The changing role of state owned enterprises in the world of Hungarian agencies: A longitudinal study

Background, objectives and rationale. There is a growing body of scholarly work on how government agencies of different types proliferate or diminish, and what factors drive or hinder these processes. However there is very... [ view full abstract ]

Background, objectives and rationale. There is a growing body of scholarly work on how government agencies of different types proliferate or diminish, and what factors drive or hinder these processes. However there is very little work that (i) cover a broad range of agency types (ranging from core administration to state owned enterpreises) and the transitions between these subpopulations, (ii) do so on a long-term time horizon allowing for scrutinizing the role of changing governance doctrines, and (iii) extend to the former Communist countries having inherited a very populous SOE sector from the pre-transition time. The study wishes to tackle this gap in scholarship. In particular, it wishes to describe the dynamics of Hungary’s agency population (covering the broadest range of agency types) in a historical perspective, since the system change; and it attempts to identify the role played by administrative doctrines on the one hand, and political leaning and motivation of the government of the day, on the other.
Data and method. The study relies on an original data set mapping core government agencies, national public institutions and agencies operating in a SOE form in the period ranging from 1990 to 2014. The method is simple descriptive statistics of population changes and change events. Depending on the quality of the emerging data set more sophisticated multivariate methods such as survival analysis might become feasible.
Expected results. The study intends to contribute to, and extend or modify the findings reached in, earlier studies covering much more limited agency subpopulations and time periods regarding the core drivers of agency policy in a post-transition polity such as Hungary.