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IJPSM
35,1
34
Received 14 April 2020
Revised 29 November 2020
15 May 2021
4 August 2021
Accepted 10 August 2021
International Journal of Public
Sector Management
Vol. 35 No. 1, 2022
pp. 34-60
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0951-3558
DOI 10.1108/IJPSM-04-2020-0105
The tides of agencification:
literature development and
future directions
Budi Waluyo
Department of Financial Management, Polytechnic of State Finance STAN,
Tangerang Selatan, Indonesia
Abstract
Purpose – This review frames the state of agencification studies to explore the development and results
achieved to date (Q1: what has been done?) and identify future directions (Q2: what could be done?) of the
studies.
Design/methodology/approach – A systematic approach is carried out to summarize how agencification is
adopted, variability of implementation, and its effects, from literature published in the past 48 years (1973–
2020). Eligibility criteria include a combination of literature quality (number of citation) and source
reputation (journal impact factor). From this, 84 articles and 9 books were included in the review.
Findings – The review finds various country-specific adoptions of agencification and some similarities and
differences of agencification practice across various administrative settings. Studies on the effects of
agencification is limited and offer mixed results. Meanwhile, little attempt was made to reveal how micro-
processes are happening in the everyday practice of agencification. The paper outlines a set of research agenda
and possible alternative approaches for future studies.
Research limitations/implications – This review provides an avenue for scholars and practitioners to pay
more attention to the “street level” of agencification. Future studies may challenge New Public Management’s
view of agencification by proposing new perspectives based on a direct observation.
Originality/value – This study contributes to the growing amount of agencification studies by synthesizing
theoretical and empirical works across countries covering developed and developing economies in local,
regional, and national levels of government.
Keywords Agencification, Agentification, Semi-autonomous agencies, Arm’s length, Systematic review
Paper type Literature review
1. Introduction
The increasing adoption of agencification is addressed as an impact of the wave of new public
management (NPM)-inspired reform. The NPM reforms have made the agencification
phenomenon highly topical. Agencification is in fashion and has become a major trend
discussed and analysed in international circles (e.g. OECD, 2002).
A large and growing body of literature has studied agencification. Despite the wide
variety of research findings and the relevant body of literature on agencification, according to
the best knowledge of the author, there have not been many comprehensive systematic
reviews regarding agencification. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses have focused
mainly on delegation (e.g. Overman, 2016), privatization (e.g. Bel and Fageda, 2009; Hodge,
2000), and contracting out (e.g. Bel et al., 2010). These reviews seek to explain causes,
processes and effects of delegating public service in various forms. For instance, Overman
(2016) investigated expectations of delegation and compares effects attributed to it.
The author wishes to thank Hendrik Vollmer (University of Warwick), Ulrike Marx (University of
Leicester), Benny Tjahjono (Coventry University), Sandra van Thiel (Erasmus University) and three
anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on a previous version of the paper. This study was
funded by Lembaga Pengelola Dana Pendidikan (LPDP, in English: Indonesia Endowment Fund for
Education) of the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Indonesia.
Agencification was analysed as a form of delegation, in addition to decentralisation, The tides of
contracting out, and privatisation. In local government settings, Bel and Fageda (2009) agencification
explained motivations for local privatization, while in the next study Bel et al. (2010) focused
on privatization of water distribution and solid waste collection services. Hodge (2000)
reviewed the empirical evidence of privatization and found that privatization activities can
lead to modest gains, but there are also winners and losers in this reform. However, the last
three reviews pay little to no attention to agencification.
A special attention to this topic has been conducted by Dan (2014) in a review of the 35
evidence of agencification. He reviewed the effects of the creation and ongoing operations of
agencies, but his study covered European countries only. A comparative study has been
conducted in the edited book by Verhoest and his colleagues (2012) covering practices of
agencification in 30 countries. However, this book does not explicitly offer an alternative
research method for studying agencification in the future.
This study addresses this gap by synthesizing relevant literature using a systematic
approach to frame the wider literature on agencification and its adoptions across countries,
including developing economies, either in local, regional, and national/federal levels of
government. Specifically, the review aims to:
(1) Explore the development and focus of the literature (Q1: what has been done?), by
analysing the adoption, implementation, use and effect of agencification;
(2) Identify future directions (Q2: what could be done?), by mapping the discussion in the
literature, and locate the need of future research in agencification.
The results show that agencification has been adopted based on various reasons, influencing
conditions and drivers. Involving multi-actors during implementation, it has created a number
of gaps and essential issues. Although agencification has been exercised by governments all
over the globe, evidence on the effects of agencification is scarce and mixed. From this, the
paper suggests future studies to explore the latest adoption of agencification, mostly in
developing countries. The paper opens up an avenue towards the use of observational
approaches, such as ethnography, for investigating micro-practices in the agencies.
The remainder of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 outlines the design of the
review by describing identification, screening, and eligibility processes. Descriptive analysis
is provided thereafter. Section 4 aims at analysing the included studies in greater depth to
observe how the agencification literature is developing and to reveal the main focus of
previous research. With regards to the second research question, Section 5 outlines what
could be done in future research. A concluding remark ends this paper.

2. Review design
Systematic reviews are relatively scarce in public management studies (Overman, 2016, p.
1242). A systematic approach was chosen because agencification has been studied in
different settings using a wide variety of approaches. Various results and diverse methods of
research call for systematization. In order to prepare a replicable and scientific literature
review, three steps were established.

2.1 Step 1: Identification

In this step, titles and abstracts of literature were searched. To reduce bias, three sources were
used, namely Web of Science Core Collection (hereafter “WoS”), Scopus, and additional
sources from Google Scholar, literature references tracing, and the author’s digital collections.
The keyword used to guide the search was agencification and its variants representing
similar meanings such as quango, semi-autonomous agencies, arm’s length agencies, next
IJPSM steps agencies, agentification, autonomization, departmental agencies, public law agencies,
35,1 private law agencies, regulatory agencies, semi-autonomous public organisations,
organisational autonomy and bureaucratic autonomy. These searches were last conducted
in October 2020 covering all years of publication.
In this study, agencification is explored in the context of delegation of tasks from ministerial
departments to semi-autonomous agencies. The departments are part of the central state
administration. As such, delegation of powers by legislative bodies and transfer of powers to
36 international organisations (e.g. United Nations) are beyond the scope of this study.

2.2 Step 2: Screening

The search results were refined by applying three general criteria. The first screening
included peer-reviewed articles, books/chapters, and PhD theses, those written in English.
The second screening was for removing duplicates, incomplete records and less reliable
sources such as working papers, proceedings, and reviews. The third phase of screening was
conducted for removing irrelevant sources, i.e. records from the other fields.

