Pages: 91-99
Introduction. Agencification is a strategy of vertical specialization of government institutions by delegating some attributions to specialized agencies. The National Institute of Administration has had a tumultuous past, being established, abolished, and re-established because it represented an ex-ante conditionality of the European Commission. Under Government Ordinance no. 23/2016, the Institute was re-established after a hiatus “by taking over the activities in the field of professional training in public administration and the professional development of public officials from the National Agency of Civil Servants and the regional centers for continuous training for local public administration”. After the completion of the Institute’s reorganization in 2018, it was gradually recognized by public institutions as a stable partner for professional training in public administration.
Aim of the study. The study aims at two interconnected objectives. First, it provides an overview of the concept of agencification. Second, and more specifically, it identifies a set of idealized features of agencies according to the literature on agencification and explores to what extent one specific agency in Romania (the National Institute of Administration) exhibits said features. While agencification is supposed to guarantee a clearer separation between policy formulation and implementation, in practice this may not work if features such as the agency’s autonomy is too limited or if, despite its organizational separation from the line ministry, the agency is in practice overseen too strictly by the latter. Case studies such as the one provided here are useful in revealing to what extent the process of agencification in Romania has followed the general template outlined in the literature or, on the contrary, at least in some specific cases has developed based on other routines or constraints.
