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Longitudinal Change in Lithuanian Agencies: 1990–2010Vitalis Nakrošis a & Mantas Budraitis ba Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University , Vilnius ,Lithuaniab Public Policy and Management Institute , Vilnius , LithuaniaPublished online: 09 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: Vitalis Nakrošis & Mantas Budraitis (2012) Longitudinal Change in Lithuanian Agencies: 1990–2010,International Journal of Public Administration, 35:12, 820-831, DOI: 10.1080/01900692.2012.715566

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International Journal of Public Administration, 35: 820–831, 2012Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0190-0692 print / 1532-4265 onlineDOI: 10.1080/01900692.2012.715566

Longitudinal Change in Lithuanian Agencies: 1990–2010

Vitalis NakrošisInstitute of International Relations and Political Science,

Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

Mantas BudraitisPublic Policy and Management Institute, Vilnius, Lithuania

Although Lithuanian agencies are relatively young, since 1990 they have experienced manyorganizational changes. The purpose of this article is to explain the change and continu-ity of Lithuanian agencies and other public sector organizations during 1990–2010 basedon the transformative approach. Agency mapping and analysis of other data showed thatorganizational changes depended on a combination of exogenous and endogenous factors:Lithuania’s transition to democracy and market economy, its accession to the European Union,the adoption of government-wide organizational reforms during the economic crisis, and thepolitical turnover.

Keywords: agencies, mapping, organizational change, termination, reform

INTRODUCTION

In many Western countries, agencification was driven bythe political agenda of national governments under thenew public management (NPM) reforms that involved theestablishment of agencies responsible for policy imple-mentation (Pollitt, Talbot, Caulfield, & Smullen, 2004).However, the process of agencification in Central andEastern Europe (CEE) countries was affected by the expan-sion and restructuring of governmental functions in thecontext of post-communist transformation (Randma-Liiv,Nakrošis, & Hajnal, 2011). These and other institutionalchanges were instrumental to achieving Lithuania’s goals oftransition and European Union (EU) membership.

This article studies organizational change in a single post-communist politico-administrative regime. Though therehave been several studies explaining the institutional orpolicy diversity of post-communist political systems basedon time-series data (Armingeon & Careja, 2008; Detlef& Müller-Rommel, 2010), such approach to the analy-sis of CEE public administrations is still underdeveloped.

Correspondence should be addressed to Vitalis Nakrošis, Vokiecu 10,Vilnius LT-01130, Lithuania. E-mail: Vitalis.Nakrosis@tspmi.vu.lt

An exception is the study of the Hungarian agency landscapebased on data sets of organizations and organizationalchanges (Hajnal, 2010).

The purpose of this article is to explain the change andcontinuity of Lithuanian agencies and other public sec-tor organizations during the period 1990–2010 based onmapping and other data sources. First, the article presents themain results of agency mapping. Second, it seeks to explainthe impact of the following factors on organizational changesand terminations: Lithuania’s transition to democracy and amarket economy; accession to the EU; public managementreforms in the context of economic crisis; and changes ingovernment and in the government’s structure. The follow-ing part of the article presents our framework for analysisand research questions.

This article focuses on Lithuanian agencies, which aredefined as public law bodies that are structurally disag-gregated from the core government and other organiza-tions. Though they have some capacity for autonomousdecision making about management or policy, they are for-mally under some control of cabinet members (Verhoest,Roness, Verschuere, Rubecksen, & MacCarthaigh, 2010).According to this definition, the government agencies, agen-cies under the ministries (semi-autonomous organizations atarms’ length of the core government), and some other public

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LONGITUDINAL CHANGE IN LITHUANIAN AGENCIES 821

TABLE 1Characteristics of All Data Sets Involving the Time Variable

Public Sector Organizations Time (Time-Series) Variables Other Information

Mapping data of theLithuanian agencies

Agencies under the six Lithuanianministries (budgetaryinstitutions, public nonprofitinstitutions, foundations,state-owned companies),without territorial units (139)

1990–2010 Agencies, legal status, policyareas, types of organizationalchanges, organizationalstatus, government in officeduring agency establishment,and termination

