The agency landscape in Hungary: An empirical survey of nondepartmental public bodies 2002-2006
György Hajnal
ECOSTAT, Department of Public Administration Research
e-mail: gyorgy.hajnal@externet.hu
Krisztián Kádár
Prime Minister’s Office, E-Government Centre
e-mail: krisztian.kadar@ekk.gov.hu
Work in progress. Please do not cite without permission.
Abstract
The study pursues three overall ambitions. Firstly, it seeks to give a data-rich quantitative
description of the Hungarian agency field and its dynamics not available so far. Secondly, it wishes
to contribute to existing explanations of agency formation by replicating some previous pieces of
research empirically testing a particular proposition, the so-called credible commitment hypotheses.
Thirdly, it gives a detailed analysis of Hungarian agencies’ structural dynamics in order to reveal –
and, to some extent, interpret – the structural processes hidden from a (comparative) static
perspective. The empirical basis of the work is a data base of Hungarian central government
organisations. The temporal scope of the data is the 2002-2006 period. Two data sets – one
involving agencies having existed in the four years under study and another one involving structural
change events having occurred to those agencies – are analysed using various statistical and
computer aided qualitative data analysis techniques.
1 Introduction
The breaking up of large, integrated central government bureaucracies and the increasing
creation of, and reliance on, single-purpose, task-specific organisations structurally separated
from their parent ministry has been an emphatic direction – and, as some say: the most
proposition (Moynihan 2006) – of administrative reforms. In an international perspective this
statement holds true not only with regards to the practice of public management reform but,
increasingly, also with regards to the academic world.
Interestingly however, Hungary seems to be an exception to the above general pattern:
throughout the past 10-15 years the proliferation process of non-departmental public bodies
1
seemed to have moved forward only modestly; moreover, agencification remained a relatively
hazy and less emphatic topic of administrative reform agendas and academic interest alike1.
Expanding a bit on this last point, the lack of even very basic systematised knowledge, be it
academic or more practice-related, on agencies – and, more generally, on the universe of central
government organisations – has been a peculiar feature of the Hungarian context. It is telling,
for example, that at the time of writing no registry – or even a simple list – of central
government public administration organisations exists (except, of course, for ministries); and
the situation has been quite similar throughout the past almost two decades.
In response to the above circumstances in general, and in particular to the disturbing lack of
information – let alone precise data of any kind – on how the process of agencification travelled
in Hungary in the past decade, we set out to collect, systematise and analyse basic organisational
data on the Hungarian central government sector. To this end, we created a genuine data base
containing all central government civil service organisations in the period of 2002 to 2006, along
with an exhaustive catalogue of all change events having occurred to the structural features of
these organisations.
According to a useful clustering given by Pollitt et. al. (2004 p. 13) most theories and models of
agencies centre around three questions: (i) why are there agencies? (ii) how can agencies best be
steered by their parent ministries? and (iii) under what conditions are agencies expected to
perform well vs. poorly? The present study can be located mostly in the first one of these
clusters of theory: on the basis a series of statistical as well as computer assisted qualitative
analyses, organisational data obtained from our newly created data base were put into use to
realise three overall ambitions.
-
Firstly, the study seeks to improve the present situation described above by giving a
qualitative as well as a data-rich quantitative description of the patterns and dynamics of
the Hungarian agency field. This ambition, in and by itself, doesn’t intend to directly
contribute to existing theorising on agencies. However, in our view this general
descriptive ambition is justified by the fact that, as already mentioned, the current state
and the recent development of the agency field in Hungary – and, more generally
indeed, in much of the new EU member states – is barely known and described in
detail. Therefore this research intends to be an early step towards unveiling the agency
dynamics of this part of Europe.
-
Our second question concerns why policymakers choose, in certain cases, to create
bureaucratic structures at arm’s length from the core executive and why in some other
cases they refrain from doing so. This is a particularly intriguing question in the
Hungarian context where – as both popular wisdom and everyday first-hand experience
suggest – practically everything is over-politicised and thus is characterised by an
overwhelming pursuit by politicians to control as much of the implementation
apparatuses and processes as possible.
-
Finally, on the basis of an empirical analysis of organisational change dynamics it wishes
to draw some inferences regarding politicians’ main driving motifs of more or less
constantly re-drawing the structural arrangements of agencies; or, put it differently, to
constantly reshuffling them. The “added value”, in terms of relevance, of this question
comes from another peculiar feature of the Hungarian politico-administrative system.
Namely, according to the authors’ impression – which is, in the absence of international
1 Throughout the study – and in congruence with much of relevant (European) scholarship –, when using the
terms ‘agency’ and – in an interchangeable manner – ‘non-departmental public body (NDPB)’ we refer to
organizations that are (i) “set up by a public law instrument (such as a statute, law, constitution, ministerial order or
a formal decision of cabinet or minister)”, (ii) structurally, to some extent, separated from the parent
ministry/organization, though (iii) directly subordinated to a ministry or the cabinet; and (iv) not corporate
bodies/commercial enterprises (Pollitt et al. 2004 pp. 8-10, Verhoest et al. 2006 p. 2).
2
comparative data, not expressed as a hypothesis, let alone claim – that the extent of
organisational volatility in central government organisations is unusually and rather
dysfunctionally high.
These questions will be examined on the empirical basis of a data base of Hungarian public
administration organisations between 2002 and 2006, developed genuinely for the purpose of
this research. Although the database contains all (meaning both central, territorial/county selfgovernment and local self-government) public administration organisations this research utilises
only data on central government organisations.
The fundamental approach of this research to the above questions emphasises the formal legally
defined, formal-institutional features of organisations; put – although a little bit over-simplified
but – briefly: mostly organisational features appearing in formal-legal terms are taken into
account.
The above general ambitions are pursued in the following structure. Section 2 gives a
description of the agency landscape in Hungary; after some introductory, background
information on the broader institutional context it describes and analyses the legal-institutional
framework in which agencies operate(d), and, finally, briefly assesses existing scholarship on
Hungarian agencies.
Section 3 describes the empirical basis and the analytical tools used in the research. The
following three sections deal with the three research ambitions outlined above. Thus Section 4
goes on to give a quantitative description of the agency field. This description offers a
comparative static view by displaying the prevalence of various types of agencies in the
examined period, years 2002 to 2006. Section 5 presents the analyses used to test a particular
explanation of agency creation: the credibly commitment hypothesis.
The next section goes on to examine the dynamics of structural change in agency type
organisations. As a starting point the section argues that an intertemporal – as opposed to
international – comparative view of examining organisations might offer significant advantages
in terms of the validity and soundness of conclusions achieved. It then introduces and
operationalises the concept of organisational change and describes the method of analysing
change events, and concludes with presenting the main findings. Finally, Section 7 draws some
conclusions from findings presented in the earlier sections.
2 Agencies in Hungary: An introduction
2.1
The legal-institutional landscape
2.1.1 The basic structure of Hungarian government
The Hungarian central government subsystem is divided into ministries (currently, there are 12
of them, including the Prime Minister’s Office). At the core of this subsystem one finds the
Prime Minister’s Office. Ministries are chiefly responsible for policy making while most of the
implementation tasks – especially those having a territorial dimension – are carried out by
NDPB’s/agencies (albeit there are important exceptions to the above role, such as centralised
public procurement, which is located in the Prime Minister’s Office).
There is no single uniform law on the organisations of the executive branch. The basic legal
provisions pertaining to the government are laid out in the Constitution, detailed procedures are
specified in the government’s procedural rules. The law provides for a listing of the ministries
while the ministerial competences are regulated by government decrees. Within the limits
specified by law the government has extensive powers to establish the government structure.
3
The local governmental system is a two-tier one involving, at the middle tier, nineteen counties
and the capital city Budapest, and, at the lowest, municipal tier almost 3200 local governments
governed by elected councils. Local governments are responsible for another broad set of public
service provision tasks, including kindergarten, primary school, basic health, and local physical
infrastructure services.
2.1.2 Agencies and agencification in the post-1990 period
In the below paragraphs we give an overview of the agency landscape of post-transition
Hungary, with a particular focus on the clarification of the legal-institutional status and the
elaboration of a typology of agencies. This typology is important because the resulting types of
legal status will play an important role in subsequent analyses.
The features of the post-1990 period’s institutional landscape were originally rooted in the
communist setup of state administration with centrally directed hierarchical structures covering
a broad range of public functions. Basically, agencies were established either to perform a new
task undertaken newly by the government, or by extracting specialised tasks from the ministries
or other bodies. Prior to the transition, the political determinants took substantial effects on the
agency structure. If the party/executive leadership wanted to have direct – and thus simple –
control over any field, it had been declared as government responsibility, for which a new
agency was created (as it happened in the cases of the Hungarian Television Broadcasting and
the News Agency). The organisational standards and legal conditions of establishing agencies
have not been clarified due to the missing common legal or even theoretical concept.