2.3 Step 3: Eligibility

Literature quality is measured by the impact of the articles based on the number of citations.
Source reputation is measured by peer-review process and Journal Impact Factor recorded in
SJR represented by SJR score (SCImago, 2020). For the reason of fairness, the criteria for
article quality (citation) and source quality (journal SJR score) were combined. The other
eligibility criteria is relevancy, to assess whether the records address research questions of
this review, based on title and abstract only. The last eligibility criteria is focus, to assess the
main content of the literature. Figure 1 summarizes these steps.

3. Descriptive analysis
3.1 Evolution of agencification studies
At the end of the “screening” stage of this review, a research time frame was developed, which
includes articles, articles in press, books/chapters and PhD theses (613 records in total, see
Figure 2). It aims to show all the literature on agencification, ignoring citation number and
SJR score and their relevance to the review questions.

3.2 Included studies

Agencification has been a growing area of research over the last 4 decades (see Figure 3). The
agencification studies have been published in Public Administration and Political Science-type
journals (see Table 1), while selected books for this review is presented in Table 2. The rising
trend in books and journal articles should be linked to the high NPM doctrines in the 1980s
followed by a growing number and type of quangos and the like in the 1990s period,
spreading from the Anglo-Saxon countries first and other western countries thereafter.
Table 3 shows the top ten articles by citation. In order to avoid the bias between old and
new articles due to the year of publication (old articles would have higher citations than more
recent papers), a second calculation has been conducted based on Citation per Year (CPY).
Accordingly, Table 4 presents the 10 most cited articles by CPY. This revealed new articles
from 2016 to 2017 with high CPY, which indicates a quicker research impact of recent studies.

4. Literature development and focus: what has been done?

To identify the main studies on agencification among the included articles in this review,
the most cited articles (from Table 3) and articles by CPY (from Table 4) were combined.
 Literature identified in Additional literature identified in the other The tides of
Identification

WoS Core Collection = 9,390 sources agencification

(Google Scholar, Tracing Article References, and
author digital library collections)
Literature identified in = 1,074
Scopus = 30,533

37
Records screened by general eligibility criteria.
Records excluded
Included: article, book/chapter, PhD thesis, written in
= 18,650
English). Excluded: discussion paper, working paper,
proceedings, conference paper, report, debate, review
Screening

= 22,374

Remove irrelevant subjects (Health, Biology, Computer Records excluded

Science, Engineering, etc.). Remove duplicates, = 21,737
incomplete records (no author, no abstract).
= 610

Literature and Source Quality, Relevancy

Include:
(A): article with minimum 3 citations in a journal with
SJR minimum 1.0 OR
Eligibility

(B): article with minimum 10 citations in a journal with Removed records

SJR minimum 0.1 OR = 432
(C): book/chapter with minimum 30 citations
Exclude: PhD thesis, article in press, and irrelevant
records (based on abstracts).
= 178

Focus: addressing research questions (based on full

articles) Removed records
= 93 = 85

Studies Included
Included

in Systematic Review:
84 articles
9 books Figure 1.
= 93 PRISMA flow chart

From this, 13 articles were selected. Appendix summarizes the research purposes or questions
and main findings of those studies.
The main studies are considered as a starting point to identify the focus of previous
research. The main studies were analysed to identify the main theme that they discussed,
based on the contexts of agencification: adoption, implementation (Moynihan, 2006), use and
effects (Verhoest and Wynen, 2016). This resulted in four themes emerging: adoption,
implementation, use, and effect. All the selected articles were classified and analysed using
these themes (see Appendix).
IJPSM 200

35,1
180

160
38
140

120

100

80

60

40

20

0
up to 1976- 1981- 1986- 1991- 1996- 2001- 2006- 2011- 2016-
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020*
Book 0 0 2 0 0 1 2 4 2 1
Book Chapter 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 5 1
Journal ArƟcles 1 13 17 2 32 53 50 83 174 159
Figure 2. PhD Thesis 0 0 0 0 0 3 1 2 4 0
Evolution of research
Total 1 13 19 2 32 57 53 90 185 161
on agencification
Note(s): *Upto October 2020

4.1 Adoption of agencification

Few countries had deliberate agencification plans. Agencification mostly happened within
the wider public management reforms. Executive agencies in the UK were introduced as part
of The Next Steps Reform in 1988 (James et al., 2012). The rise of autonomous administrative
bodies in the US was led by the 1992 Clinton campaign on “globalization” which promoted
depoliticization through planned agencification (Bezes, 2012, p. 72; Roberts, 2010, p. 12).
Meanwhile, without a deliberate agencification policy, most countries had created arm’s
length agencies in both central and local level. In France, agencies were created along
pragmatic lines to answer to new policy issues, instead of a systematic hiving-off project
(Allix and van Thiel, 2005, p. 51). In Italy, the establishment of agency-like bodies was based
 60 The tides of
50 agencification
40

30

20

10 39
0
1981-1990 1991-2000 2001-2010 2011-2020*
Books 1 1 6 1 Figure 3.
Reviewed studies by
Journal ArƟcles 0 10 43 31 temporal interval and
Total 1 11 49 33 publication genre
Note(s): *Upto October 2020

Journal No. articles

Public Administration 13
Governance 9
Public Management Review 7
Journal of European Public Policy 6
International Review of Administrative Sciences 5
Parliamentary Affairs 4
Public Administration and Development 4
International Public Management Journal 3
West European Politics 3
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 3
Financial Accountability and Management 2
Journal of Public Policy 2 Table 1.
Transylvanian Review of Administrative Sciences 2 Articles on
Others 1 each (21 total) agencification, by
Total 84 journal