Links to the legal acts

Data from the Register of CivilServants

State and municipal institutions(budgetary institutions wherethe civil service law is applied),with territorial units (unknownnumber)

2003–2010 State and municipal institutions Aggregated data for thecivil servants employed

Data set of the CRIPO study Public sector organizations(25) responsible for25 executive tasks

2009 (the study year) Birth date (in the current form) This data set includes21 countries

Data set of the COBRA survey Agencies and other Lithuanianpublic sector organizations (73)

2008 (the survey year) Many variables (including thebirth date and organizationalage)

This data set includes16 countries

sector organizations that have all agency features are calledagencies in this article. Our agency definition excludes thestate institutions provided in the Lithuanian constitution (asecurity service, the army, the National Audit Office, theProsecution Service, and the Bank of Lithuania), other stateinstitutions accountable solely to the parliament (e.g., officesof ombudsperson) or both the parliament and the president(e.g., the Special Investigation Service). However, the articlealso covers other public sector organizations (public non-profit institutions, foundations, and state-owned companies),which do not meet the common agency definition.

Lithuanian agencies can be classified according the cate-gorization used by van Thiel (2012). The government agen-cies (100 in 2009), agencies under the ministries (397), andagencies under the Lithuanian president (2) correspond to thelevel 1 agencies (semi-autonomous organizations at arms’length of the core government). The civil service law isapplied in all of these agencies. Public nonprofit institutions,whose stakeholders are state institutions (227), correspond tothe level 2 (legally independent organization with managerialautonomy), and foundations (their number is unknown) andstate-owned companies (143) correspond to level 3.

The Lithuanian agencies operate within the structureof the dual executive consisting of the president1 and thegovernment. The Lithuanian cabinet is nominated by thepresident upon approval of the parliament. The number of theLithuanian ministries, whose ministers form the cabinet, wasreduced from eighteen in 1990 to thirteen in 2000 throughseveral ministerial reorganizations. However, a fourteenthMinistry of Energy was established in 2009. According tothe government law, the ministries are responsible for policy

1The Lithuanian president, who is directly elected for five years, is thehead of state, but he or she is mainly responsible for foreign and securitypolicy.

making, and the agencies under the ministries are respon-sible for policy implementation (including the regulation ofeconomic activities and the provision of public services).

The main source of data is the mapping data set describedin the third part of this article. This data set was supple-mented by other data sets involving the time variable (seeTable 1 for the main characteristics of all data sets). Thetime-series data from the Civil Service Department underthe Ministry of the Interior covers all state and municipalinstitutions where the civil service law is applied (for theperiod 2003–2010). The data set from the ComparativeResearch Into Current Trends in Public Sector Organization(CRIPO) study (van Thiel, 2011) captures the population of25 Lithuanian public sector organizations responsible for theimplementation of twenty-five executive tasks covered by thesecond data set from the CRIPO study.

Finally, the article is supported by other findingsof agencification research in Lithuania: desk research,surveys, case studies, and interviews. The ComparativePublic Organisation Data Base for Research and Analyses(COBRA) survey of Lithuanian public sector organizationswas carried out in 2008.2 A representative sample of orga-nizations included 263 respondents, but due to relativelylow response rate the analysis of the COBRA data includesixty-nine agencies and other public sector organizations.Four studies of the Lithuanian agencies and other publicsector organizations3 and a number of interviews with

2The COBRA network is an academic research collaboration in the fieldof public management. The Lithuanian COBRA survey was carried out in2008, and its data set was integrated into the COBRA database in 2011.For more information about this network, see http://soc.kuleuven.be/io/cost/survey/index.htm#00.

3The case studies included a study of two public security organizations(the National Security Department and the Special Investigation Service),

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822 NAKROŠIS AND BUDRAITIS

representatives of the highest authorities of Lithuania (theLithuanian parliament, the president’s office, and the primeminister’s office), the Lithuanian ministries, agencies, andother public sector organizations were carried out during theagencification research in Lithuania.

