Keeping a watchful eye in times of turmoil? How repeated structural reform leads to more attention to political signals
| Published date | 01 September 2020 |
| Author | Jan Wynen,Bjorn Kleizen,Koen Verhoest,Per Lægreid,Vidar Rolland |
| Date | 01 September 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12653 |
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Keeping a watchful eye in times of turmoil?
How repeated structural reform leads to more
attention to political signals
Jan Wynen
1,2
|Bjorn Kleizen
2
|Koen Verhoest
2
|
Per Lægreid
3
|Vidar Rolland
4
1
Department of Management, University of
Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
2
Department of Political Science, University
of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium
3
Department of Administration and
Organization Theory, University of Bergen,
Norway
4
Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD),
Bergen, Norway
Correspondence
Jan Wynen, Department of Management,
University of Antwerp, Prinsstraat 13, 2000
Antwerp, Belgium.
Email: jan.wynen@uantwerpen.be
Funding information
FWO (Research Foundation Flanders): FWO
project, Grant/Award Number: G085819N;
(Slow healing wounds) and the UAntwerpen
Centre of Excellence GOVTRUST
Abstract
An important rationale for the creation of semi-autonomous
agencies is to create some distance between politics and
administration. As such, agencies are expected to shield pol-
icy implementation from the daily concerns of political life.
However, political actors and politically controlled ministries
still influence agencies in various intended and unintended
ways. This article focuses on intensive long-term series of
structural reforms and how they may undermine the original
design philosophy underpinning agencification. We utilize a
dataset combining staff surveys and a structural reform
database to perform multilevel analyses of employees
nested in organizations. We find that the frequency with
which agencies have experienced structural reform affects
the weight that employees attach to signals from political
and ministerial principals. Frequent structural reform may
lead to heightened perceptions of the importance of political
signals. Hence, frequent structural reforms may increase the
risk of political influence on agencies that were designed to
operate impartially.
1|INTRODUCTION
One of the rationales for the creation of semi-autonomous public organizations is to increase the distance between
politics and administration. Not only does imbuing an organization with a given degree of formal autonomy provide a
signal of credible commitment (Gilardi 2002), it also serves to emphasize that the organization should operate at
some distance from politicians and politically led sections of government (such as ministries or departments) (Majone
Received: 24 April 2019Revised: 30 October 2019Accepted: 13 January 2020
DOI: 10.1111/padm.12653
570 © 2020 John Wiley & Sons LtdPublic Admin. 2020;98:570–590.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/padm
1997; Egeberg and Trondal 2009). As such, the semi-autonomous agency is an organizational form that can be used
to shield policy implementation from the short-term priorities of political life (Majone 1997; Busuioc 2009). Thus,
many agencies are created on the assumption that, both de jure and in practice, they will operate beyond the daily
purview of politicians and politically controlled parent ministries. This would provide these agencies with the ability
to operate impartially and prioritize professional values and cues from non-political actors such as citizens and com-
panies (Hood and Lodge 2006, pp. 30–31).
However, previous work already indicates that political actors have a strong urge to steer their implementing
organizations, even when these organizations are placed at some distance from the government (’t Hart and Wille
2006; Kleizen et al. 2018). As many formal control mechanisms that allow for ad hoc steering, such as the compe-
tence to provide direct and binding instructions, are not available towards formally autonomous agencies, political
actors may resort to intervening through structural reforms altering the tasks, legal statute and organizational frame-
work underpinning the agency (Carpenter 1996; Hood and Lodge 2006, p. 184; Terman 2014; Zito 2015). Such
imposed structural reforms often coincide with various structural reforms developed by the agency itself, in some
cases creating series of disruptive and contradictory reforms (Pollitt 2007).
Research in organizational psychology and the management sciences has shown that even single structural
reforms generate substantial levels of uncertainty and cognitive stress (e.g., Bordia et al. 2004), while multiple
reforms are associated with higher levels of uncertainty (Rafferty and Griffin 2006). Threat-rigidity theory suggests
that, under such uncertain and stressful circumstances, individuals will avoid additional uncertainty, causing the orga-
nization to become risk averse, more centralized and more formalized (Staw et al. 1981; Van Hootegem et al. 2019).
This article builds on these insights by considering whether we may expect agency employees that have experienced
longer structural reform histories to more closely monitor their political and administrative principals. We argue that
such employees are likely to place increased emphasis on signals from the government, the competent minister or
state secretary and his/her ministry or political advisers—which we will refer to as political signals, for purposes of
succinctness—to anticipate and prevent additional turmoil (’t Hart and Wille 2006; Terman 2014). Thus, we argue
that when an agency is reformed too frequently, a situation may arise in which the effort to insulatean organization
from political life is (partially) undone by the psychological processes produced by the reform fever confronting said
organization (Kleizen et al. 2018).
Although not all agencies are created with the intent of insulating them from political interference (with some
agencies even being created to increase political control; Park and Joo 2010), such a positive effect of repeated
structural reform on attention devoted to signals could be detrimental in cases where impartiality and credible
commitment are considered important. To provide a concrete example: supervisory and enforcement agencies
(such as competition law agencies) are often imbued with substantial formal autonomy in an attempt to legitimate
their output and mitigate concerns over potential biases that political actors may have on these agencies' enforce-
ment decisions (Norwegian Competition Authority 2016). This autonomy thus aims to ensure that norm addressees
are treated impartially and with regard for due process, as supervisory and enforcement action often results in signif-
icant alterations to citizens' and/or organizations' rights and obligations (Barron 2008; Rothstein and Teorell 2008;
Egeberg and Trondal 2009; Norwegian Competition Authority 2016).
However, a supervisory agency that has recently experienced a major reform trajectory may wish toprevent—or
at least anticipate—further turmoil by closely monitoring the preferences and communications of its principals,
including the government, the competent minister or state secretary, as well as the competent ministry. Within
the agency, social cues and hierarchical instructions to take heed of a political signal may reach various levels of civil
servants, allowing the effect to manifest not just on the senior manager level, but also in mid-level and rank-and-file
inspectors and policy officers. This introduces the risk of political influence on what were intended to be impartial
and expert-based considerations, policies and decisions (e.g., withholding, delaying or slightly reframing sensitive
reports, decisions or investigations).
Moreover, while one might argue that changing the organization's overarching course to match the preferences
of its political principals might be the goal of some structural reforms (e.g., Carpenter 1996; Zito 2015), it is likely that
WYNEN ET AL.571
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