on the public agency as an organisational model for the public sector, without a deliberate
design choice by the reformers (Ongaro et al., 2012, p. 116).
The present study reveals diversity on the reason, influencing condition and driver,
requirement, and actor involved in agencification. For instance, arm’s length agencies in the
UK are established based on four different rationales: (1) to generate commitments in
regulation; (2) to develop commitments to decision making characterized by probity; (3) to
develop commitments to decision making informed by expertise; and (4) to provide a
representation of citizens and users in public policy and administration (Greasley and
Hanretty, 2016, pp. 160–161, original emphasis). Agencification was adopted by the Japanese
government as a result of a very proactive search for new ideas (Nakano, 2004, p. 184). In
Tanzania, the main objective of agencification was to improve public service delivery in a
smaller, affordable, efficient and effective civil service through the use of private sector
techniques (Sulle, 2010, p. 348). Meanwhile in Slovakia, agencification was intended to reduce
administrative and financial responsibilities of ministers. By establishing semi-autonomous
agencies, politicians sacrifice “political cost”, i.e. presumed controllability and accountability
of public tasks (Verschuere, 2007, p. 108).
IJPSM No Author(s)/Editors Title Publisher Year
35,1
1 Barker, A. (Ed.) Quangos in Britain: government and The Macmillan 1982
the networks of public policy-making Press
2 Flinders, M. Delegated governance and the British Oxford 2008
state: Walking without order University Press
3 Flinders, M. and Smith, M. Quangos, accountability and reform: Palgrave 1999
40 (Eds.) the politics of Quasi-government Macmillan
4 Gilardi, F. Delegation in the regulatory state: Edward Elgar 2008
independent regulatory agencies in
western Europe
5 Lægreid, P. and Christensen, T Autonomy and regulation: coping with Edward Elgar 2006
agencies in the modern state
6 Pollitt, C. and Talbot, C. (Eds.) Unbundled government: a critical Routledge 2003
analysis of the global trend to agencies,
quangos and contractualisation
7 Pollitt, C., Talbot, C., Caulfield, J. Agencies: how governments do things Palgrave 2004
and Smullen, A. through semi-autonomous Macmillan
organizations
8 Verhoest, K., Ronnes, P., Autonomy and control of state Palgrave 2010
Verschuere, B., Rubecksen, C. agencies: comparing states and Macmillan
and MacCarthaigh, M. (Eds.) agencies
9 Verhoest, K., van Thiel., Government agencies: Practices and Palgrave 2012
Table 2. Bouckaert, G. and Lægreid, P. lessons from 30 countries Macmillan
Selected books (Eds.)

No Reference Title Cit.*

1 Verhoest et al. (2004)
2 Gilardi (2002)
3 Jordana et al. (2011)
4 Maggetti (2007)
5 Thatcher (2002)
6 Levi-Faur (2011)
7 Wonka and Rittberger
(2010)
8 Egeberg and Trondal
(2009)
9 Greve et al. (1999)
10 Christensen and
Table 3. Laegreid (2007)
The most cited articles Note(s): *As of 13 October 2020
The study of organisational autonomy: a conceptual review 248
Policy credibility and delegation to independent regulatory agencies: 246
a comparative empirical analysis
The global diffusion of regulatory agencies: channels of transfer and 126
stages of diffusion
De facto independence after delegation: a fuzzy-set analysis 125
Regulation after delegation: independent regulatory agencies in 114
Europe
Regulatory networks and regulatory agencification: towards a single 90
European regulatory space
Credibility, complexity and uncertainty: explaining the institutional 86
independence of 29 EU agencies
Political leadership and bureaucratic autonomy: Effects of 79
agencification
Quangos – what’s in a name? Defining quangos from a comparative 76
perspective
Regulatory agencies – the challenges of balancing agency autonomy 69
and political control

In Estonia and Lithuania, the increasing impact of the economic crisis plays a great role in the
design of the agency landscape (Randma-Liiv et al., 2011, p. 169). In contrast, politicians in the
Netherlands prefer to imitate previous decisions instead of considering political situations,
economic conditions and public tasks (Van Thiel, 2004, p. 196). In addition, Kickert (2010, p. 489)
No Reference Title CPY*
The tides of
agencification
1 Verhoest et al. (2004) The study of organisational autonomy: a conceptual review 15.50
2 Jordana et al. (2011) The global diffusion of regulatory agencies: channels of transfer and 14.00
stages of diffusion
3 Gilardi (2002) Policy credibility and delegation to independent regulatory agencies: 13.67
a comparative empirical analysis
4 Levi-Faur (2011) Regulatory networks and regulatory agencification: towards a single 10.00 41
European regulatory space
5 Maggetti (2007) De facto independence after delegation: a fuzzy-set analysis 9.62
6 Wonka and Rittberger Credibility, complexity and uncertainty: explaining the institutional 8.60
(2010) independence of 29 EU agencies
7 Egeberg and Trondal Researching European Union agencies: what have we learnt (and 8.33
(2017) where do we go from here)?
8 Egeberg and Trondal Political leadership and bureaucratic autonomy: effects of 7.18
(2009) agencification
9 Maggetti and Verhoest Unexplored aspects of bureaucratic autonomy: a state of the field and 7.00
(2014) ways forward
10 Overman and Van Agencification and public sector performance: a systematic 6.50 Table 4.
Thiel (2016) comparison in 20 countries The most cited articles,
Note(s): *As of 13 October 2020 by citations per year

argued that agencification in the Netherlands is neither centrally planned or a controlled