This article is divided into several parts. After the intro-duction, the second part presents our framework for analysisand research questions, and the methodology of agency map-ping is outlined in the third part. The fourth part explainsorganizational changes and terminations based on the map-ping data and other data sources. The final part concludeswith main empirical results and methodological implicationsfor the future research.

FRAMEWORK FOR ANALYSIS ANDRESEARCH QUESTIONS

In order to explain the birth, maintenance, and death ofLithuanian agencies, the transformative approach is used inthis article. The main thesis of this approach is that inter-national pressures are transformed by various national fac-tors in organizational changes (Laegreid & Verhoest, 2010;Verhoest et al., 2010). Taking into consideration the con-text of the CEE countries, we focus on the EU (and NorthAtlantic Treaty Organization [NATO]) accession as our maininternational factor and three state-specific factors (transitionto democracy and a market economy, changes in govern-ments, and public management reforms). As proposed in theintroduction to this special issue, we are concerned not onlywith the impact of deliberate public management reforms oractions but also those that occurred as a result of other factorsspecific to Lithuania as a newly independent state and a newmember of the EU.

First, we analyze the changing role of the state duringthe transition process. The main goals of transition wereto develop the public administration in supporting marketsand private enterprise rather than following central plansand commands, as well as reforming the social safety net(European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,1999). The policy areas of public finance, private enterprise,and social policy faced especially high institutional chal-lenges. In the CEE region, renewal of the post-communiststates involved the establishment of new governmentalfunctions and/or the restructuring of old functions inheritedfrom the communist past (Randma-Liiv et al., 2011).Therefore, our first research question is the following: Howdid the changing role of the state and its functions affect

a study of two regulatory agencies (the Communications RegulatoryAuthority [CRA] and the Competition Council), a study of four EU supportagencies implementing the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and the EUCohesion Policy (the Lithuanian Agricultural and Food Market RegulationAgency, the National Paying Agency [NPA], the European Social FundAgency, and the Central Project Management Agency), and a study ofthe Information Society Development Committee and other organizationsinvolved in the coordination of horizontal policy in the area of informationsociety.

the establishment of new agencies (or reorganization of theexisting ones) in Lithuania during the transition period of1990–1996?

Second, we analyze the influence of the EU onagencification in Lithuania. Europeanization was found tobe a very important driver of agencification in all CEEcountries (Randma-Liiv et al., 2011). In order to removevarious obstacles to EU membership (identified in theAccession Partnerships and the European Commission’sreports), the CEE governments needed to adopt the acquiscommunautaire (the body of EU law) by implementingvarious legal, policy, and organizational measures. In thepolicy areas, where the EU institutions have no exclu-sive or shared competences with the EU member states(mainly in social affairs), the EU’s influence encompassedsofter measures, such as shaming and blaming or sharingof good practices. Therefore, our second research questionis as follows: How did the EU influence the establishmentof new agencies (or reorganization of the existing ones)across different policy areas in the preaccession period of1997–2004?

Third, because Lithuania has experienced a few eco-nomic crises and several government-wide initiatives ofpublic management reform following the reestablishmentof its independence in 1990, we analyzed the impact ofthese factors on (de-)agencification. The economic crisesshould translate into organizational changes and terminationsthrough a change in the government and/or a change in thecontent of public management reforms. Though some studiesexpected that economic crises should lead to agencificationaccording to the NPM model (Verhoest et al., 2010), weexpect that due to severe fiscal austerity in Lithuania pub-lic management reforms are likely to follow the post-NPMmodel, leading to de-agencification (in terms of deaths,absorptions, and mergers of organizations). Therefore, ourthird research question is the following: How did publicmanagement reforms affect the process of agencification inLithuania?

Fourth, because political turnover is one of the maincauses of agency termination (Lewis, 2002) and due to fre-quent changes in the CEE governments (Blondel & Müller-Rommel, 2001), it is important to analyze the impact ofgovernment changes on organizational change and termi-nation in Lithuania. The Lithuanian government is oneof the most unstable in the CEE region (with fourteenchanges in 1990–2010) due to frequent changes in par-liamentary majority from right-wing to left-wing partiesor coalitions.4 Therefore, our fourth research question isas follows: How did major pendulum swings in gov-ernments and ministerial reorganizations affect organiza-tional changes and terminations at the agency level inLithuania?