Immediately after the transition the inherited set of agencies has changed mostly according to
political considerations. Continually, the agency creations or alterations were implemented along
diverse patterns, moreover, the opportunities of saving ministerial functions to the background
institutions have been widened broadly by the presence of alternative legal entities (state-owned
enterprises, not-for-profit public foundations, chambers etc.). By the absence of legal
constraints, the nineties preserved and more or less ignored the mushrooming structures where
the ministries (sectors) could build up their “empires” without substantive external (political or
administrative) oversight while the agencies could look for ways to weaken their dependency.
Thus, while on the level of ministries the legal/constitutional regulation and the traditions
narrow the government’s opportunities in establishing and forming organisations, the lower
levels of the organisational hierarchy – lacking in such obstacles – ended up in a rather opaque
proliferation. Both academics and practitioners were dissatisfied with the unregulated character
of agency universe, and persistently argued in favour of common legal standards as a token of
effective central government structure.
There has been, however, one minor motion regarding the regulation of agencies; the
2040/1992 Government Resolution, which categorized the agencies into three groups.
Nevertheless, it did not classify the particular bodies themselves accordingly. This Resolution
could not settle the problem – perceived by many – of unregulated proliferation of agencies,
because it was not to be applied to bodies created previously (no retroactive force), and it
allowed deviations, exceptions to the features declared. As a result, the statutes of the agencies
don’t exactly/always reflect either the typology or the terminology of this piece of legislation.
Still, the three genres outlined in the Resolution are also applied in the literature dealing with
this subject.
The fact that this situation with regards to the lack of binding regulation of agency structure
remained unchanged until 2006 is proven by the recurrent (evergreen) subject of reforming
central state administration, announced in specific Government Resolutions on modernization
of public administration. This is well illustrated by the below table (see also Hajnal 2006).
4
1052/1999
1057/2001
1113/2003
1064/2004
Develop the guiding principles of establishing
agencies
Standardising and fine-tuning
categories of agencies
status
2013/1999
×
legal
2396/1997
Review (and divide) the jurisdictions and tasks of
ministries and agencies (in order to eliminate overlaps,
parallel structures), organisational retrenchment
the
1033/1995
1026/1992
Government Resolution
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
×
Source: authors’ compilation
By the late nineties, the New Public Management related trends turned visible by timidly
adapting OECD recommendations and formerly articulated reform agendas. The EU accession
driven criteria further gave an impetus towards organisational changes aiming at rationalization,
better performance and – as it will be shown in the findings – agencification. And still, the lack
of relevant regulation left the government and the ministries free to shape the institutional
structure as well as the powers and scope of competences. As a result they opted for different
models based on diverse bureaucratic, political and personal interests.
To sum it up, establishing agency-type entities have followed, like in a number of other
(especially non-Continental) countries, a very heterogeneous pattern. For this reason it is
extremely difficult to provide a comprehensive typology of the agencies. It is however possible
to identify their main distinctive features, bearing in mind that – using strict criteria – one may
find numerous exceptions. The classification of legal status laid down in the Government
Resolution mentioned above and applied also by the academics defines three types of agencies:
(a) organisations with nationwide competence2 (OHSZ);
(b) central bureaus (központi hivatal); and
(c) ministry bureaus (minisztériumi hivatal).
All three types of organizations are separate legal entities operating with nationwide competence
and perform some specialized public administration task(s). Unlike ministries, they do not have
legislative power (except for the OHSZ Central Statistical Office issuing legally binding
guidelines). Their key features are summarized in the below table.
Structural features
OHSZ
Central bureau
Ministry bureau
Founder/form of
founding document
(statute)
Parliament/Law
Government/Government
Decree
Minister/Ministerial
Decree
Superior organ
Cabinet
Ministry
Ministry
Appointment/dismissal of
the leader
- By the Cabinet/Prime
Minister
- By the Minister
- By the Minister
- for an indefinite period
- for an indefinite period
- for a term of 4-6 years
Remuneration of staff
(according to Law on
Civil Service)
Same as ministries’
Less than ministries’
Less than ministries’
Participation in the
governmental decision-
Direct*
Indirect
Not relevant
2
The term is misleading, as the other two categories have nationwide competence, too.
5
making
Budgetary status (position
in the Law on Budget)
Separate section in the
Law on Budget*
Subsection within the
Ministry’s section in the
Law on Budget
Not included explicitly in
the Budget
* Can be applied for a smaller set of OHSZs
Table 1.: Typology of agencies based on legal-structural features
This mapping of three types of agencies not only groups the characteristics of each, but more or
less predicts the extent of their autonomy, too as most or all of their distinctive features have
and effect on organisational autonomy. These features, or dimensions, are briefly reviewed as
follows.
Firstly, the extent, to which an organization is able to entrench itself from its politicoadministrative context may depend on the position of the underlying decisions in the hierarchy
of legal instruments regulation level. For example, the OHSZ is regularly founded by the
Parliament by a law, hence its statute (and the amendment thereof) involves the legislation
process. In contrast central bureaus are founded/modified/ended by Cabinet decisions while
the fate ministry bureaus can be simply decided by individual ministerial decisions.
Likewise, the issue whether it is the Cabinet or the minister who is charged with the supervision
over the agency has far-reaching significance. Naturally, the former has no appropriate
apparatus for directing an organisation effectively, thus by all means this kind of supervision is
less operative and powerful than that of the ministry.
From a functional perspective this is related to the fact that an OHSZ’s duties do not fall into
the portfolio of any ministry (as they were established for providing functions besides
ministries), therefore it is independent from the ministerial structure, as being typically
subordinated to the Cabinet. This implies the following with regards to its autonomy:
-
there is no ministry which could absorb its duties;
-
a designated minister bears only minor supervisory functions over the OHSZ, but (s)he
cannot issue instructions to carry out specific tasks or to rectify ones already taken;
-
its head is appointed and dismissed by the Prime Minister or the Cabinet, hence the
Prime Minister is responsible for the body’s activity before the Parliament;
-
the OHSZ can appeal directly to the Cabinet, and their leaders are invited to the Cabinet
Meeting, while the other agencies only through the parent ministries.
Unlike OHSZ’s, central bureaus’ duties fall into the portfolio of the parent ministry. Central
bureaus have no direct relation with the Cabinet. Ministry bureaus have no separate scope of
duties from that of the ministry’s. What differentiates them from the central bureaus is that hey
has no legally defined and addressed competence; it only performs the devolved/assigned
competence and duties of the ministry. This practically means that the minister – as opposed to
central bureaus – may freely reshuffle or even cease the ministry bureau on his/her own
decision. As ministry bureaus do not require by any pieces of legislation (law or government
decree) in order to be established, in practice the above mentioned features are often blurred,
therefore it is suggested to include the vague range of background institutes.
With regards to the shielding and legal entrenchment of managerial positions, in the case of
OHSZ’s, the leader is appointed for a term of 4 or 6 years, and can only be dismissed of
extraordinary reasons thus (s)he enjoys a significantly higher extent of employment security than
the leaders of most other agencies. Some of the most autonomous OHSZ’s gained some further
privileges in the field of shaping government policy, e.g. signing international treaties or directly
taking part in preparing draft bills.
6
With regards to budget procedures, a set of the most autonomous OHSZ’s are entitled to take a
direct role in the budgetary bargaining process (i.e., they directly negotiate with the finance
ministry). In contrast, central bureaus are represented in this process only via their minister,
while ministry bureaus are – as a general rule – simply not a party in the budget bargain as they
simply receive what the minister decides to allocate to the give agency. The extent of autonomy
differs also with regards to agencies’ ability to modify approved budgets.
To sum up, the three clusters of agencies can, with regards to their legally defined, structural
features, clearly ranked according to the extent of autonomy they enjoy: OHSZ’s are the most
autonomous while ministry bureaus the least autonomous entities, with central bureaus in
between them.
2.1.3 The 2006 changes
In an attempt to create some order amongst more than a decade of mushrooming of central
government organizations and organizational units – perceived by many as chaotic and
uncontrolled – in 2006 the Government initiated and the Parliament adopted a law regulating
the basic structural features of agencies3. Since the temporal scope of the empirical investigation
that follows later in the years between 2002 and 2006 these changes are not (or are only
marginally) reflected in our data. Therefore the overview is strongly focused on the key aspects
of the change as they further reveal some of the weaknesses that characterised the pre-2006
legal regulations on agencies.
This law stipulates that there are eight different types of central state administrative
organizations, out of which two fall within the scope of our agency concept. These are (i) the
government bureaus (“kormányhivatalok”) and (ii) the central bureaus (“központi hivatalok”).
The law stipulates exactly what kinds of managerial, or steering, competencies there are with
regards to these two classes of agencies; which is the reporting entity (i.e. the one that the given
organization reports to), what the supervisory competencies are, and in what respect should the
organization preserve its autonomy.
2.1.3.1 Government bureaus
The law enumerates the instances of this class of central government organizations.
