Previous studies have shown that agencification tends to undermine political control within a government portfolio. However, doubts have been raised as regards the robustness of these findings. In this paper we document that agency officials pay significantly less attention to signals from...

The paper starts by discussing what I think most students of government hold to be the most characteristic features of development over the last couple of decades; namely ‘agencification’ and fragmentation of national governments. Interestingly, when dealing with the problems such a...

Establishing separate executive bodies of a confederation or of a nascent federation of states seems in many respects to be the ‘hard case’ of institution-building. This article argues that ‘agencification’ at the EU level is basically about increasing the potential for more uniform...

The High Authority, later the European Commission, was indeed an organisational innovation. Unlike international governmental organisations, it should from its very inception be able to act independently of national governments. Its autonomy was to be justified by its role as a promoter of the...

The cabinets of the European Commission are seen to play a crucial role in the policy-making process. So far, however, they have in many respects remained ‘black boxes’. In this paper we ‘unpack’ the demographic composition in terms of nationality of the three latest commissions’...

The jury is still out with respect to whether 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...

The jury is still out with respect to whether 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...

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...

Nasjonale administrasjoner, eller mer korrekt, deler av nasjonale administrasjoner, har i noen grad også blitt deler av hva vi kan kalle en felles EU-administrasjon. Dette synes å henge sammen med to institusjonelle utviklingstrekk: På det europeiske nivået er det konsolideringen av...

Nasjonale administrasjoner, eller mer korrekt, deler av nasjonale administrasjoner, har i noen grad også blitt deler av hva vi kan kalle en felles EU-administrasjon. Dette synes å henge sammen med to institusjonelle utviklingstrekk: På det europeiske nivået er det konsolideringen av...