Agency Termination in the UK: What Explains the ‘Bonfire of the Quangos’?

Abstract

In October 2010, the UK’s Coalition Government announced a radical reduction in the number of public bodies in the UK. This research tests the impact of three factors identified in the termination literature as affecting agency survival: political turnover, age and agency type. The research found that advisory Non-Departmental Public Bodies were five times more likely to have been identified for abolition or merger than other agency types. The research also found that agency age was a factor, but that political turnover was not significant.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. I am extremely grateful to Brian Hogwood for providing a copy of this paper for my research.