Government bureaus (the law lists seven of them) are – so-called – supervised by a designated
minister. This supervision generally involves the following competencies:
(a) creation, reorganization and abolishment;
(b) employment of the bureau’s chief executive;
(c) monitoring of the bureau’s activities with regards to their legal and financial regularity,
professional soundness, and efficiency;
(d) approval of the organization’s book of rules;
(e) abatement of the bureau’s individual decisions and ordering a new procedure;
(f) requesting reporting in relation to the above mentioned issues.
Law on Central State Administrative Organizations and on the Legal Status of Cabinet Members and State
Secretaries (Law LVII/2006)
3
7
2.1.3.2 Central bureaus
Central bureaus are so-called “directed” by the designated minister. This direction involves all
the six competencies listed above as constituting “supervision”; in addition, however, it also
includes
(g) according to the relevant laws and regulations, ex-ante or ex-post approval of decisions
made by the bureau;
(h) instructing the bureau to carry out specific tasks or to rectify ones already taken;
(i) requesting reporting in all issues falling within the bureau’s competence.
The budget and the number of employable staff is determined by the reporting minister and the
minister of finance.
Currently, there are approximately 40 to 50 central bureaus in Hungary. Out of this set, there
are about 32 so-called deconcentrated organizations (i.e., having various territorial or local
offices) (Szigeti 2007).
In addition to the above legislative changes other, significant changes occurred in the
organisational reality of agencies, too. However, falling outside the temporal scope of our data
(and, thus, our study) these are also only mentioned, without further investigation.
2.1.4 Scholarship on Hungarian agencies
Hungarian Public Administration scholarship – as used in the English sense of the term – is
relatively modest in volume (Hajnal and Jenei 2007) in general as well as, specifically, with
regards to agencification. While much of the relevant literature dealt with legal-structural
regulations of agencies from a normative perspective, one of the few and early attempts at
empirically examining agencification experience is presented by Nyitrai (1994). His goal was to
describe the dynamics of OHSZ level related to transition of government (Nyitrai 1994). Nyitrai
classified the organizational changes of agencies into three clusters:
(a) cessation of agencies without successor, as a consequence of the political, economic and
social changes;
(b) creation of agencies without predecessor, as a result of newly emerged government
functions; and
(c) a change of name or status occurred, but their scope of duties are not affected by a new
function.
Facilitating the government’s modernization agendas, other authors (Mónus 1994, Verebélyi
1997) focused on the ways of standardizing the central state organisations offering
methodological assistance to the review of their tasks and legal competences. Others looked
beyond the types of organizations having historically evolved, and argued in favour of importing
new institutions, e.g. regulatory agencies (Horváth 2004, Nagy 2005).
Since 2000, major synthesizing works have been written due to the growing need for a law on
administrative organizations, which would define the conditions and measures of creating such
bodies (Balázs 2004, Vadál 2006, Kilényi 2006). The reform of central government in 2006 was
mainly supported by the comprehensive diagnosis and therapy recommendations, which directly
contributed to the draft bills (Sárközy 2006).
Two significant attempts have been made by scholars to generate a registry of public
administration organisations on the central level (Békefi, 2006) and on the territorial-local level
(Szigeti, 2007).
8
To briefly sum up, the agencification problem (i) attracted relatively little scholarly attention
throughout the past almost two decades, (ii) much or all of which was however directed to
issues of the legal regulations on their structural features; and (iii) the de facto developments
regarding agency formation and proliferation did not form the subject of any empirical work.
3 The research questions, the data and the method
3.1
Research questions and hypotheses
The general ambitions of the paper were set out in the introductory section. Put briefly, they
were
(a) giving a rich empirical description of the Hungarian agency field in the period under
study;
(b) contributing to theories of agency creation; and
(c) describing – and, possibly, developing some explanations of – the seemingly chaotic and
constant flux of structural changes among agencies.
Ad (a):
The first one of the ambitions relates to (i) a broad and relatively unfocused, general description
of Hungary’s agency landscape and its development, (ii) the pinpointing of certain interesting
patterns and (iii) the development of some plausible explanations thereof; consequently, this
part of the work does not require much theoretical or methodological treatment.
Ad (b):
Contrary to this, the second one of the above goals is partly based on/refers to, and partly
intends to contribute to, theories of agencification. Our basic question – why policymakers
choose, in certain cases, to create bureaucratic structures at arm’s length from the core executive
and why in some other cases they refrain from doing so – attracted much scholarly attention
(for some broad overviews see Pollitt et al. 2004 pp. 12-18 and Wettenhall 2005). Observing the
empirical limitations of the current research we examine one candidate explanation: the socalled credible commitment hypothesis.
At the heart of the credible commitment hypothesis (Majone 1997) lies the argument that in
order to be effective certain policies need to be credible since in a world of increasing
international exposure the most traditional and “reliable” policy instrument – coercion – may no
longer be available. Certain policy sectors are more prone to this problem than others. For
example, this is the case in newly opened markets requiring policymakers to attract new
investors, which is clearly not a goal to be accomplished by coercion (Yesilkagit and Christensen
2006 p. 6 citing Majone 1997 and Gilardi 2002). The need for credibility is an especially burning
issue in the case of utilities privatisation and liberalisation (Gilardi 2002 p. 877).
Politicians in this regard largely lack credibility since in order to politically survive in a political
market characterised by short-term cycles they have to orientate themselves to the political
imperatives of the day, which greatly increases the political hazard of long-term international
investment. The most straightforward way of creating credibility – and thereby effective policies
– is, the argument goes, to delegate decision making powers to institutionally entrenched
regulators isolated from direct, short-term political influence.
There may be, of course, many ways, in which the credible commitment hypothesis can be
operationalised and tested. One – relatively simple thus “popular” – way is to compare the
presence of autonomous regulatory agencies in the field of economic vs. non-economic (social)
9
regulation (Gilardi 2002, Yesilkagit and Christensen 2006). Albeit the theoretical argument
seems well-founded these empirical results are somewhat controversial: the former research
focusing on seven western European countries found empirical support to the hypothesis, while
the latter piece resulted in its rejection (or non-confirmation) on the basis of Danish, Dutch and
Swedish data.
Hungary, being one of the European transition countries with an internationally particularly
exposed economy is a context abundant in regulatory tasks centering around newly opened and
internationally exposed markets, privatised public utilities/services sectors, and the economic
imperative of attracting foreign (direct) investment. With a grain of exaggeration one may say
that if there was only one country where the credible commitment hypothesis finds support it
must be Hungary (as opposed to, for example, western or northern European countries). Beside
some technical issues this is why empirically examining the credibility hypothesis in the
Hungarian context is particularly relevant, both from a practical and from a theoretical
perspective.
Ad (c):
As already mentioned, a peculiar feature of Hungarian agencies – and, probably, of the entire
central government sector – is their significant structural volatility (although, unfortunately, this
claim is not substantiated by “hard” comparative evidence it is based on widespread agreement
among academics, practitioners and the broader public). While the previous, second research
question is connected to a longer and fruitful – although not conclusive – tradition of scholarly
interest, to the best of our knowledge using organisational change events as units of analysis is
quite rare4. In congruence with the structural focus of the present study, we conceptualise an
organisational change event as a change in one or more basic structural features of the
organisation in relation to its environment. The concept is further operationalised in the next
sub-section.
In the absence of a robust body of conceptual and theoretical preliminaries the task of analysing
the agencies’ structural change patterns resembles to that of grounded theorising, whereby those
concepts and theories are expected to emerge directly out of the in-depth, qualitative
examination and analysis of the empirical material (Strauss and Corbin 1990). Specifically, our
ambition simply relates to
-
finding and/or creating the concepts and terms having sufficient descriptive power to
grasp organisational changes, and
-
suggesting some partial explanations of some of the patterns found in the data.
3.2
The data
Organisational data used in the analyses come from the following kinds of sources:
-
The “skeleton” of the database is KÖZIGTAD (see the details in 3.2.1.3).
These data have been supplemented by two kinds of expert inputs:
-
“Hard data” gained from legal databases on such variables as ministry affiliation or
structural change events; and
-
Judgemental information – gained from expert ratings performed by two independent
experts.
One notable exception is the set of research efforts centred on the organisational data base of the University
of Bergen and the Norwegian Social Science Data Services (Lagreid et al. 2003, Rolland and Aagotnes 2003).
4
10
3.2.1 Organisational data
3.2.1.1 What types of organisations are in the database?
In accordance with our earlier definition the database contains organisations, which operate (a)
with nationwide competence, (b) subordinated to the government (either a ministry or the
cabinet as such), (c) directly under the ministerial/cabinet level (i.e., entities on the third level or
the organisational hierarchy are excluded); (d) created by a public law act (legal measure or
formal decision of the cabinet or a minister) and (e) staffed (mostly) by civil servants. These
definitional elements result in excluding from the agency database
(a) territorial units of agencies;
(b) so-called autonomous state administrative organisations, which are accountable
to the Parliament, such as National Board for Radio and Television, Hungarian
Competition Authority etc.;
(c) departments within ministries (thus those NDPBs with nationwide competence
subordinated to an OHSZ or a central bureau form a third level and not
included in the database);
(d) certain types of entities (in spite of their agency-like nature) such as private and
non-governmental organisations (even if publicly funded), state owned
enterprises, the (national HQs of) armed bodies, associations, or public utility
companies (KHT’s).
