The spread of semi-autonomous organisations for the execution of public functions has attracted academic interest. There seems to be two main research agendas, one investigating broad issues of autonomy and control of Non-Departmental Public Bodies, another one focused on the narrower phenomenon of executive agencies. Especially the latter may benefit from the operationalisation of commonly used concepts like: disaggregation, autonomy and re-regulation, conctractualism. The paper adopts an analytical framework based on these concepts to investigate executive agencies in Italy. Findings of interest for the international scholarly debate include: the limitations to the consideration of conctractualism as an autonomous unit of analysis; the influence of the politico-administrative context on the actual utilisation of performance contracting; the (apparently limited) role of re-regulation, and its sensitivity to the context; the importance of considering a wide range of factors in a combined way in explaining agency form; the consideration that ‘modern’ agencies are varied and not standardized solutions; the limitations that apply to the use of the so-called ‘tripod’ model of agency.
Disaggregation, autonomy and re-regulation, contractualism: public agencies in Italy (1992-2005)
FEDELE, PAOLO;GALLI, DAVIDE;ONGARO, EDOARDO
2007
Abstract
The spread of semi-autonomous organisations for the execution of public functions has attracted academic interest. There seems to be two main research agendas, one investigating broad issues of autonomy and control of Non-Departmental Public Bodies, another one focused on the narrower phenomenon of executive agencies. Especially the latter may benefit from the operationalisation of commonly used concepts like: disaggregation, autonomy and re-regulation, conctractualism. The paper adopts an analytical framework based on these concepts to investigate executive agencies in Italy. Findings of interest for the international scholarly debate include: the limitations to the consideration of conctractualism as an autonomous unit of analysis; the influence of the politico-administrative context on the actual utilisation of performance contracting; the (apparently limited) role of re-regulation, and its sensitivity to the context; the importance of considering a wide range of factors in a combined way in explaining agency form; the consideration that ‘modern’ agencies are varied and not standardized solutions; the limitations that apply to the use of the so-called ‘tripod’ model of agency.
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