4However, more political stability was gained in the period 2000–2010,when five changes in governments occurred. In addition, the 2008–2012government had been in office for more than thirty months at the time ofwriting this article.

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LONGITUDINAL CHANGE IN LITHUANIAN AGENCIES 823

MAIN CONCEPTS AND METHODOLOGICALAPPROACH TO AGENCY MAPPING

Organizational change is a main dependent variable of thisarticle. Classifications of different types of organizationalbirths, survival, and deaths are discussed by MacCarthaighand Roness (2012). The mapping of organizational changesin Lithuania largely followed the Irish classification from theIrish State Administration Database with two minor adap-tations (Hardiman, MacCarthaigh, & Scott, 2011). First,because the agency mapping covered only the central gov-ernment, such organizational events as transfer from subna-tional or transfer to subnational were not relevant. Second,taking into consideration the importance of legal changesin the Lithuanian agency landscape, we added two types ofchange event referring to a change in name or affiliation.

In order to analyze the impact of change events on(de-)agencification in Lithuania, we divided all types ofchange events into three sets. These sets include three changeevents (birth, secession, split) leading to agencification (orexpansion in the number of agencies), three change events(absorption, merger, death) leading to de-agencification (orcontraction in the number of agencies), and other changeevents (replacement, transfer of functions, change of name,

change in affiliation) that do not affect the number of agen-cies or their effect is mixed.

Agency termination is a modification of our main depen-dent variable. A conceptual discussion about the relationbetween organizational changes and terminations is providedby Hajnal (2012). In the analysis of agency termination,we did not include changes in the name and affiliation ofagencies because these events usually bring only formalchanges to the agency status.

Our categorization of twelve change events, their descrip-tion, and their relation to organizational termination aredescribed in Table 2.

The mapping of organizational changes covered all agen-cies under six Lithuanian ministries (selected according tothe Lithuanian alphabet): the Ministry of Environment, theMinistry of Finance, the Ministry of National Defence, theMinistry of Culture, the Ministry of Social Security andLabor, and the Ministry of Transport and Communications.Although these ministries comprise less than a half of allLithuanian ministries (14), the mapping sample is repre-sentative of the agencies under the Lithuanian ministries.The mapping data set captured a total of 139 agencies:112 budgetary institutions (the main type of agencies underthe Lithuanian ministries), 18 public nonprofit institutions,

TABLE 2Description of Organizational Change Events

Event DescriptionCapturing of Agency

Termination

Events leading to expansion in the number of agencies

Birth This code is used when the unit is created without any connections to other units. Such a unit will haveno predecessor; that is, it is a pure birth

No

Secession This code is used when some functions of an existing organization are transferred to create one or morenew organizations while the original unit continues to exist, retaining its name and fundamentalstructure. Some secessions may involve more than one new organization being established

No

Splitting This code is used when a unit ceases to exist through its division into two or more new units and thetransfer of all its functions into these new units

Yes

Events leading to contraction in the number of agencies

Absorption This code is used when the functions and resources of one or more units are fully transferred into anotherexisting one. Some functions may cease to be performed and not taken on by the new organization

Yes

Merger This code is used when two or more units are combined into one new unit which is given an independentstanding/status. The combining units cease to exist. Some of the functions of the original units mayalso cease to be performed

Yes

Death This code is used when a unit is disbanded, no replacement organization is created, and its functions arenot transferred to another organization

Yes

Other change events that do not affect the number of agencies

Replacement This code is used when one organization is completely replaced by another. The new organization mayor may not adopt a new name, legal status, structure, or function and may expand the scope of itspolicy domain

Yes

Transfer of function This code is used when the core or defining functions of one or more organizations are transferred to anew organization

No

Change of name or affiliation This code is used when the name or the affiliation of an existing organization is changed without notablechanges in functions performed prior and after the reorganization

No

Note. Adapted from Hardiman, N., MacCarthaigh, M., & Scott, C. (2011). The Irish State Administration Database. Retrieved July 29, 2011, fromhttp://www.isad.ie

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824 NAKROŠIS AND BUDRAITIS

6 state-owned companies, and 3 foundations that meet theagency definition outlined above. Territorial units of theagencies were not covered by the mapping exercise.