(e) organisations not falling under the organisational scope of the Act on Civil
Service (Law XXIII/1992) such as e.g. the police, the armed forces, or the socalled background institutions staffed by public servants.
As a result of these restrictions, the definition covers the total of 50, 56, 60, 61, 57 organisations
in five years from 2002 to 2006, respectively. The time period experienced lively changes in the
government structure by the following milestones. The data of 2002 largely reflect the set-up of
the centre-rightist Orbán administration, while the winning Socialist-Liberal coalition’s
changeover was realised in the next year of 2004. With shake-ups in the government the
incoming Prime Minister Gyurcsány has launched some organisational changes on the central
level. Hungary’s accession to the European Union in the same year also implied actions towards
agencification. However, the re-elected centre-leftist coalition of Socialist-Liberals (2006) has
determined itself upon the retailoring of the central government structure (as no-one did
before), the data of 2006 are too early to indicate these massive changes.
3.2.1.2 Data
The organisational database involves the following variables:
(a) Name of the organisation;
(b) Total number of staff: the staff consists of every civil servant from the senior
officials to the assistant employees;
(c) Ministerial affiliation: the ministry supervising the given organisation;
(d) Legal status: as we elaborated in Section 2, the organisations have been classified
according to their main distinctive features into the categories of OHSZ, central
and ministry bureau (it is important to note, that the category of ministry
bureaus is expanded artificially in order to include the remainders; i.e., if an
11
organisation, which fulfils the definition criteria, is not OHSZ and is not central
bureau, then it is ministry bureau);
(e) Primary COFOG function: the functional breakdown of government functions
was developed by the OECD and adopted as a standard in national accounts;
the classification was made to the first (one-digit) level of COFOG
(f) Regulatory target group: agencies with regulatory function5 have further been
classified as they target business vs. non-business sectors.
3.2.1.3 Sources of organisational data
The primary input to the database is gained from KÖZIGTAD, a system of civil service registry
used by the government in annual planning. It contains data on both the number of staff and
basic payments and allowances of public administration organisations. It is not a day-to-day
tracking system, has a one year period of data collection, so each year provides a snapshot of 1
September.
As to the basic structural features of the agencies – such as it legal status and ministry affiliation
– the main analytical tools were the pieces of legislation which established the organisations. As
mentioned in Section 2, the lack of clear legal definitions and compulsory legal constraints
caused deficient and disordered regulation, subsequently, the statutes rarely declare the legal
status explicitly. As a substitute, the main distinctive features laid down in the statute served the
basis for identifying and classifying the organisation (the entity of directing/supervision, the
extent of competences, etc.). In absence of a statute exclusively focusing on the agency at hand
the legal status and the ministerial affiliation was be determined on the basis by other relating
laws or organisational and functional regulations of the organisation itself.
For the COFOG as well as for the regulatory target group classification further desk research
(website and literature) was necessary. For the sake of fine-tuning, to experts – working
independently from one another – were involved in the rating of functions. Conflicting ratings
amounted to about 10%. These deviations (much of which were attributable to mistyping or
lack of some factual information) were then jointly reviewed and eliminated.
3.2.2 Structural change events
3.2.2.1 What kind of structural change data are in the database?
As we noted earlier, the organisational database can be best conceived of as a series of still
photographs of the organisational domain under study; thus, in principle, on the same day (1
September) of each year a snapshot view of Hungarian agencies is created, whereby each
organisational entity is recorded in the database as a separate observation (record), along with its
main structural features.
However, these consecutive snapshot views – and the entities therein – are not independent
from one another:
(a) certain organisations can be clearly pinpointed on the individual pictures as different
instances of the same – unchanged – organisations;
(b) other organisations are in a more complex relationship with one another; for example,
Organisation X on PictureT is some kind of a predecessor of Organisation Y on Picture
PictureT+1;
Regulation is understood as “the public administrative policing of a private activity with respect to rule
prescribed in the public interest” (Mitnick 1980 p. 7 cited by Yesilkagit and Christensen 2006 p. 9).
5
12
(c) finally, there are cases when Organisation X “suddenly” appears on Picture T without any
predecessor, or disappears (does not appear), although it was definitely there on
PictureT-1 and PictureT-2.
Despite any such possible appearance it is far from being a trivial issue which organisations are
deemed (a) identical and unchanged, (b) identical but changed, or (c) started anew / ended
without successor. In the final analysis, this is the central question underlying the problem of
determining the organisational change concept. The problem is visualised in the below figure.
Year T-1
Year T
Year T+1
Organisation 1
Organisation 12
Organisation 26
Organisation 2
Organisation 13
Organisation 27
Organisation 3
Organisation 14
Organisation 28
Organisation 4
Organisation 15
Organisation 29
…
…
…
Organisation N
Organisation P
Organisation Q
The columns represent the organisations, which have to be linked together if necessary. There
are three possible outcomes of this exercise:
(a) In line with the predominantly formal, structural focus of this study, stability is
conceptualised as the lack of structural change. That is, if all major structural features of
two organisations are the same then the two organisations are deemed different
instances of the same, unchanged organisational entity. This is represented by the solid
line arrow. The defining structural features are operationalised as (i) the name, (ii) the
legal status and (iii) the ministry affiliation of the organisation. If this type of link
between two organisational entities can be established there is no change event
associated with these entities.
(b) In some other cases we find that although one or more of the three central structural
features are changed still Organisation(X) can be conceived of as a predecessor of
Organisation(Y). Now the question is what the preconditions of establishing such a
relationship are. In the present study such an “inheritance relationship” is present if
there is a significant commanility between the two organisations in terms of the staff
employed by them. In other words, Organisations (X) and (Y) are in an “inheritance
relationship” if a significant chunk of X’s staff are employed by (or are transferred to) Y.
This kind or relationship is represented in the figure as a dotted line arrow.
(c) Finally, if neither a relationship of Type (a) nor Type (b) can be established for a given
entity it is said to be genuinely founded or completely dissolved (depending on the
direction of its “inheritance” relationship).
13
In the focus of our analysis is cases of Type (b) and (c); these cases are called “change events”.
An additional question regards the definition of the unit of analysis; namely, what constitutes
one, as opposed to two or three, change events? In the terminology applied in this study, one
change event is defined as a contiguous set of organisations and inheritance relationships. For
example, Organisations 2, 3 and 13, Organisations 12 and 26, or Organisations 13, 14, 27, 28
and 29 are bounded within a single one change event.
In the database, each change event is described by the following variables:
-
input (i.e., affected, pre-existing) organization(s), if any;
-
output (i.e., affected, resulting) organization(s), if any;
-
the year, in which the change took place;
-
a brief open-ended description of the change event.
3.2.2.2 Sources of change data
The primary sources of change data were legal regulations defining the basic structural features
of the agency at hand. These pieces of legislation (statutes) have been amended on average two
or three times a year, entailing some minor as well as major changes. On the basis of these
statutes all changes affecting the three basic structural features of the agency – that is, its name,
legal status and/or supervising ministry – could be detected. The thematic and chronologic
query options of the electronic database of Hungarian legislation (Complex Jogtár) facilitated
the task to a large extent.
3.3
The method
Analyses related to the first and the second research question – that is, to the description of the
agency field, and to the testing of the credible commitment hypothesis – followed, more or less,
the usual way of quantitative, statistical analyses. Firstly, records for each agency and for each
year under study were compiled and exported into a single data file (the descriptions of the data
files are given in Annex 1). Most of the subsequent analyses were carried out using SPSS 11.0,
apart from a few operations where the complex nature of the data management task
necessitated the reliance on SQL database operations in the original database.
In contrast, the analysis of organisational change data followed different routes. In this regard,
two kinds of analytical approaches were utilised:
(a) Computer aided qualitative data analysis supplemented by a simple statistical analysis of
the coded data, and
(b) Frequency tables produced directly from the database using SQL operations.
Ad (a):
Data records describing change events were, like it was the case with organisational data,
compiled in the original database. However, the subsequent qualitative analysis of the exported
data took place using the Qualrus computer aided qualitative data analysis software package. In
the course of this analysis all so-called text segments – each corresponding to one change event
– were carefully read and, if necessary, several times re-read in order to identify typical issues
emerging out of them and contributing to describing and understanding them.
