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The study examines bureaucrats facing administrative architectures that are multiple, overlapping, ambiguous and sometimes incompatible. It makes two main contributions. Firstly, by an organizational approach it derives fine‐grained predictions on how bureaucrats maneuver when taking part in integrated multilevel administrative orders. Secondly, benefitting from a large‐N data‐set (N = 4285) from 16 ministries and 47 government agencies in Norway, the study demonstrates how organizational factors systematically 'moderate' and bias behavioral perceptions among government officials. Moreover, to probe the robustness of explanatory models, the study specifies patterns of moderation by outlining multiple interaction models as well as illustrating how interaction effects unfold. The study finds that few moderators make dramatic effects by profoundly weakening relationships. Moderating variables either strengthen or attenuate already apparent effects, thus probing the empirical robustness of the models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Establishing government agencies outside ministerial departments is frequently justified by a need to safeguard agency autonomy. In addition to 'formal agencification', that is, erecting formal barriers between agencies and ministries, agencies are also frequently (re)located physically distant from ministries to both signal and strengthen agency autonomy. However, we know little of the effects of physical location and distance on agency autonomy. Using two large surveys from 2006 and 2016, this study examines how geographical location and distance affect agency autonomy. Our study establishes that agency autonomy is only weakly associated with physical location and distance, and is much less important than political salience. Whereas a conventional claim is that agency autonomy may be strengthened by physically (re)locating agencies at arm's length distance from the core executive, our study suggests that physical (re)location represents an in effective administrative policy design-tool when applied to agency autonomy. Points for practitioners: Physical distance between agencies and parent ministries is only remotely associated with agency autonomy. Physical location thus represents an ineffective design-tool if the purpose is to increase agency autonomy [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "agencification" of both EU (non)member-states and the EU administrations serve as an institutional infrastructure for differentiated administrative integration (Trondal, 2014) through a differentiated inclusion of administrative bodies from member and non-member states in EU governance. Arguably, when the EU functionally responds to crisis through differentiated institutional and policy responses, the EU's democratic deficit may grow in the long run since crisis responses tend to strengthen executive institutions and contribute to the contraction of government decision authority. Differentiation and the Covid-19 Pandemic In March 2020, the global Covid-19 pandemic eventually hit Europe; it affected most policy domains of the EU and substantially put solidarity amongst member states to a test. 2021 marked the official start of a post-Brexit era for the European Union (EU) since the United Kingdom (UK) had only fully withdrawn when the transition period lapsed on 31 December 2020. [Extracted from the article]

Benefiting from a novel data set spanning nearly half a century, this study probes the sustainability of public governance. Theoretically, it examines how sustainable public governance rests on its organizational fabric. The study illuminates how organizational factors systematically influence decision-making behaviour and thus public governance sustainability. Moreover, the study argues that since organizational structure is amendable to deliberate manipulative change, it may thus be an important design instrument of the context of choice in public governance. Accordingly, the article offers an avenue to build bridges between the academic and practitioner worlds of public administration. Empirically and methodologically, the study offers: a novel large- N (13,173) and longitudinal data set that spans five observation points in 1976, 1986, 1996, 2006 and 2016; nine surveys at ministry and agency levels; and several generations of government officials. Taken together, the data set demonstrates that both administrative sustainability in public administration and sustainable public governance rest on its organizational fabric. Points for practitioners: A sustainable public administration is a necessary condition for public service delivery. Based on observations that span 40 years (1976 to 2016), this study offers an opportunity to systematically trace public governance processes over half a century. Second, this study examines how sustainable public governance rests on its organizational fabric. Organizational factors systematically influence decision-making behaviour and arguably influence administrative governance. Moreover, organizational structure is amendable to deliberate manipulative change and may thus be an important design instrument of the context of choice in public governance. As such, the article offers an avenue to build bridges between the academic and practitioner worlds of public administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines government agencies facing choice architectures that are multiple, overlapping, ambiguous, and sometimes incompatible—in short: turbulent. It makes two contributions: First, two conceptual images of agency governance are outlined that derive distinct predictions on how agencies are likely to maneuver when embedded in integrated multilevel administrative orders. Secondly, benefitting from a large‐N dataset on agency officials (N = 1,963) from 47 government agencies, the study suggests that government agencies are primarily biased towards