change, it is an “emergent and complex change” instead. When designing independent
regulatory agencies, governments seem to care about national administrative traditions
(Yesilkagit and Christensen, 2010) and the credibility of their policy commitments (Gilardi,
2002, p. 890). On the other hand, agencification may allow blame avoidance by politicians in
a sense that they shift blame away to independent agencies (Mortensen, 2016, p. 632).
In the EU context, some regulations have contained specific requirements as to how
national agencies should be set up, for the purpose of standardisation of administrative
practices across the EU member countries (Egeberg, 2008, p. 247). The EU agencies often are
established to bring together the relevant actors from the regional, national, supranational,
and international level (Hofmann and Morini, 2012, p. 421). In Korea, executive agencies are
subject to the hierarchical regulations of their parent authorities, and their employees remain
legal public officials (Kim and Cho, 2014, p. 220).
Because agencification has been widespread almost in all countries over a relatively short
period, it has been considered a fad and fashion in institutionalized environment rather than a
solution to governance problems (Christensen and Lægreid, 2006; Egeberg and Trondal,
2018, p. 138; Verhoest et al., 2012). For example, Ara ujo (2001, p. 916) argued that
agencification in Portugal is a fad and fashion of politicians to meet the interests of the
bureaucrats more than it meets the needs of citizens. Meanwhile, agencification is more path-
dependent on the previous institutional design than dramatic change (Moynihan, 2006, p.
1033). For example, the case of Ireland (MacCarthaigh and Boyle, 2012, p. 49), Hungary and
Romania (Randma-Liiv et al., 2012, p. 339), and Nordic countries including Denmark (Hansen
and Andersen, 2012, p. 222), Finland, Norway, and Sweden (Hansen et al., 2012, p. 260) show
how institutional “roots” determine the “route” of agencification.
Previous studies have addressed adoption of agencification by revealing undesirable
motivation and more desirable governance. This implies that motivation and drivers may
become embedded in more extensive bundles of agencification and the practice of
agencification can be shaped both by different reason and by agent’s understanding of the
field-specific “game” as it unfolds over time.
IJPSM 4.2 Implementation or practice of agencification
35,1 Delegating a task to an agency is expected to improve the quality and impartiality of policy
implementation (Overman, 2016, p. 1246). However, there is no guarantee that the
establishment of quangos will improve the efficiency or quality of policy implementation
(Van Thiel, 2004, p. 196). Flinders and Tonkiss (2016) found a gap between resources and
auditory demands in departments with a large number of arm’s-length agencies (p. 507). In
the EU context, a continuously growing gap exists between the prolific creation of agencies
42 and their recognition in EU primary constitutional law (Hofmann and Morini, 2012, p. 421).
In Japan, agencification focuses on the management for results, customer orientation and
devolution to implementation, and market mechanism and has had little role in management
control (Yamamoto, 2004, p. 154). However, it was not a priority reform agenda on the
reorganisation of central ministries (Nakano, 2004, p. 181). Korinek and Veit (2015) analysed
ministry–agency interactions by interpreting the institutionalisation of agencification in
Germany. They concluded that in order to grant the ministry room for political manoeuvre in
relation to the independent agencies, the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment should adapt
to politico-administrative demands (p. 117).
A wide range of actors are involved in the institutionalization processes that follow
agencification (Yesilkagit, 2004). Ministries or departments are generally regarded as
steering actors or trustors, while agencies are trustees (Rommel and Christiaens, 2009, p. 93).
Kickert mentioned the role of change agents who create changes and exercise a directing
influence on the change process by seeking points of leverage and reframing current patterns.
They exercised multiple coordinating or supervisory roles, for example by the ministries of
Finance and Home Affairs, in the form of supervisory committees, by establishing new
budgetary regulations, and by publishing advisory reports (Kickert, 2010, pp. 496–497, 511).
From an operational perspective, political decisions are influential. For example, conflict
between the agency manager and the politicians may lead to a political punishment for
disloyal behaviour (Mortensen, 2016, p. 633).
There are almost no comparable organisations with respect to their autonomy (Verhoest
et al., 2004), due to the variation in delegation (Gilardi, 2002) and its subjective, dynamic and
relational nature (Maggetti and Verhoest, 2014). In practice, a common gap exists between
formal or “de jure” and “de facto” levels of autonomy (Maggetti, 2007; Verhoest et al., 2010).
This leads to “agencification paradoxes” (Smullen et al., 2001), in which semi-autonomous
agencies have their managerial autonomy hindered because they are more controlled
(Lægreid et al., 2008; Verschuere, 2007, p. 119). However, trade-off between local managerial
autonomy and central political control is not a major problem, but rather a basic systemic
feature of agencies (Christensen and Lægreid, 2004, p. 135, 2007, p. 518, emphasis added).
Generally speaking, previous studies found that the implementation of agencification may
be influenced by political settings and shared meanings. This implies that situated change
can take place in the name of agencification. Countries appropriate agencification into their
local contexts while improvising variations to accommodate different logics of action.

4.3 The use of semi-autonomous agencies

Agencies are expected to assist governments in achieving particular salient and widely held
objectives by improving service quality and working better, yet more economically (Pollitt
et al., 2001, pp. 276–277). In CEE countries such as Estonia, Lithuania and Hungary, semi-
autonomous agencies have been used to deliver the executive tasks in the areas of security,
education and information, payments, registration, social care and infrastructure (Randma-
Liiv et al., 2011, p. 167). In relation to “blame-shifting”, one of the instrumental purposes of
delegation is that the agent has to take morally dubious actions which the principal is
unwilling explicitly to sanction (Durose et al., 2015, p. 140).
 De Kruijf and Van Thiel (2018) mentioned that in the past three decades, the governments The tides of
of most OECD countries have established significant numbers of such agencies. Meanwhile, agencification
the number of regulatory agencies increased in 36 countries studied by Levi-Faur and
Jordana (2005) and also grew in Eastern Europe, East Asia, Latin America, as well as in
developing countries (Pollitt and Talbot, 2004). Others have embarked upon agency creation
since a couple of decades ago (e.g. for Portugal, see Ara ujo, 2001; for Sweden, see Pierre, 2004).
The number of quangos has increased strongly in most western countries from the 1980s
onwards (Van Thiel, 2004, p. 175). In the second half of the twentieth century, the British 43
government continued to establish quangos, including 41 quangos created between 1901 and
1951 (Flinders, 2004, p. 885, cf. Box 1). In 1992, there were 5,573 EGOs at national, regional and
local level (see Weir, 1995, p. 306). The British “Next Steps” programme created 155 agencies
in the period of 1988–1998 (James, 2000). On the other hand, Hogwood (1995) argued that
there is no evidence available to show an increasing number of NDPBs in the UK between
1949 and 1978 (p. 224). Instead, the number of NDPBs declined by 92 between 1979 and 1992
(p. 214, cf. Table 1). At the local level, over 2,000 new quangos have been created since 1979,
including health commissions, NHS trusts, city technology colleges, further and higher
education corporations, housing action trusts, training and enterprise councils, grant-
maintained schools and urban development corporations (Payne and Skelcher, 1997, p. 209).
The Netherlands experienced a rapid increase in the number of quangos during the 1980
and 1990s, resulting in around 400 ZBOs in 2000 (Van Thiel, 2004, pp. 178–179, cf. Figure 1).
In Ireland, over 700 public organizations (other than ministerial departments) existed
between 1922 and 2011 (MacCarthaigh, 2014, p. 1020, cf. Figure 1). While in the EU, the
number of agencies increased rapidly from two agencies in the 1980s to 34 agencies in 2015
(Egeberg and Trondal, 2017, p. 679, cf. Figure 1).
MacCarthaigh (2014) presented longitudinal studies of agency life-cycles and addresses
the issue of agency termination and the process of “de-agencification” in Ireland. After
exploring the logic of agency “rationalization”, he showed that agency termination increased
from below 10 occurrences in the 1920s to above 80 occurrences in the 2000s (pp. 1028–1029,
cf. Figures 2 and 3). However, this was not the result of de-agencification but rather occurred
in an ad hoc manner (p. 1029).
In Korea, termination of quangos represents political control over the inefficiency and
moral hazard of the agencies and a symbolic event for solving other problems such as
financial and structural issues (Park, 2013, p. 430). In the UK, Greasley and Hanretty (2016)
showed a pattern of agency birth and termination for the years 1985–2008 and found the
median age at termination is 10 years (pp. 166–167, cf. Figure 1). The reason of agency
termination in the UK is mostly because of the agency age and type, while political turnover
was not a significant factor (O’Leary, 2015, p. 1327).
Previous studies have revealed the use of semi-autonomous agencies for different
purposes. The extensive use of these agencies represents the international ubiquity of
“agency fever” (Pollitt et al., 2001). The spread of these organisations can be considered a
symptom of a systemic disease (Weir, 1995, p. 321) while political control over the agencies
may lead to agency termination. Based on these studies, it can be argued that less political
intervention is expected to encourage a more professional approach to management.
Separation into single-purpose organisations implies a closer relationship with the consumer
that will make it easier for key stakeholders to identify, participate in, and be consulted about
the work of the agencies.