It is important to mention that – as our initial assumption was reinforced in the course of the
analysis – it seemed both practically difficult and conceptually problematic to cluster change
14
events in a category system consisting of mutually exclusive and (with regards to all,
theoretically possible change events) jointly exhaustive categories. Many change events consisted
of a complex series of loosely (if at all) related structural alterations6; moreover, the way these
were – or were not – tied together in a single decision often depended on purely accidental
factors. Therefore it was neither wise nor possible to look for mutually exclusive and jointly
exhaustive categories describing change events; rather, we were looking for emergent motifs
grasping certain important aspects of change events, whereby one change event can be
described by one or more such motifs.
The qualitative analysis proceeded in a case-by-case, iterative manner. The process of
identifying, labelling, grouping, re-labelling and re-grouping of change motifs lasted until a finegrained typology of motifs (not change events!) – consisting of conceptually clear and mutually
exclusive categories – emerged. An important guiding principle of this process was (i) achieving
as sharp as possible conceptual demarcation between the various emerging analytical categories,
meanwhile (ii) maximising their descriptive power and theoretical relevance. Some additional
details of this coding procedure – sometimes referred to as “open coding” (Ryan-Bernard 2002)
or “qualitative coding” (Kelle 1997) and much resembling to the procedural prescriptions of
grounded theory (Strauss–Corbin 1990) – are given in the section on findings.
While some of the analytical results (outputs) come from the qualitative analysis software, the
coding results were exported into a data file and analysed in SPSS 11.0 using the regular
statistical analysis procedures. The description of the change data file is given in Annex 3.
Ad (b):
In order to produce certain kinds of information database operations, rather than “normal”
statistical procedures, had to be relied on. This was the case, in particular, with regards to
calculating the proportions of so-called “stable organisations” across various sectors/subsets of
agencies – the term “stable organisation” referring to those ones which did not undergo any
structural change throughout the examined period. Some further clarification and justification
for this type of analysis – partially relying on findings gained from previous analysis – will be
given in the relevant sub-section.
4 The organisational universe
4.1
Prevalence of agencies and agency types
In 2002 the incoming Socialist-Liberal government started its parliamentary cycle with fifty
agencies. In the subsequent year this figure has rapidly risen to 61 in 2005; this trend seems to
be consistent with the markedly activist, generously distributive attitude of the new (Medgyessy)
cabinet having been in office from 2002 to 2004. In the subsequent year of 2006, however, this
trend took a sharp change and the overall number of agencies has sunk to 57. As it can be seen
most of the 2002 to 2005 increase occurred to the most autonomous type of agencies, OHSZ’s.
The new Socialist-Liberal cabinet starting its parliamentary cycle in Spring 2006 rapidly
decreased this number, whereby the number of OHSZ’s sunk, within one year, from 23 to 18
(note that all data refer to the situation as of 1 September).
6 One may think of such change events as, for example, Agency X being divided into two, one part being
reintegrated into the parent ministry, and the other part being merged with another agency and the resulting new
entity horizontally transferred under the supervision of another ministry, at the same time changing its legal status
from a more to a less autonomous one.
15
Legal status
2002 2003 2004 2005 2006
OHSZ
14
17
19
23
18
Central bureau
26
28
28
25
24
Ministry bureau
10
11
13
13
15
TOTAL
50
56
60
61
57
Table 2.: Frequencies of various agency forms between 2002 and 2006
At the other end of the autonomy spectrum ministry bureaus kept on, through the entire
period, to exhibit a modest but constant increase in number. It is the central bureaus, which
exhibited a large degree of stability with regards to the overall number of organisations.
The above trends also appear if – instead of organisation counts – staff sizes are used as
indicator of organisational weight. As it is shown in the below figure the sharp reversal of the
growing trend among OHSZ’s occurred in 2005, one year after the office-taking of the new
cabinet of the ruling Socialist-Liberal coalition (the first Gyurcsány cabinet, 2004-2006).
Following an almost 40% growth between 2002 and 2005, within one year the total OHSZ staff
decreased by about 800 (or more than 10%). Central bureaus followed a partly different trend
by producing a 15% growth during the first three periods but avoiding the staff decline in the
last one.
In contrast to these patterns, however, total staff of ministry bureaus remained rather stable
throughout the entire period.
8000
7000
Total number of employees
6000
5000
4000
Legal status of org.
OHSZ
3000
Central bureau
2000
2002
Ministry bureau
2003
2004
2005
2006
Figure 1.: Staff employed by agencies broken down by legal status7
7 It is noted that there are some problems of validity with Közigtad staff number data. Namely, while the
territorial/local units of most deconcentrated agencies appear in the database as separate entities (along with their
own staff size etc.), in the case of certain other deconcentrated agencies this is not so. In this latter case, field
offices do not appear as separate entities, and their staff appears in the staff size figure of the central (national)
head office. In other words, some (national-level) agencies’ staff size include the field staff, and some
deconcentrated offices’ staff does not appear in the data. It is impossible to trace the roots of this difference as it is
partly rooted in some fuzzy idiosyncrasies of the Hungarian public legal system, and – predominantly – in simple
legislative/codification and administrative/data management errors.
Still we do use staff data for the above, descriptive analyses. This decision is underpinned by the following
arguments. (i) It is typically the smaller and less significant agencies, which exhibit the above problem; staff data of
16
One may ask why this sharp difference between ministry bureaus on the one hand, and central
bureaus and OHSZ’s, on the other, exist. On the basis of the data presented so far an emerging
hypothesis is that ministry bureaus, being at the “lower end” of the agency hierarchy in terms of
autonomy, are not so much prone to play the role of political spoil:
-
As a starting point one may say that being a relatively direct extension of ministry
hierarchies ministry bureaus usually perform rather technical functions, whereas the
other two clusters of agencies – and especially OHSZ’s – deal with overarching policies
not fitting under the jurisdiction of any ministry, thereby creating a much larger room
for organisational/political manoeuvre.
-
It follows from the above that ministry bureaus as the less autonomous type of agencies
form a more or less inherent part of the supervising minister’s organisational
Hintergrund (as opposed to being exposed to the empire-building desire of a broader
selection of party strongmen).
-
Another difference among the three types of agencies – potentially explaining the above
patterns – relates to the prestige and salary attached to the position of the agency
director, which is much more appealing in the case of OHSZ’s and central bureaus.
Consequently, these types of agencies are more attractive targets decisionmakers tying to
find/create an appropriate “shelter” of fired/unwanted but still “important” cadres
customarily called as “parachutists”.
In the light of additional empirical evidence we will come back to this issue in the section on
organisational change and stability.
4.2
Policy areas served by the agencies
A breakdown of agencies according to their primary function (using the COFOG classification)
for the various years is given below. In order to condense the data and thereby to make it more
comprehensible six COFOG classes having minimal weight/importance were suppressed into
one (“others”). These COFOG classes included those where (i) the number of agencies in the
given class was not more than two in any of the years and (ii) those where the number of total
staff did not exceed 50 in any of the years.
2002
GEN. PUBLIC SERV.
HEALTH
SOC. PROTECTION
GENERAL ECON. AFF.
SECTORAL ECON. AFF.
OTHERS
Total
n
14
2
1
7
19
6
49
Col %
28,6%
4,1%
2,0%
14,3%
38,8%
12,2%
100,0%
YEAR
2004
2003
n
16
3
1
8
19
9
56
Col %
28,6%
5,4%
1,8%
14,3%
33,9%
16,1%
100,0%
n
17
3
2
8
18
12
60
Col %
28,3%
5,0%
3,3%
13,3%
30,0%
20,0%
100,0%
2005
n
17
3
2
8
19
12
61
Col %
27,9%
4,9%
3,3%
13,1%
31,1%
19,7%
100,0%
2006
n
15
3
2
7
21
9
57
Col %
26,3%
5,3%
3,5%
12,3%
36,8%
15,8%
100,0%
Table 3.: Frequencies and relative frequencies of agencies according to their primary
COFOG function (2002-2006)
the really “weighty” and important deconcentrated agencies appear correctly. (ii) The distribution of this error
according to various grouping variables (such as legal status or COFOG function) is even; that is, there are not
association between the existence of data error and these grouping variables. (iii) Finally, staff data is key to
disentangling “real” changes from those omnipresent formal-structural changes.
17
Beside the (i) weighty presence of economic policy among agencies – altogether amounting, in
2002, to an absolute while since then to a relative majority of the agency population – and (ii)
the large stability of the agency distribution across COFOG classes it is the different extent of
variation in the number of agencies within individual classes that deserves attention. However,
the structural change patterns of agencies deserve – and will be subject to – more in-depth
analysis in the section on analysing change events.
5 Motifs of agency creation: examining the credible commitment
hypothesis
Briefly reiterating the claim to be tested, the credible commitment hypothesis predicts a larger
prevalence of autonomous regulatory agencies in the field of business regulation than in other
regulatory fields. The explanatory variable is thus the field, or target group, of regulation. As
outlined in Section 3 these data stem from expert ratings of each agency performed by two
independent experts thoroughly familiar with the Hungarian agency landscape, and with the
support of additional legislative information specifying the task portfolio of the different
agencies8.
