Regulatory Agencies—The Challenges of Balancing Agency Autonomy and Political Control

In this article we focus on the dynamic interplay between increase in autonomy of regulatory agencies and political control of those agencies. The general research issues are the weak empirical foundations of regulatory reforms, the complex trade‐off between political control and agency autonomy, the dual process of deregulation and reregulation, the problems of role‐specialization and coordination, and the questions of “smart practice” in regulatory policy and practice. The theoretical basis is agency theories and a broad institutional approach that blend national political strategies, historical‐cultural context, and external pressures to understand regulatory agencies and regulatory reform. This approach is contrasted with a practitioner model of agencies. Empirically the article is based on regulatory reform in Norway, giving a brief introduction to the reform and agency context followed by an analysis of the radical regulatory reform policy introduced recently by the current Norwegian government. We illustrate how regulatory reforms and agencies work in practice by focusing on two specific cases on homeland security and telecommunications.     

Understanding Organizational Reforms in the Modern State: Specialization and Integration in Norway and France

This article examines the challenge Norway and France face in coordinating specialized government activities after 10 years of comprehensive reforms. The focus is on the tension between territorial and sectoral specialization and between vertical and horizontal specialization. We describe both sector‐specific administrative reforms and more overarching general reforms, looking at similarities and differences in the reorganization choices made by the two countries and also at what drives change. We argue that a combination of factors is required to explain outcomes. These factors include not only home‐grown reforms but also sectoral challenges, diffusion and learning from abroad, adaptation to the financial crisis and budget deficit, and choices made by powerful political executives. Sometimes these factors work together and reinforce each other, producing radical reforms; at other times they have a mutually constraining influence, resulting in only minor changes.     

HOW TO ASSESS ADMINISTRATIVE REFORM? INVESTIGATING THE ADOPTION AND PRELIMINARY IMPACTS OF THE NORWEGIAN WELFARE ADMINISTRATION REFORM

This article addresses how to assess public-sector reforms using a reform in the Norwegian welfare administration as a case study. This reform represents a complex hybrid organizational form and a challenging combination of political control and local autonomy. We examine first how the reform has addressed its three main goals. These were to get people off welfare and back into work, to bring about more service-orientation, and to increase efficiency. We also address the side-effects of the reform by describing operational effects, process effects and system effects. Second, we examine how effects can be understood from an instrumental, cultural, and environmental perspective. A main finding is that context is significant for effects, and that it has so far proven difficult to discern clear overall effects concerning the main goals of the reforms and their side-effects.     

Comparing non-voters in the USA and Norway: permanence versus transience

Abstract. Voter turnout for the 1984 presidential election in the USA was 30 percent lower than the last parliamentary election in Norway (1985). Similarities among the factors which explains non-voting in the two nations are apparent, but the factors unique to each country are important for understanding the difference in turnout level as well as patterns of non-participation. While the Norwegian non-voters are in a transient situation where youth and limited life-cycle experience determine non-voting, factors effecting American non-voters are more permanent. In particular, if socio-economic resources are not acquired in youth, the development of political involvement and participation will be obstructed.     

DO DISADVANTAGED NEIGHBORHOODS CAUSE WELL‐ADJUSTED CHILDREN TO BECOME ADOLESCENT DELINQUENTS? A STUDY OF MALE JUVENILE SERIOUS OFFENDING,INDIVIDUAL RISK AND PROTECTIVE FACTORS,AND NEIGHBORHOOD CONTEXT*

This paper presents a study of the relationship between type of neighborhood socioeconomic context, individual characteristics (individuals are classified by a set of selected key measures of individual dispositions and social situation) and serious male juvenile offending (prevalence and early and late onsets) in the city of Pittsburgh. The analytical strategy may best be described as holistic and epidemiological. The key research question is whether onset and prevalence of juvenile serious offending is invariant by neighborhood socioeconomic context when controlling for individual sets of risk and protective characteristics. The results do not support the notion that neighborhood socioeconomic context has any greater direct impact on the early onset of serious offending. However, neighborhood socioeconomic context appears to have a direct impact on the late onset of offending for those juveniles who score high on protective factors, or who have a balanced mix of risk and protective factors. No support was found for the notion that individual risk characteristics and neighborhood risk are additive. Children and adolescents with high scores on risk characteristics offend in serious crime at a similar high rate regardless of the socioeconomic context of their neighborhood.