4.4 Effects of agencification

Agencification implies changes in economic, political, and organizational dimensions. For
economic dimension, a study by Overman and Van Thiel (2016) uses data from different
IJPSM sources to test the expectations about performance effects of agencification in 20 countries.
35,1 They concluded that agencification is hardly related to output and outcome (p. 628). Kim and
Cho (2014) found a significant relationship between human resources management autonomy
and performance in 44 executive agencies in Korea. Financial and HRM autonomy have a
significant and negative impact on agency performance. In contrast, result control has a
positive effect on performance (p. 229). Meanwhile, Yamamoto (2006) concluded that
autonomy in operational management has a significant impact on perceived performance of
44 semi-autonomous agencies in Japan. The autonomy minimises the hierarchical accountability
of agencies and allows a greater discretion for managers (p. 41).
In terms of organisational dimension, Wynen and Verhoest (2013) concluded that
managerial autonomy positively affects a customer-oriented culture of 78 public agencies in
Flanders. However, managerial autonomy does not make customer-oriented culture
dominant within the agencies (p. 356). Using interviews from nine agencies operating in
Northern Ireland, Hyndman and Eden (2001) concluded that “tightness” in planning and
control systems of executive agencies is less than in other agencies, which may reduce
potential dysfunctional consequences (p. 596). The impact of agencification is more
pronounced and brings about a major change in management and focus of the agencies
(p. 586).
For political effect, administrative resources of the EU agencies contribute to a supra-
nationalization and centralization of executive power for implementation of EU policies
(Egeberg and Trondal, 2017, p. 684). In contrast, Bach and his colleagues (2015) argued that
Europeanization has a weak impact on the role of agencies in policy implementation. A
stronger impact is found on their role in policymaking (Bach et al., 2015, p. 301; Maggetti,
2009). In addition, agencification in the EU may lead to a blurring of responsibilities because
agencies are responsible to the institutions of the EU and, at the same time, the member states
(Hofmann and Morini, 2012, p. 422).
The administrative resources held by staffs in ministries and agencies are an important
factor in determining outcomes (Gains, 2004, p. 727). In Tanzania, the outcome of
agencification is determined by a variety of local factors such as legal frameworks and
governance systems (Sulle, 2010, pp. 351–353). The intervention of donors in agencification
agendas generates a complexity in reforms outcome (Caulfield, 2002).
Previous studies on agencification have explained that the adoption of private sector
management techniques by public organisations is the result of the “management matters”
thesis that has been influenced by the doctrines of managerialism and NPM (Verhoest et al.,
2010, p. 26). In the public sector, NPM ideas propose notions of essential concepts for
government reform such as decentralisation, management empowerment, competition, and
flexibility. This reform aims to improve the efficiency of the economy, to promote
competition, and to protect the consumers and citizens (Christensen et al., 2008).
Earlier studies have addressed the effects of interplay of agency autonomy and control.
Much of these studies on effects of agencification and organisational autonomy delve into
issues which are close to the daily practices in the agencies such as performance management
(Bjørnholt and Salomonsen, 2015; Dvorak, 2013; Kim and Cho, 2014; Verhoest, 2005; Wynen
and Verhoest, 2016), human resources management (Bach, 2014; Sulle, 2011), internal
decentralisation of decision making (Overman et al., 2014; Verschuere, 2007), and innovation
practices (Hofmann and Morini, 2012; Kallio and Lappalainen, 2015; McHugh et al., 2001;
Wynen et al., 2014). Overall, evidence on the effects of agencification is scarce and mixed. This
resembles a finding by Kettl (2000) that net impact of NPM programmes is not yet evident.
More specifically, knowledge of the effects of agencification – whether economic, political, or
organizational effects – is limited and fragmented (Verhoest et al., 2021).
The present review has shown that these reforms imply a shift in the balance
between bureaucratic autonomy and bureaucratic integration, marked by “agencification”
(Thynne, 2003). Responding to the NPM doctrines, the civil service opened its doors and minds The tides of
to a new paradigm in public service delivery and flexible financial management techniques agencification
(Kosar, 2011). Financial inflexibility also encourages the civil service organisation to become
more independent.
Authors in agencification studies have pointed out theoretical and empirical discussion of
agencification. This field of study has been explored in various settings using different
approaches. From this, a basis for suggesting further studies can be developed, which now we
turn in the next section. 45

5. Discussion: what could be done?

5.1 The importance of researching the late adopters
The countries analysed for studies into agencification are dominated by European nations.
Table 5 shows that a majority of agencification studies focus on cases in the UK. This is not a
surprising finding as the UK was a frontrunner in establishing quangos in the 1980s (Van
Thiel, 2012, p. 399) and Anglo-American countries had been the leaders of agencification
(Randma-Liiv et al., 2011, p. 167). In addition, most of the researched countries are developed
economies.
Developing countries such as Tanzania have adopted agencification, and so have
developed countries in Asia such as Japan. Although during the past five years much more
information has become available on the practice of agencification in developing economies
and Asian countries, they remain under-researched. Despite the fact that there are a number
of studies on public service in Asian countries, studies on agencification are rare to find in the
literature. Studying agencification in developing countries is essential to uncover how this
concept is implemented in a different politico-administrative setting.

No. No. books/

Continent Country of analysis articles Chapters

Europe UK 25 6
The Netherlands 12 4
Norway 6 2
Belgium 4 2
Denmark, Germany, Ireland 1 each 2 each
Portugal 1 1
Sweden 3
Finland 2
Austria, Croatia, Estonia, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, 1 each
Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland
Australia and Australia 2
Oceania New Zealand 2
Asia Japan 2 1
Korea 2
Thailand 2
Hong Kong, Israel, Japan, Pakistan 1 each
Africa Tanzania 1 2
America USA 1 2
Jamaica 1
Multi-countries 20 1
Supra-nationals European union 7 2
Total 84 56* Table 5.
Note(s): *The 9 reviewed books contain 56 chapters in total Country of analysis
IJPSM It is essential to explore the latest adoption of agencification as a part of a widely growing
35,1 phenomenon, enabling us to see how the agencification trend is going on. The late adopters,
mostly developing countries, may gain some benefits by learning from the previous
experiences or may fall into similar failures instead. From this, a wider understanding of
recent development on agencification would be obtained.

