Agencification

• Author: Jarle Trondal
• Date: 01 July 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/puar.12252
• Published date: 01 July 2014

Book Reviews 545

Jarle Trondal is professor in the

Department of Political Science and

Management at the University of Agder,

Norway, and the ARENA Centre for

European Studies, University of Oslo,

Norway.

E-mail: jarle.trondal@uia.no

Public Administration Review,

Vol. 74, Iss. 4, pp. 545–549. © 2014 by

The American Society for Public Administration.

DOI: 10.1111/puar.12252.

less toward the ef‌f ects of agencif‌i cation (e.g., Pollitt et

al. 2004). Moreover, to the extent that this literature

has explored the ef‌f ects of agencif‌i cation, organiza-

tion structures, procedures, and legal capacities have

served as key independent variables. A comprehensive

understanding of agencif‌i cation needs to bring several

literatures together. Government Agencies contributes

to rebalancing an overly legal bias in much of the

agency literature.

 is book review asks three sets of questions:

1. What is agencif‌i cation?

2. What explains agencif‌i cation?

3. What implications does agencif‌i cation yield?

What Is Agencif‌i cation?

Historically, ministerial portfolios have been arranged

either as “integrated ministries,” meaning that a

ministerial portfolio constitutes a unitary organiza-

tion, or as vertically specialized structures, meaning

that a portfolio is split into a ministerial, or cabinet-

level, department, on the one hand, and one or more

separate agencies, on the other (Verhoest et al. 2012,

3). Over time, agencies seem to have been moved

out of and into ministerial departments, often in a

cyclical manner (Aucoin 1990; Hood and Jackson

1991; Pollitt 2008; Verhoest, Bouckaert, and Peters

2007). By an “agency,” we mean an administrative

body that is formally separated from a ministerial,

or cabinet-level, department and that carries out

public tasks at a national level on a permanent basis,

is staf‌f ed by public servants, is f‌i nanced mainly by the

state budget, and is subject to public legal procedures.

Agencies are supposed to enjoy some autonomy from

their respective ministerial departments in regard to

decision making (Verhoest et al. 2012). However,

the respective ministers normally keep the political

responsibility for agencies’ activities (cf. Pollitt and

Talbot 2004). “Agencif‌i cation” thus signif‌i es a transfer

of government activities to bodies vertically special-

ized outside ministerial departments. Related to the

NPM movement, governments across continents have

Koen Verhoest, Sandra Van  iel, Geert Bouckaert, and

Per Lægreid, eds., Government Agencies: Practices

and Lessons from 30 Countries (Basingstoke, UK:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). 496 pp. $170.00 (cloth),

ISBN: 9780230354357; $54.00 (paper), ISBN:

9780230354364.

One persistent theme in public administration

is whether a government portfolio should

be organized as an integrated ministry or

as a dual organization composed of a ministerial

department and one or several semidetached agen-

cies (Verhoest et al. 2012). “Agencif‌i cation” has been

high on the agenda of administrative policy makers

for two decades, partly because of the New Public

Management (NPM) wave. Two decades of NPM

reforms have made the agencif‌i cation phenomenon

highly topical and attracted considerable scholarly

attention. After at least two decades of agencif‌i cation

research, it is time to take stock. Our starting point

for doing so is Government Agencies: Practices and

Lessons from 30 Countries, edited by Koen Verhoest,

Sandra Van  iel, Geert Bouckaert, and Per Lægreid.

Essentially, this book of‌f ers a state-of-the-art account

of agencif‌i cation. One ambition of this book review is

to bring two literatures together that are often mutu-

ally ignorant: public administration and European

studies. Whereas most studies on agencif‌i cation

have ignored this, the book under review represents

an attempt to advance research along this line. Still,

the European dimension receives scant attention in

this study.  is book review highlights a broader set

of implications of agencif‌i cation, particularly with

respect to (1) political steering and autonomy and (2)

the rise of multilevel administration.

Students of agencif‌i cation have focused on the causes

of agencif‌i cation as well as its consequences (e.g.,

Christensen and Lægreid 2006; Lægreid and Verhoest

2010; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004; Pollitt et al. 2004).

One noticeable bias in this literature is that the vast

majority of the “agencif‌i cation” scholarship is geared

toward administrative history, reform, and change and

Agencif‌i cation

Sonia M. Ospina and Rogan Kersh, Editors

Jarle Trondal

University of Agder, Norway

University of Oslo, Norway