The prevalence of various types of regulatory agencies is given in the following table.
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
Group Total
Regulation target group (two-clas s)
Non-business entities
Business entities
Count
Row %
Count
Row %
8
32,0%
17
68,0%
10
35,7%
18
64,3%
10
34,5%
19
65,5%
8
29,6%
19
70,4%
8
26,7%
22
73,3%
44
31,7%
95
68,3%
Group Total
Count
25
28
29
27
30
139
Row %
100,0%
100,0%
100,0%
100,0%
100,0%
100,0%
Table 4.: Frequencies and relative frequencies of regulatory agencies, broken down by
target group of regulation (2002-2006)
As the data reveal both the total number of regulatory agencies and the number of agencies
targeting business entities exhibited a modest but more or less steady increase throughout the
period.
The dependent variable – the extent of agency autonomy – is operationalised as the legal status
of the agency – OHSZ’s being the most and ministry bureaus the least autonomous entities,
central bureaus being in between the two. This operationalization is justified by the analysis of
these institutional types given in Section 2.
The concept of regulation was understood in the sense summarised by Mitnick (1980) and followed in the
Cobra surveys as “public administrative policing of (private) behaviour according to rules and laws”. The „target
group of regulation” was operationalised as the primary target group, as in many cases the regulatory activity
extended to both public and business actors. It is noted that in three cases (the Tax and Finance Authority, the
Traffic Authority and the Central Traffic Authority) the regulatory agency at hand had to be omitted from the
analyses as it was not possible to classify it into either one of the two classes of “business” and “non-business”
regulatory target groups.
8
18
The analytical tool used for testing the credible commitment hypothesis was cross-tabulation of
the two categorical variables and calculating Chi-square statistics. The result of this analysis is
shown in the below table.
% within REGCODE2 Regulation target group (two-clas s)
STATUS
Legal s tatus
OHSZ
Central bureau
Ministry bureau
Total
REGCODE2 Regulation
target group (two-class)
Business
Private
entities
entities
32,6%
11,4%
41,1%
52,3%
26,3%
36,4%
100,0%
100,0%
Total
25,9%
44,6%
29,5%
100,0%
Chi-Square Te sts
Pearson Chi-Square
Lik elihood Ratio
Linear-by-Linear
As soc iation
N of Valid Cases
Value
7,130a
7,906
5,298
2
2
As ymp.
Sig.
(2-sided)
,028
,019
1
,021
df
139
a. 0 c ells (,0% ) have expec ted count less than 5. The
minimum expec ted count is 11,40.
Table 5.: Results of Chi-square test (variables: Target group of regulation * Legal status
of agency)
The upper table shows the proportion of OHSZ’s, central bureaus and government bureaus
among business vs. non-business regulators: the proportion of the most autonomous type of
agencies (OHSZ) is definitely higher among business than among non-business regulators.
Likewise, the proportion of the least autonomous types of organisations (ministry bureaus) is
significantly higher among non-business than among business regulators.
To sum up, the data support the credible commitment hypothesis: the prevalence of the most
autonomous type of agencies (OHSZ) is larger while the prevalence of the least autonomous
type of agencies (ministry bureau) is smaller in the population of economic regulators than
among other types of regulators. This association – while being only relatively modestly strong –
is statistically significant9.
9 Since the measurement level of the two variables doesn’t reach interval level it is only for illustrative purposes
that we also calculated Pearson correlation coefficient between the two variables (non-economic regulation coded
as 1, economic regulation as 2; OHSZ coded as 1, central bureau as 2, and ministry bureau as 3). The correlation
coefficient was -0.196 with a significance level of p=0.021.
19
6 Change events in organisations
6.1
The significance of structural changes in understanding agencification
In economics and related sciences it is customary to differentiate between data or measurement
of a “stock” versus “flow” character. Stock measurement is meaningful with regards to a single
one point time (e.g. the population of Country X on Date Y); stock data therefore can be
conceived of as a snapshot picture of the segment of the reality under study. Contrary to this,
flow data are meaningful only with regards to some given period of time (such as the number of
births in Country X in Year Y). Flow measurements are thus a kind of moving picture, grasping
dynamic processes taking place in time.
Most, or maybe all, studies of agencies rely exclusively on stock type data; in a number of cases
the analysis is extended either in space (international comparative data), in time (time
series/comparative static data), or both in time and space. While such extensions of the static,
snapshot view usually significantly increase the relevance and the scope of the analysis some
limitations cannot be trespassed that way.
The assumption that most of the essential features of decision making regarding agencies (their
creation, alteration, or closure) can be grasped by comparing two consecutive snapshot views of
the agency universe holds true only under some specific circumstances. To take a very simple
example, if in a given period a certain number of agencies Type A are changed to Type B and at
the same time the same amount of agencies Type B are changed to Type A, this dynamics will
not be visible using a comparative static view at all; the appearance will be that no significant
change took place in the given period. Of course this problem may emerge in more complex
ways too. To sum up, the comparative static analysis of change processes is a problem-free
approach only if those processes are coherent (i.e., they do not consist of controversial subprocesses of opposed sign) and unidirectional (no ups and downs happen between two
observations).
These preconditions, however, seemed not to hold true for the Hungarian central government
organizational landscape; the constant, turbulent and even contradictory waves of structural
change – often window-dressed as “reform” and at the same time becoming a kind of routine
operation of government – are far too much part of the daily reality of administration to allow
for their disregard. This starting hypothesis of the research – based on our familiarity with the
setting but not rooted in direct empirical evidence – was reinforced by the initial results of
organisational structural change data: in the four one-year periods between 2002 and 2006 we
recorded altogether 66 significant structural changes.
In the course of filling up the structural change database with change data it became clear very
soon that while most change events are relatively easy to describe, a number of them are often
quite complex, involving (i) even three to five organisations, and (ii) consisting of a number of
conceptually different – sometimes contradictory – change motifs (some of which being the
result of “real” organisational changes while other only those of more or less
broader/untargeted legislative changes). Therefore, it was illusory to apply any pre-conceived
category system to describe organisational changes.
The purpose of the qualitative analysis of change data we performed was twofold:
(a) firstly, it was necessary to develop a category system capable to giving a comprehensive,
powerful and conceptually coherent description of the change dynamics;
(b) secondly, by applying the emergent category system to the data we wished to reveal the
underlying patterns by (more traditional) statistical analysis.
The following two sub-sections describe the results of these two phases.
20
6.2
Change motifs
The qualitative analysis of structural change events resulted in thirteen categories, or change
motifs, emerging in the change data. These motifs – in qualitative analysis often called “codes”,
identified by a code name, and briefly explained by a brief code description – are summarised in
the next table.
Agencification (N=14): Part of a ministry is moved into an agency (either existing or
newly created).
Genuine organisation created (N=1): An organisation is created, much of its
parts/employees having been newly recruited (as opposed to transferred as units from
already existing organisations).
Horizontal shift (N=10): Organisation is put under the supervision of another (already
existing) ministry.
Insourcing to Ministry (N=7): Agency or its part is moved into a ministry.
Internal functional change (N=4): Change in the size or tasks of the organisation (not
affecting COFOG class), without any other type of significant change .
Merger (N=7): Re-shuffling of organisational boundaries, as a result of which the
number of agencies and other NDPB's decreases10.
Realm of civil service contracted (N=1): As a consequence of legislative changes the
scope of the CS regulation is narrowed so that the organisation at hand gets out of that
(but continues to exist).
Realm of civil service expanded (N=8): As a consequence of legislative changes the
scope of the CS regulation is broadened so that the organisation at hand gets in it (and
continues to exist there).
Relative autonomisation of organisation (N=5): Organisation or its part moves
"upwards" in the agency hierarchy
Relative de-autonomisation of organisation (N=3): Organisation or its part moves
"downwards" in the agency hierarchy
Secession (N=1): Re-shuffling of organisational boundaries, as a result of which the
number of agencies and other NDPB's increases.
Supervising ministry reorganised (name change) (N=14): The ministerial entity
supervising the organisation is transformed into a new one.
Transfer of organisational unit (N=3): A component part of an agency is transferred to
either another agency or to another type of NDPB. (Vertical transfer means
agencification or insourcing.)
Table 6.: A summary of change motifs identified by the qualitative analysis of change
events (code names, number of occurrences, and code descriptions)
10 There is a huge variety of cases when entire organisations and/or certain sub-units within organisations are
put together, forming a one or more new and/or altered organisations – which, again, can be either agencies,
ministries, or other types of organisations. In order to avoid the overly extension of the concept we restricted it to
(i) involve only those changes, as a result of which the total number of agencies decreases. Moreover, (ii)
absorption of an organisation or a unit into the parent ministry in considered as a different motif, namely,
“Insourcing to Ministry”. Vice versa, the same considerations are applied to the “Secession” of agencies.