46 5.2 Challenge to researching micro-practices at agency level

The research setting of the reviewed studies is dominated by national-level (42%) and multi-
level settings (27%). Research at the union level represents 8%, while agency-level research
makes up 23% of the studies. It is clear that within a country, micro-practices at agency level
are relatively less discussed. By micro-practices we mean the actual practices conducted in
day-to-day life, how ordinary actions are practised in the agencies, and how practices and
procedures are worked out in “local” agency settings. In the other discipline, for example,
scholars have uncovered the micro-practices of policy implementation in education (e.g.
Coburn, 2006), energy policies (e.g. Hampton, 2018) and corruption (e.g. Anjaria, 2011).
Research into the day-to-day practices in the agencies is relatively rare. An exceptional
study has been conducted by Flinders and Tonkiss (2016). They studied how relationships
between semi-autonomous agencies and their parent ministries are mediated at an everyday
level in the British government. A series of observations of internal meetings, workshops, and
conferences in ministerial departments were used to collect data. They found both financial
and administrative tightening relationships such as a “Triennial Review” (p. 501). Every three
years, this triennial review questions the governance of public agencies and asks whether the
arm’s-length arrangement is still appropriate for them (Cabinet Office, 2011, pp. 7–8).
In order to understand a macro-level phenomenon, such as agencification, we need to
translate it into micro-level practices (Collins, 1981). While agencification has been introduced
into public organizations in almost all countries, less is studied in terms of their daily operation.
Pollitt et al. (2004, p. 12) reveal that most of the agencification studies are constructed at the
macro level. Agencification has scarcely been researched from the day-to-day practice
perspective. Consequently, our understanding of micro-practices of agencification remains
limited. Details of these practices are underrepresented in the literature on agencification.
This leads to several questions. Do micro-practices of agencification differ across different
agencies? If so, what factors bring this difference about? What factors affect the arrangement
of these practices? Hence, it is essential to deeply look at the micro level on how ordinary
actions are practised in the agencies across countries, type of task, size, and parent ministry.
Future studies should show how the implementation of agencification may be influenced by
daily routines, shared meanings, and particular practices by describing its day-to-day
practices. A micro-level perspective is valuable to unpacking large social phenomena such as
agencification by showing how this arrangement is performed by different groups of actors
in different ways. We need to come to a new understanding of large-scale complexes of
activities to show how practices interweave from one situation to another (Schatzki, 2000).
The present review reveals that agencification provides a distinctive context for the study
of particular practices, and country-specific settings considerably influence the nature and
extent of them. For example, in Indonesia, accounting is the main feature of semi-autonomous
agencies (Waluyo, 2018). While accounting literature finds a deficiency in third world public
sector accounting practices in semi-autonomous agencies (Rahaman and Lawrence, 2001, p.
17), this opens up an avenue to study everyday accounting in the agencification context. Such
a study is essential since accounting researchers call for the need to analyse the “local”
settings, such as agencification, in which practices and procedures are worked out (Miller,
1994, p. 16). Focusing on the micro level of agencification, such as accounting, for example,
opens up an avenue towards a better understanding on how this dimension is practised.
5.3 Call for new research approaches The tides of
The methodological approaches used in the reviewed articles are shown in Table 6. By data-based agencification
analysis, we mean analysis based on the ready-made or third-party data set. It can be argued that
agencification studies has a lack of methodological breadth. It is clear that most of the articles
used case studies/interviews. Meanwhile, observation is the least used empirical method.
Observational approaches, such as ethnography, are potential for the study of
agencification for two reasons. Firstly, ethnography allows researchers to gain a detailed
understanding of the real situation by examining the immediate settings within which 47
activity propagates (Schatzki, 2001, p. 3). This approach can reveal the rich description of
practices, personal or organizational histories, and in-depth information on selected topics.
Ethnography enables researchers to collect detailed records of beliefs and behaviours.
In addition to several calls for applying ethnographic approaches in public management
research (e.g. Ferguson and Gupta, 2002; Kim, 2012; Schillemans and Bovens, 2019), ethnographic
methods are state-of-the-art in qualitative inquiry for representing the “microscopic” details of the
social and cultural aspects of individuals’ lives (Geertz, 1973, p. 10). For future studies, by focusing
attention on these micro-practices in the agencies, we could better understand how different
actors of agencification are acting-doing as social beings (Parker-Webster, 2018, p. 185), entangled
together with human and non-human actors and meanings. The micro-level research on the
internal management systems and cultures of agencies is expected to reveal another layer of
convergence in agencification (Pollitt et al., 2001, p. 288).
Secondly, an ethnographic approach is able to answer questions as to the “how” of a
process, its temporality, and the meaning attributed to it (Gherardi, 2012, p. 5). It provides
understanding of larger issues, by observing the daily picture of events, thoughts, and
activities. For future studies, ethnography is essential in the exploration of the everyday life
of the agencies to understand agencification, because this approach focuses on the context of
investigation (Borgnakke, 2018, p. 62, emphasis added). Immersion of the researcher in the
day-to-day setting allows an interpretive approach to understand practices in semi-
autonomous agencies. In addition, ethnography brings about the active nature of practices
through which the subjects negotiate and create cultural order (Bourdieu, 1977).
Employing this approach, future research could complement other studies of
agencification by providing thick description of day-to-day practices. For example,
studying the everyday life of accounting practices in this context allows one to grasp more
completely and more clearly what they entail by understanding ordinary behaviours that the
involved actors perform every day in the ordinary course of agencification.

5.4 Extending theoretical frameworks used

This review reveals that most of the agencification studies used single and multiple
theoretical frameworks (65% in total), while 35% of them do not explicitly mention their

Methods No. of articles

Case study/Interviews 25
Data-based analysis 19
Survey/Questionnaire 13
Reflection/Commentary 12
Content/Document analysis 7
Theoretical/Conceptual 4
Observation 3 Table 6.
Literature review 1 Articles by research
Total 84 methods
IJPSM theoretical framework. For studies using single and multiple theoretical frameworks, 41
35,1 meta-approaches/key issues/theories were identified (see Table 7) based on the classification
or level of theories by Van der Waldt (2017).
In general, there are four types of theoretical framework used to discuss agencification.
First, agencification is mainly studied using institutionalist approaches. For instance,
rational choice theory is used to analyse the role of ministers in making appointments to semi-
autonomous agencies, boards, and commissions. Path dependence theory addresses how
48 agency tasks, autonomy, and control depend on historical traditions, established practices,
and cultural norms. Second, agencification is researched in a political science background,
since political ideology significantly influences the regulation of public organizations
(Bertelli, 2006, p. 257). Theory of accountability is used to analyse the importance of political
salience. Policy network theory concerns the role of networks in promoting or preventing
institutional crises.
Third, agencification is analysed using organizational management frameworks. For
instance, theory of delegation is adopted to analyse how parent ministries steer the agencies.
Fourth, economics backgrounds and NPM doctrines are used to develop the theoretical
model. For example, principal-agent theory is employed to analyse the link between
autonomy and performance.
Agencification is situated in different socio-political settings and formed by different actor
constellations. Given the complexity of this assemblage, telling the story of agencification
needs an appropriate analytical assistance. The theory of practice, for example, offers a
suitable framework for understanding social and organisational phenomena by focusing on
regimes of ordinary actions, rather than individuals, systems, class or structure (Bourdieu,
1977, p. 72). Schatzki (2001, p. 2) argues that practices are arrays of human activity which
include non-human objects such as artefacts, natural objects and hybrids. Theories of
practice do not emphasise the views, motives, or intentions of individuals. Instead, this theory
focuses on the situated doing of their shared activities (Nicolini, 2012) as organisational
practices are comprehended through activities and discourses (Ahrens and Mollona, 2007,
p. 310).
The practice theory framework defines practices as including both human and material
resources, and rejects the dualism between the actors and the tools or technologies used
(Styhre and Arman, 2015, p. 157). Practice theory provides a rich analytical framework to
uncover why and how day to day practices are organised in the context of a reform movement
within public sector organisations. This view is expected to provide a way of understanding

