The Agency Model: The Growth of Regulation and Regulatory Institutions in the European Union

Abstract

Agencies and the new mode of governance. While agencies are certainly not a new feature of public administration in Europe, their importance has grown so much in recent years that they can no longer be treated as marginal additions to more traditional administrative structures. Rather, they should be seen as key elements of a new mode of governance that relies less on the power of taxing and spending – the very foundation of the Keynesian welfare state – and more on the power of making and enforcing rules. Typically, rules are made and enforced by expert agencies operating at arm’s length from government. Thus, the growing significance of the agency model is perhaps the clearest indication of the transition from the interventionist state of the past to the regulatory state of the future. So important are the implications of this transition that this paper deals primarily with regulatory institutions rather than with operational agencies such as the British ‘Next Step’ or the Swedish line agencies. It can be shown, however, that the growth of operational agencies and ‘third party’ government also raises serious regulatory issues.

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