a pragmatist compound dynamic. Additionally, the analysis probes the robustness of these conceptual images by entering moderator variables into the analysis. Multiplicative interaction model analysis suggests that the compound dynamic of agency governance is robust because no moderator variables fundamentally transform relationships from one governance type to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past couple of decades a considerable number of European Union (EU) agencies have been established. Research has so far shown that they have become more than mere facilitators of transnational regulatory networks, arenas for the exchange of information on ‘best practice', and vehicles for member state governments. Task expansion has taken place, e.g., by taking up (quasi-) regulatory tasks. However, the jury is still out regarding exactly where in the political-administrative landscape EU agencies are situated. Benefiting from novel data sources, this study sheds light on so far undocumented relationships between EU agencies and the European Commission. The study shows that EU agencies have become integral components in the policy-making and implementation activities of Commission departments. Secondly, this development is accounted for by an organizational approach that specifies a set of organizational factors. The study argues that such tight relationships between Commission departments and EU agencies signify a centralization of EU executive power. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The jury is still out with respect to whether European Union (EU)-level agencies act primarily as tools of national governments or not, although parts of the literature as well as the legal framework of EU agencies seem to favour the former interpretation. We argue that EU agencies which might be able to act relatively independently of national governments and the Council, but not necessarily independently from the Commission, would contribute to executive centre formation at the European level and thus to further transformation of the current political-administrative order. By measuring along several dimensions, we demonstrate that the Commission constitutes by far the most important partner of EU agencies. EU agencies deal (somewhat surprisingly) to a considerable extent with (quasi-) regulatory and politicized issues. When engaging in such areas, national ministries and the Council tend to strengthen their position, however, not to the detriment of the Commission. In addition to the Commission, national agencies make up the closest interlocutors in the daily life of EU agencies, indicating how EU-level agencies become building blocks in a multilevel Union administration, partly bypassing national ministries. We build our analysis on an on-line survey among senior officials in EU agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two decades of New Public Management have placed agencifiction high on the agenda of administrative policy-makers. However, agencification (and de-agencification) has been one of the enduring themes of public administration. Agencies organized at arm's length from ministerial departments have fairly often been located outside of the capital or political centre. Although practitioners tend to assign some weight to central versus peripheral location as regards political-administrative behavior, this relationship has been almost totally ignored by scholars in the field. In this paper, based on a large-N elite survey, we show that agency autonomy, agency influence and inter-institutional coordination seem to be relatively unaffected by agency site. This study also specifies some conditions under which this finding is valid. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How did the Norwegian government succeed in the geographic relocation of a number of domestic agencies? This study suggests an organisational theory approach to explain the success. It argues that formal organisation of the decision-making process in government largely explains the success of the relocation reform. The government had to contend with: physical relocation of institutions tending to mobilise the attention and resistance of affected stakeholders, earlier attempts at physical relocation of agencies largely failing, and the absence of parliamentary majority. Studies demonstrate that large-scale reform processes tend to be characterised by medium degrees of hierarchical control. Instrumental leadership tends to be present in minor institutional reforms than in large-scale reforms. This study suggests that large-scale physical relocation of agencies was completed largely through the formal design of the reform process, i.e. by safeguarding hierarchical leadership from the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diagnosis of the transformation of executive governance in Europe should incorporate the diverse dynamics of EU-level agencies. Recent years have witnessed comprehensive reform efforts in the European Commission aimed partly at increasing institutional effectiveness and efficiency. One constituent ingredient thereof has been the institution of non-majoritarian EU-level agencies with regulatory and non-regulatory discretionary competences beneath the Community institutions. This article conceptualises theoretically and explores empirically three complementary images of agency governance in the EU. Based on a rich body of survey (N = 265) and interview (N = 29) data among three regulatory and four non-regulatory EU-level agencies, the article demonstrates that EU-level agencies tend to combine the roles as autonomous administrative spaces, multilevel epistemic networks and Community institutions. EU-level regulatory and non-regulatory agencies blend all three images of agency governance. This article thus demonstrates that agency governance is only marginally affected by the regulatory-non-regulatory dichotomy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]