21
Two important features of these categories have to be emphasised again:
-
Firstly, they are not derived by some pre-existing set of concepts or theories of the
observed phenomenon. Rather, they are the result of a careful examination and
conceptual disentangling of change events, and a constant comparison of emerging
concepts with data as well as with other concepts. This category system is therefore to
be conceived of not so much as a definite analytical result but much more as a plausible
and (hopefully) useful tool which however might, and in the possible case of adding
further change events to the data will surely have to, be modified and/or supplemented
by additional motifs.
-
Secondly, the individual motifs are neither mutually exclusive nor jointly exhaustive
(with regards to all theoretically possible change events). Consequently, a certain number
of change events received two, or even three codes11; moreover, it is definitely possible
that in some other set of organisational change events this typology would perform less
than optimally with regards to descriptive power.
While the emergent categories promised to be, in themselves, a suitable tool of describing and
analysing change events it seemed useful to put them under further conceptual scrutiny in order
to reveal underlying similarities and differences between them. By doing so, the thirteen codes
were grouped into four groups then, in the final analysis, two groups (signified by four so-called
second-order and two third-order codes). The result of the process is displayed in the below
figure:
Figure 2.: Grouping of change motifs: second- and third-order codes
In order to explain and/or justify the above grouping of the codes (as well as some further
decisions) some comments on individual codes are necessary as follows:
-
Dividing organisations into more units (secession) can typically be expected to create
more specialised and single-purpose organisations. Since the latter principle is a typical
prescription of NPM-type reforms it is considered a “pro-NPM” measure. This
consideration is reflected by changing the code name to “Secession/Specialisation”.
-
Likewise, mergers can be considered a step towards leading to larger, more integrated,
multi-task organisations, that is, the opposite direction. They are thus assumed to be a
step towards the direction opposing NPM principles. This assumption is reflected by
changing the code name to “Merger/Amalgamation”.
Some of the subsequent analyses focus on examining/comparing the relative frequencies (percentages), with
which various (sets of) codes have been applied to (various sets of) change events. Therefore, since one change
event can be characterised by more than one change motif, percentages do not add up to 100% (see also Table 6)
11
22
-
Some of the core concepts, to which the organisational change data were distilled down
fall outside the scope of the “structural change” concept as used in this study. In the
final code set presented above there was one such motif, namely: internal functional
change. This code refers to changes in the size or tasks of the organisation without any
other type of significant change. This type of change motifs was eliminated from further
analysis as it does not fall into its scope.
-
As a practical, possibly even opportunistic, decision, the other motif of the previous
group – operational responses – was also eliminated. The creation of a new organisation
“on green field” is a par excellence structural change; the omission of this category from
further analysis is only justified by (i) its minimal weight (a total of N=1 occurrence) and
(ii) the resulting simplification of the second-order category system.
To sum up, the input to the descriptive, statistical analyses provided in the next sub-section was
an organisational change database describing each change event by one or more element of an
eleven-category change motif system, each change motif belonging into either the “pro-NPM”,
the “anti-NPM”, or the “organisational-legal reshuffling” second-order group.
6.3
Patterns of change events
As already mentioned, sixty-six change events having occurred between 2002 and 2006 were
recorded. These change events were coded using the code system described above. Most change
events received only one code, but there were also some more complex ones requiring more
than one code to be described sufficiently. The frequencies of such change events – i.e., those,
which are described by more than one codes assignment/change – are displayed in the below
table.
NOOFCHNG
Number of codes
as signed t o the
change event
1
2
3
Total
Frequency
56
8
2
66
Percent
84,8
12,1
3,0
100,0
Valid
Percent
84,8
12,1
3,0
100,0
Cumulativ
e Perc ent
84,8
97,0
100,0
Table 7.: Frequency distribution of change events by the number of change motifs
(codes) assigned to them
The following two figures display information on the overall composition and the temporal
dynamics of organisational changes.
23
60
Proportion of change events (%)
50
40
30
20
N
ti An
s
ge
an
ch
s
ge
an
ch
fl.
uf
sh
re
PM
PM
al
eg
.-l
rg
N
oPr
O
10
Figure 3.: Relative frequencies of change events broken down by major second-order
categories
30
N. of change events / changes
20
10
All change events
Org.-legal reshuffl.
Pro-NPM changes
0
Anti-NPM changes
2003
2004
2005
2006
Figure 4.: Frequencies (counts) of change events broken down by year and major
second-order categories
On the basis of the data the following observations can be made:
-
A convincing, absolute majority of change motifs present in the data represent some
instance of pure organisational-legal reshuffling of existing organisations. The intensity
of purely legal-structural change strongly varies; it reaches its peak in the 2005-2006
period with a total of eighteen such change events.
-
Out of the 36 occurrences of purely organisational-legal type of change 14 were related
to the changing identity of the reporting ministry. A vast majority of these changes
happened in 2006, when 7 out of 15 ministries got reorganised. However, even if this
type of change – related not directly to the agency itself but, rather, to its orgnisational
context – was disregarded structural-reshuffling would retain its convincing, although
relative, majority.
-
Pro-NPM type changes amount 30% of total code occurrences. It is remarkable,
however, that anti-NPM type changes also have a significant presence, as their relative
24
frequency amount to 18%. This relative proportion between pro- and anti-NPM type
changes strongly varies between the four periods studies: the large initial majority of
pro-NPM changes rapidly disappears so that by 2006 anti-NPM changes outweigh proNPM changes by about two-thirds.
-
The intensity of structural change (as measured by the number of change events per
year) has, likewise, dramatically increased in 2006, to about the double of its value
throughout the previous years.
6.4
Determinants of organisational stability
The analysis of organisational change data presented so far revealed some interesting patterns
not having appeared in the preceding, comparative static analysis of agency formation.
However, this type of analysis still has an important drawback as it does not account for the
differences change events’ distribution among various (clusters of) agencies. Thus, we don’t
know whether all changes were distributed among all agencies evenly and in a similar manner,
or certain (types of) changes were concentrated around certain (types of) agencies, while the
others remained almost untouched.
This type of questioning opens up a quite complex analytical field. In fact, the problem can be
modelled as a network (graph) composed of snapshot-viewed agencies as nodes (or vertices)
and change events as arrows (arcs) linking certain agencies with some other ones. The analysis
of such structures could answer such questions as (i) which are the longest vs. the shortest
“agency–change event–…–agency” chains in the data, and (ii) what are the properties of these
chains. As this type of analysis would require the development of a relatively complex
programmatic algorithm – not fitting into the time constraints of this research –, only a less
ambitious, initial step taken into this analytical direction is presented below.
The basic idea of this method is that some agencies – unlike others – remained unaffected by
any change throughout the entire period (these will be referred to as “stable organisations”); and
that the frequency distribution of such stable organisations across various agency subgroups is a
telling sign of policymakers’ willingness to initiate structural changes as well as the constraints
they face in doing so.
The following table present the proportions of such stable organisations broken down by
available explanatory variables: (i) primary COFOG function, (ii) legal status and (iii) regulatory
target group (economic vs. non-economic actors). As a methodological remark it is noted that
simple counts of stable organisations are, in an by themselves, meaningless; therefore relative
frequencies were calculated using organisation counts for the mid-point year of 2004 as
reference year.
Breakdown variables and variable
categories
% of
stable
org.
Total
N
(2004)
1. COFOG function
Defence
25%
4
Education
0%
2
Environment protection
0%
2
Expenditures not classified by division
0%
1
25
General economic affairs
57%
7
General public services
38%
13
Health
0%
2
Housing and community amenities
0%
1
Recreation, culture and religion
0%
3
65%
20
0%
5
37%
60
OHSZ
43%
20
Central bureau
32%
27
Ministry bureau
90%
13
Total for legal status
37%
60
Non-economic
30%
3
Economic
53%
10
Total for target group of regulation
47%
13
Sectoral economic affairs
Social protection
Total for COFOG function:
2. Legal status
3. Target group of regulation
Table 8.: Percentage proportions of structurally stable agencies (2002-2006)
The above data reveal what kinds of organisations change events are focused on, and what are
the organisational subsets that are relatively untouched by structural change:
-
From a functional perspective the pattern is remarkably clear: it is agencies tied to the
economy/the business sector which enjoy by far the largest extent of structural stability.
The majority of such agencies – in the case of COFOG classes General and Sectoral
economic affairs: 57 and 65%, while in the case of economic regulators: 53% –
remained untouched.
-
Contrary to this, agencies belonging to other functional categories were much more
volatile; the proportion of stable organisation was with one exception below 30%, but
most frequently 0%.
-
From a legal-institutional perspective, it was ministry bureaus that exhibited the largest
extent of structural stability. The proportion of stable organisations among these least
autonomous agencies more than doubled the same measure calculated for the joint set
of the other two, more autonomous clusters of organisations.
