Credibility and agency termination under parliamentarism

Greasley, Stephen and Hanretty, Chris (2016) Credibility and agency termination under parliamentarism. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 26 (1). pp. 159-173. ISSN 1053-1858

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Abstract

We investigate the life span and risk of termination of 723 arm’s length agencies in the United Kingdom between 1985 and 2008, an under investigated question in parliamentary systems. We hypothesize that termination risk depends on three groups of factors: (1) factors relating to the rationales for initial delegation of responsibility to the arm’s length agency; (2) factors relating to the political and economic position of the government; and (3) factors relating to the institutional form of the agency. We find that agencies intended to generate credible commitments in regulation are less likely than others to be terminated in any given year. Agencies operating under right-wing governments and under heavily indebted governments are more likely to be terminated, although left-wing governments are more sensitive to the effects of debt. Agencies structured as executive non-departmental public bodies and non-ministerial departments are also longer lived than others. Contrary to expectations about arm’s length agencies in parliamentary systems with single-party government, partisan change does not affect the risk of termination.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Politics, Philosophy, Language and Communication Studies
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	18 Jan 2016 16:00
Last Modified:	28 Oct 2023 00:41
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/56432
DOI:	10.1093/jopart/muu050

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