The involvement of agencies in policy formulation: Explaining variation in policy autonomy of federal agencies in Germany

The article addresses how government agencies perceive their own role and relationship with their parent ministry in policy formulation. Although a growing body of literature suggests that agencies are frequently granted this type of policy autonomy from their parent ministries, there is little systematic knowledge about why some agencies have more policy autonomy than others. The article analyzes data from a large-N survey of federal agencies in Germany, examining the self-perception of federal agencies with regard to policy formulation and feed-back on policy effectiveness. The article uses task characteristics, formal–legal structure, and cultural aspects of ministry–agency relations as main explanatory factors. A key result of this research is that task characteristics are more important for explaining policy autonomy than structural and cultural characteristics.