the flexibility available in regard to ministerial
doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00713.x
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008 VOL 56, 807–829
© 2008The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
authority over the NDPBs (Cabinet Office,2007, pp. 10–1). Section 5.3 of those
guidelines begins:‘The nature of the controls [ministers retain over NDPBs] will
depend both on the NDPBs’ functions,and on the closeness of supervision which
ministers wish to exercise’ (p. 10). In making delegations to NDPBs, then,
parliament is not constrained to the choice of one bureau or another or some
combination of extant bureaus to be its policy-making agent. It may design
agencies from whole cloth to perform a single policy-making task, even if it means
committing assets to the quango that are ‘non-recurrent and task-specific’ (Van
Thiel, 2001, p. 46). Quasi-governmental organizations per mit ‘control and regu-
lation by new bodies of experts or appointed individuals who worked with an
element of independence from traditional politics and therefore were not tainted’
in the eyes of an increasingly distrustful public (Flinders, 1999, p. 30).
But that assertion may be treated as an empirical question. This matter is crucial
for understanding such delegations since there are competing arguments regard-
ing the impetus for legislators to place policy making at arm’s length. On the one
hand, recent studies illuminate the links between the independence of regulatory
agents1and the structure of governance (e.g. Keefer and Stasavage, 2003; Persson
and Tabellini, 2003). Independence is linked to ‘credible commitments’ – self-
restrictions on the exercise of power by political agents otherwise lawfully
possessing such power (e.g.Barro and Gordon, 1983; Keefer and Stasavage, 2003;
Persson and Svensson, 1989; Qian and Weingast, 1997; Stasavage, 2002; Tabellini
and Alesina, 1990). Since the seminal argument of Douglass North and Barry
Weingast (1989) that commitment to limited authority in the Glorious
Revolution of 1688 invested confidence in the barons that government debts
would be repaid, various scholars have sought to assemble evidence on the
efficacy of such commitments and their institutional sources (compare Elgie and
McMenamin, 2005; Gilardi, 2002).
According to Cabinet Office guidelines ENDPBs are classified as such by their
credible commitment function. The ENDPB form is‘Ideally suited in areas where
political considerations should play little part in decisions (e.g. exercising some
regulatory functions, or managing public services such as museums and art
galleries) but where it is agreed that the function should still be carried out in the
public sector’ (Cabinet Office, 2005b, p. 4). The statutory basis of the ENDPB is
itself credibility-enhancing:‘It is also desirable to underwrite the body’s indepen-
dence, powers and obligations through legislation’ (Cabinet Office, 2005b, p. 5).
For example, after the 1989 deaths of 96 football spectators at Hillsborough
Stadium in Sheffield, the Football Spectators Act of 1989 created the Football
Licensing Authority (FLA) – an ENDPB – to issue stadium licenses for seating and
monitor the safety precautions taken on behalf of spectators. The FLA’s indepen-
dence from the government, major private sector interests (i.e. the Football
Association) and local police mechanically buttresses the credibility of the Act’s
commitment to spectator safety. Originating in legislation, the FLA’s regulatory
responsibilities represent what Christopher Hood (2004, p. 9) considers an
808 ANTHONY M. BERTELLI
© 2008The Author.Jour nal compilation © 2008 Political StudiesAssociation
POLITICAL STUDIES: 2008, 56(4)
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