7 Discussion and conclusions
The broad range of empirical data presented in the above chapters on Hungarian agencies –
having been not available so far – can be, and definitely needs to be, extensively interpreted and
further investigated. Still some concluding observations emphasising certain findings are
justified in this concluding section.
26
Firstly, despite all (possible) driving forces related to the functional imperatives of effective
policymaking and implementation and to the structural isomorphism emanating from normative
pressures, the data does not show the presence of a significant trend of agencification. One may
argue that a four-year period is far too short to establish any trends, or the lack thereof. This
argument undeniably has merit; still if we consider that we observed the turbulent years of
joining the EU governed by the most “pro-NPM” cabinets of the past almost twenty years (at
least on the level of rhetoric; cf. Hajnal 2006) the lack of any significant “net” movement
towards either more agencies or more autonomy is a telling observation. At the same time, it is
undeniable that, especially in the era of the Medgyessy-cabinet (2002-2004) these processes were
definitely more significant.
It is an important result of the study that the credible commitment hypothesis of agency
formation gained some extent of support in the light of Hungarian data. In the light of the fact
in the Northern European context the same hypothesis seemed to be not supported (Yesilkagit
and Christensen 2006) one may conclude that, in line with the theoretical considerations
underlying the mode, the model travels definitely better in a (post-)transition context
characterised by the large weight of newly opened markets and (to-be) privatised community
sectors.
With regards to the main patterns of organisational dynamics among agencies it is a peculiar
finding of the study that much of the policy action regarding agencies end up as a “good old”
structural and/or legal reshuffling of the organisational scene, just as it was the case with the
Government Resolutions on Administrative Modernisation Hajnal 2006). That is, certain tasks
are transferred form A to B organisations, or some unit of Organisation B is merged with
another one etc. Pro- and anti-NPM dynamics exist in parallel; that is, the volatile and
contradictory nature of change processes diagnosed on the basis of organisational data is
reinforced by the analysis of organisational change data.
As to the decision making activity related to agency formation, a – some may say: strikingly –
high intensity of structural change was detected, with about only one third of agencies not
having been restructured within a four-year period. There are two peculiar features of the
patterns of organisational stability: it is much higher among
(a) agencies with low autonomy and
(b) agencies dealing with economic issues.
These observations deserve some further thought.
As to the first one, this is a strongly counter-intuitive finding as on may intuitively expect that
the higher in the agency hierarchy one goes, the more those agencies are institutionally and
legally entrenched, leading to an increased resistance to external change initiatives driven by
whatever (functional, mimetic, “agency shaping”, or other) motifs. While our findings do not
necessarily refute this line of argument they do suggest that policymakers’ “demand” for
shaping agencies according to their (often temporary) needs is significantly higher with regards
to more autonomous agencies than in the case of less autonomous ones.
It is difficult to see any other explanation to this circumstance than the more autonomous and
prestigious character of these more autonomous agency types. More organisational autonomy,
the argument might go, means more (political) autonomy and room for manoeuvre for the
agency leadership and the (party-political) clientele; in short: to create/strengthen their
organisational Hintergrund. In addition, these organisations offer a more appealing target for
“fallen parachutists” coming from higher echelons of the government hierarchy.
As to the second observation, the finding might be interpreted along similar lines than those
outlined with regards to the first observation. Namely, this finding is congruent with the
presumptions that (i) while there is a more or less uniform “demand” by politicians for
organisational Hintergrund (ii) agencies related to the “hard” business sector are nevertheless
27
able to cope with such pressures more successfully than other agencies in the social, education,
or health etc. sector. Put differently, a plausible explanation of the significantly larger stability of
economy related agencies is the greater need by the government of the day for sheltering them
from self-serving (party) political Hintergrund-building.
Of course, these propositions on the motif of organisational Hintergrund building need further
elaboration, testing, interpretation and, if necessary, modification. This might be one important
task for future research on agency formation and dynamics in the Central and Eastern
European region.
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29
9 Annex 1: The description of the data files
9.1
The organisational data set
List of variables on the working file
Name
Position
SZERV_ID
1
Measurement Level: Scale
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
ONAME
2
Measurement Level: Nominal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Left
Print Format: A35
Write Format: A35
CSTAFF
N. of employees
Measurement Level: Scale
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
7
STATUS
Legal status of org.
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
8
Value
1,00
2,00
3,00
TASK
2,00
3,00
4,00
5,00
6,00
,00
1,00
9
Label
Business/industrial
Other e. public auth
Policy formulation
General public serv.
Regulation/control
Has regulatory function
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
REGCODE
Central bureau
Ministry bureau
OHSZ
Organisational task
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
REGULATE
Label
10
Label
No
Yes
Target group of regulation
11
30
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
1,00
2,00
3,00
4,00
DECORG1
Private entities
Business entities
Public entities
Private and public ent.
Has deconcentrated units
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
,00
1,00
DECORG2
Label
Label
No
Yes
Deconcentrated units appear in DB
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
,00
1,00
12
13
Label
No
Yes
DOFF
N. of field offices
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
14
DEMP
N. of field employees
Measurement Level: Scale
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
15
YEAR
16
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
2,00
3,00
4,00
5,00
6,00
N_COFOG
Label
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
COFOG class
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
1,00
2,00
17
Label
GEN. PUBLIC SERV.
DEFENCE
31
3,00
4,00
5,00
6,00
7,00
8,00
9,00
10,00
11,00
12,00
PUBLIC ORDER/SAFETY
EDUCATION
HEALTH
SOC. PROTECTION
RECR./CULTURE/RELIGION
HOUSING/COMMUNITY AM.
ENVIRONMENT
GENERAL ECON. AFF.
SECTORAL ECON. AFF.
NOT CLASS. ELSEWHERE
CHEMPL
Change in staff (%)
Measurement Level: Scale
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Missing Values: 999,00
18
CHDEMPL
Change in field staff (%)
Measurement Level: Scale
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Missing Values: 999,00
19
COFOG_6
Cofog six-class
Measurement Level: Scale
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F8.2
Write Format: F8.2
20
REGCODE2
Value
Label
1,00
2,00
3,00
4,00
5,00
6,00
7,00
8,00
9,00
10,00
11,00
12,00
13,00
GEN. PUBLIC SERV.
DEFENCE
PUBLIC ORDER/SAFETY
EDUCATION
HEALTH
SOC. PROTECTION
RECR./CULTURE/RELIGION
HOUSING/COMMUNITY AM.
ENVIRONMENT
GENERAL ECON. AFF.
SECTORAL ECON. AFF.
NOT CLASS. ELSEWHERE
OTHERS
Regulation target group (two-class)
Measurement Level: Scale
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F8.2
Write Format: F8.2
Value
1,00
2,00
STATUS2
Label
Private and public entities
Business entities
Legal status 2
Measurement Level: Scale
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F8.2
Write Format: F8.2
Value
1,00
2,00
3,00
21
22
Label
OHSZ
Central bureau
Ministry bureau
32
9.2
The change data set
List of variables on the working file
Name
Position
ID
ID #
Measurement Level: Scale
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
1
YR
Year
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F4
Write Format: F4
2
F1
Description
Measurement Level: Nominal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Left
Print Format: A255
Write Format: A255
3
VALT_ID
35
Measurement Level: Scale
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
AGENCIFI
Agencification
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
,00
1,00
AUTONOM
,00
1,00
DEAUTO
Code absent
Code present
,00
1,00
37
Label
Code absent
Code present
Relative de-autonomisation'
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
G_ANTINP
Label
Relative autonomisation
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
36
38
Label
Code absent
Code present
Anti-NPM changes
Measurement Level: Ordinal
39
33
Column Width: Unknown
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Alignment: Right
G_OPERAT
Operational responses
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
40
G_ORGANI
Org.-legal reshuffling
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
41
G_PRONPM
Pro-NPM changes
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
42
GENUINE_
Genuine organisation created
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
43
Value
,00
1,00
HORIZONT
,00
1,00
,00
1,00
,00
1,00
MERGER
Code absent
Code present
45
Label
Code absent
Code present
Internal functional change
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
44
Label
Insourcing to ministry
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
INTERNAL
Code absent
Code present
Horizontal shift
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
INSOURCI
Label
46
Label
Code absent
Code present
Merger/Amalgamation
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
47
34
Write Format: F11.2
Value
,00
1,00
REALM_OF
,00
1,00
,00
1,00
,00
1,00
TRANSFER
Code absent
Code present
Code absent
Code present
,00
1,00
50
Label
Code absent
Code present
Transfer of organsiational unit to another agency
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
49
Label
Supervising ministry reorganised
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
48
Label
Secession/specialisation
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
SUPERVIS
Code absent
Code present
Realm of civil service contracted
Measurement Level: Ordinal
Column Width: Unknown Alignment: Right
Print Format: F11.2
Write Format: F11.2
Value
SECESSIO
Label
51
Label
Code absent
Code present
NOOFCHNG
53
Measurement Level: Scale
Column Width: 1 Alignment: Right
Print Format: F1
Write Format: F1
35