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In this article, we examine how agencies build organizational political capacities (OPC) for reputation management, where capacity building is treated as a challenge underpinned by the learning relationships that exist between key governance actors. This challenge requires the development of four types of OPC: absorptive capacity (ACAP); administrative capacity (ADCAP); analytical capacity (ANCAP) and communicative capacity (COMCAP). Analytically, we link each of these capacities to one particular type of policy learning – reflexive learning – which characterises politicised situations where an agencies reputation is under threat and citizens are the main governance partners. Empirically, we demonstrate how agencies learn to develop these OPCs with governance partners using the case of the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) which increasingly aims to engage citizens in a dialogue to combat the negative images attached to health and safety regulation. We conclude asking what a learning approach tells us about how agencies can develop OPC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The delegation literature tells us that decision-makers delegate power to agents to achieve efficiency or credibility (or both). Critically, however, the successful delivery of each of these implies very different levels of control over their agent by the principal. This paper deploys principal-agent modelling to explore how this logic works with epistemic agents. It explores the implications of two epistemic communities' contrasting de facto independence from European Commission decision-makers for the delegation goals satisfied in formulating policy on hormone growth promoters. Analysis supported the view that to deliver policy efficiency an epistemic community must have low autonomy from the political principal. Policy credibility was achieved when decision-makers selected an epistemic community whose views were socially legitimate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]