Meta-approach/key issues/theories No. of studies

Institutional theory 9
Accountability 5
Autonomy 5
Rational choice theory 5
Principal–agent theory 5
Theory of delegation 4
NPM doctrines 3
System theory 3
Discourse theory 2
Managerial 2
Neo-institutional theory 2
Table 7. Path dependence theory 2
Theoretical Policy network 2
frameworks used Others 1 each (total 28)
the various activities involved in agencification in relation to each other as several bundles of The tides of
everyday activity. agencification
Exploring a novel perspective on the micro-practices of agencification by drawing on
practice theories has three advantages. First, non-human elements. Practice theory sheds
light on the relations between various actors, making sense of changing organizational
environments. The essential contribution of the practice-based approach is that it directs
attention to the sociomaterial domain (Gherardi, 2012, p. 208). Non-human entities mediate or
even propagate nexuses of practices (Schatzki, 2001, p. 3). Considering the non-human objects 49
of agencification practice is crucial, as the role they play in shaping practices are often
unrecognized. Joining posthumanism and a variety of “materialist” approaches, practice-
based views are needed to identify these “blind spots” (Duncan et al., 2018, p. 6).
Second, comprehensive understanding. When we take a practice approach to focus on the
situated actions and sequence (such as performance management, leadership, and decision
making), the idea of context (agencification) changes radically. From a practice perspective,
context is an evolving hinterland rather than container. As a container or backdrop, context is
formed by the practice and sequence. While as an evolving hinterland, practice and sequence
determine the context (Nicolini, 2012). By using this view, we will be able to see how the
situated actions and sequence relate to agencification. Practice-based perspectives are
expected to reveal policy implications by showing the way in which day-to-day practices
influence the operation of semi-autonomous agencies.
Third, large-scale phenomena. Practice theory has had a rapid career as a concept for
understanding small-scale social phenomena such as nursing (e.g. Miriam and Feldman,
2015; Scheel et al., 2008), washing or laundering (e.g. Hess et al., 2018; Pullinger et al., 2013),
and cooking (e.g. Herington et al., 2017; Hertz and Halkier, 2017). There have rarely been
attempts to apply this theory in researching large social phenomena such as educational
systems, international organisations (Lamers et al., 2016, p. 229), financial markets and
bureaucracy (Nicolini, 2016, p. 99). Practice theories, such as Bourdieu’s practice perspective,
is valuable to unpacking large social phenomena such as agencification by showing how this
arrangement is performed by different groups of actors in different ways. Practice-based
analysis may result in richer, more creative and dynamic insights of large-scale social
phenomena (Lamers et al., 2016, p. 235).
Cross-country transfer of agencification occurred because certain political actors actively
searched policy ideas that could be useful to solve domestic problems, which were themselves
also socially constructed (Nakano, 2004, p. 185, emphasis added). The social-practice
framework offers an integration of underlying norms, technology, and practices, allowing a
better understanding of the agency behaviour. Therefore, future studies need to address the
micro level of agencification as a process – rather than as a property.

6. Conclusion
The present review sheds new light on agencification by presenting comprehensive review
and analysis on this topic, covering both developed and developing economies. It contributes
to the current body of knowledge by showing how the previous literature have been
developed and identifying future research agenda. The main findings of the reviewed studies
summarised in Appendix contributed to mapping main studies in agencification and to
setting ways forward.
This review finds various country-specific adoptions of agencification whether in
theoretical or empirical studies. The review contends that agencification constitutes a
distinctive context for the study of day-to-day practice, such as accounting. Country-specific
settings considerably influence the nature and extent of this practice. Most of the studies
investigating agencification have been carried out in Europe and North America. Only some
IJPSM of them have been conducted in less developed countries. There are some similarities and
35,1 differences in agencification practice across various administrative settings. Therefore,
studying agencification in developing countries is essential as a basis for understanding the
micro-processes within the agencies. Understanding this construction can extend theoretical
discussion of agencification by uncovering how agencification is adopted in different politico-
administrative settings.
Numerous studies have identified a number of different practices of agencification.
50 However, little attempt was made to reveal how the micro-processes are happening in the
everyday life of the agencies. For example, research into day-to-day financial and accounting
dimensions of agencification is rare (for general accounting issues in the agencies, see e.g. Mol
and de Kruijf, 2003). This review provides adequate reasoning for scholars and practitioners
to pay more attention to the micro-practices of agencification, such as routines of financial
management and accounting in the context of agencification. Agencification can only be
understood in the context of the reasoned arguments that constitute the framework from
which it comes. Future studies may challenge NPM’s view of agencification by proposing
new perspectives based on a street-level observation that is invisible to the previous view.
It is worth noting that our study has several limitations. Firstly, while we call for research
in less-developed countries, the review may have missed literature published in languages
other than English. In part this lack of research from some countries may be a bias in search
strategy. Looking for English language scientific articles in select journals based on impact
factors only is likely to yield such a result. However, we believe that selecting only English
manuscripts would not raise a bias or lead to different conclusions (Moher et al., 2000).
Secondly, the review focuses on published articles. Selected books in this review are analysed
only for discussing the countries covered in the agencification studies. This is due to the
reason that several books cover different chapters with various theoretical frameworks,
research methods, findings and conclusions. Thirdly, we select articles based on the number
of citations and the journal’s impact factors. This may exclude potentially relevant sources,
such as studies that are overlooked in the current debate. Notwithstanding these limitations,
this review could be considered an attempt to digest previous studies on agencification and
propose a research agenda. Indeed, the adoption, practice, use and effect of agencification
have been highly topical that require further investigation.

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 58
35,1
IJPSM

Table A1.

agencification
Main studies on
Concept(s)
Author(s) (Year) Research purpose(s) or question(s) discussed Main finding(s)
Appendix

Christensen and It focuses on the dynamic interplay between increase in Autonomy, Stability in the trade-off between autonomy and control
Lægreid (2007) autonomy of regulatory agencies and political control of control is an elusive goal. An unstable balance between
those agencies autonomy and control is not a specific problem of the
organization of the public sector but rather a basic
systemic feature
Egeberg and The extent to which agencification has resulted in a Agency Agency officials pay significantly less attention to
Trondal (2009) relative insulation of agency decision making from signals from executive politicians than their
political considerations counterparts within ministerial (cabinet-level)
departments
Egeberg and Reviews studies on EU agencies’ organization, tasks, Agencification The contours of a more direct multilevel administration
Trondal (2017) proliferation and location in the political-administrative in which EU agencies not only constitute nodes within
space transnational agency networks, but in addition, in
governance terms, relate more closely to the European
commission than to any other institution
Gilardi (2002) To examine the empirical consistency of a claim that Delegation The economic nature of regulation is a strong
governments delegate powers so as to enhance the determinant of agency independence, but is mediated
credibility of their policies by national institutions in the form of veto players
Greve et al. (1999) Aims to clarify the quango topography Quango, A sub-sectional map of distinctive types of quangos
autonomy
Jordana et al. (2011) To explore the role of countries and sectors as sources of Institutional The restructuring of national bureaucracies unfolds via
institutional transfer at different stages of the diffusion transfer four different channels of institutional transfer (sector,
process intersectoral, national, international)
Levi-Faur (2011) Explores the politics and architecture of the Network A mapping exercise of 36 regulatory regimes. A trend
institutionalization and administrative rationalization towards agencification as the major instrument of
of the EU regulatory space choice in the EU governance system, and the deliberate
institutionalization of dependent networks by the
agencies and the commission

(continued )

Author(s) (Year) Research purpose(s) or question(s)
Maggetti (2007) To examine the relation between formal independence
and de facto independence of regulatory agencies. It
conceptualizes and assesses de facto independence, and
discusses organizational, institutional, and political
explanations for divergence from formal independence
Maggetti and It provides an overview of the literature on bureaucratic
Verhoest (2014) autonomy and identifies different approaches to this
topic
Overman and Van Questions whether these acclaimed effects of
Thiel (2016) agencification have actually been realized: has public
sector performance gone up in countries where many
tasks have been transferred to semiautonomous
agencies?
Thatcher (2002) To examine three aspects of the life of independent
regulatory agencies (IRAs) after delegation: Their
independence from elected officials, their relationship
with regulatees, and their decision-making processes
Verhoest et al. To develop six dimensions of the concept of autonomy
(2004) in public organisations (managerial autonomy, policy
autonomy, structural autonomy, financial autonomy,
legal autonomy, and interventional autonomy)
Wonka and Systematically scrutinizing the institutional structure
Rittberger (2010) and degree of formal-institutional independence of these
agencies
Table A1.
Concept(s)
discussed Main finding(s)
Independence Formal independence is neither a necessary nor a
sufficient condition for explaining variations in the de
facto independence of agencies. Other factors, such as
the lifecycle of agencies, veto players, and European
networks of agencies, have a decisive impact
Bureaucratic The concept of bureaucratic autonomy is expanded by
autonomy taking into account its subjective, dynamic and
relational nature
Agencification Negative effect of agencification on both public sector
output and efficiency
Delegation IRAs enjoy considerable insulation from elected
politicians. IRAs and business regulatees have been
relatively separate in terms of the professional origins
and destinations of senior IRA staff. In decision-making
processes, they have opened up, in contrast to closed
processes before delegation
Autonomy There are almost no completely comparable
organisations with respect to their independence. To
answer the autonomy-performance question, we need
an integrated and combined study of the six dimensions
of autonomy
Agency Agencies operating in the field of economic regulation
show higher levels of independence than agencies
operating in the field of social regulation or agencies
entrusted with an executive or informational mandate
agencification
59
The tides of
IJPSM Theme Content: sample of references
35,1
Adoption Overview and reasons
 Araujo (2001), Christensen and Lægreid (2004), Denton and Flinders (2006), Durose et al.
(2015), Flinders (2009), Hogwood (1995), Verschuere (2007), Weir (1995), Yesilkagit and
Christensen (2010)
Influencing conditions and drivers
60
 Kickert (2010), Mortensen (2016), Moynihan (2006), Randma-Liiv et al. (2011), Rommel
and Christiaens (2009), Stott (1995), Sulle (2010), Yesilkagit and Christensen (2010)
Implementation Actors involved
 Christensen et al. (2008), Christensen and Lægreid (2004), Gains (2003), Harlow (1999),
Hirst (1995), Marsh et al. (2000), Rommel and Christiaens (2009), Verschuere (2007),
Yesilkagit (2004)
Gaps between adoption and implementation
 Harlow (1999), Kickert (2010), Maggetti (2007), Overman (2016)
Implementation issues
 Christensen and Laegreid (2007), Flinders and Tonkiss (2016), Gains (2003, 2004), Gilardi
(2002), Hyndman and Eden (2001), Laegreid et al. (2008), Maggetti (2009), Maggetti and
Verhoest (2014), Moynihan (2006), Nakano (2004), Pollitt et al. (2001), Verhoest et al.
(2004), Yamamoto (2004, 2006)
Use Purpose of use
 Araujo (2001), Korinek and Veit (2015), Nakano (2004), Rommel and Christiaens (2009),
Thatcher (2002), Van Thiel (2011), Wettenhall (2005), Wonka and Rittberger (2010),
Yamamoto (2006)
Extent of use
 Egeberg and Trondal (2017), Elston (2014), Hofmann and Morini (2012), Hogwood (1995),
Jordana et al. (2011), Kickert (2010), Pollitt et al. (2001), Sulle (2010), Van Thiel (2004,
2011), Wettenhall (2005)
Effect Positive effects
 Egeberg and Trondal (2017), Vining et al. (2015)
Negative effects
 Overman and Van Thiel (2016)
Table A2. Mixed effects
Themes and contents
covered in journal  Bach et al. (2015), Brewer (2004), Kim and Cho (2014), Verhoest et al. (2010), Verhoest and
articles Wynen (2016), Wynen and Verhoest (2013), Yamamoto (2006)

About the author

Budi Waluyo is lecturer at the Polytechnic of State Finance STAN, Indonesia. His research interests span
public management and public sector accounting. Budi is particularly interested in the role of
accounting in society. Prior to his academic career, he worked in a semi-autonomous agency. Budi
Waluyo can be contacted at: budiwaluyo@pknstan.ac.id

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