A longitudinal mapping of the Lithuanian agenciesunder the six selected ministries, which was carried out in2010–2011, involved the following stages. First, websites ofall currently existing agencies under the six selected min-istries were reviewed and data regarding their organizationalhistory were collected. Second, legislation governing theidentified change events was identified in the database oflegal acts administered by the Office of the LithuanianParliament. Following a review of governmental decisionsand ministerial orders adopting these organizational changes,certain associated change events concerning other agen-cies and/or organizational changes were identified. Third,in order to identify other important legislation, all deci-sions of the government of the Republic of Lithuania andorders of respective ministers for the period 1990–2010 werereviewed. Fourth, all collected data were recorded in MSExcel and SPSS data sets of the Lithuanian agencies and theirchange events (including organizational terminations).

ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGES IN THELITHUANIAN AGENCY LANDSCAPE OVER

1990–2010

Before answering our research questions, we present themain findings of agency mapping and termination analysis.Figure 1 shows how the landscape of ministerial agenciesevolved during the period 1990–2010. The number of agen-cies under the ministries of Environment, Finance, NationalDefence, Culture, Social Security and Labor, and Transportand Communications increased from thirty-four (in 1996) tosixty-nine (in 2010). In terms of change dynamics, constantgrowth in the number of agencies during 1990–2001 was

followed by a period of stability that lasted until 2010, whentheir overall number started decreasing.

However, the process of agencification was not evenacross all policy areas. Though the number of agenciesin the policy areas of public finance, social security, andtransport expanded during the period 1990–1996, in the pol-icy areas of environment and national defense this trendoccurred only during 1997–2004. The number of agenciesunder the Ministry of Culture grew gradually over the period1990–2004. Furthermore, the policy areas of environmentand social policy experienced the most radical agencificationover the period 1990–2010. Though a considerable reduc-tion in the number of agencies was identified in the policyarea of environment in 2010, other policy areas experiencedonly minor organizational changes during this year.

Out of fifty-one agency terminations identified in themapping data set, eleven terminations (21.5%) occurred inthe transition period, and nineteen terminations (37.3%)and twenty-one terminations (41.3%) materialized in thepreaccession and postaccession periods, respectively. Thisindicates that the higher the number of agencies, the largershare of organizational terminations. However, the termi-nation of Lithuanian agencies differed across the policyareas. For instance, whereas the policy area of environmentexperienced nineteen terminations (37.3%), only several ter-minations occurred in the policy areas of public finance andculture.

The Impact of Transition on Agencification

Although the state apparatus of the Lithuanian SovietSocialist Republic contained many different stateorganizations (ministries, state committees, offices, localexecutive committees, enterprises, and other organizations),they formally ceased to exist after the reestablishment ofLithuania’s independence on March 11, 1990. The mapping

FIGURE 1 Changes in the number of agencies under the six ministries in 1990–2010.

Note. Because this article does not analyze the state organizations of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, this figure does not show the communistorganizations that existed in the beginning of 1990. Because the precise birth year of 16 Lithuanian agencies of could not be established, they were not includedin this figure. Therefore, the actual number of agencies under the six Lithuanian ministries should be somewhat higher (especially in 1990–1992). Data fromthe Institute of International Relations and Political Science (2008).

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LONGITUDINAL CHANGE IN LITHUANIAN AGENCIES 825

data illustrate how Lithuania’s transition to democracy anda market economy affected the agency landscape of theRepublic of Lithuania. Figure 1 shows that the number ofagencies under the six Lithuanian ministries increased tothirty-five by the end of 1996.5 The agency growth wasespecially fast in the areas of public finance, social policy,and transport (involving the regulation of business activitiesin this economic sector), which faced important institutionalchallenges in the transition period.

Out of 133 change events identified in the mapping dataset, 40 changes (30%) occurred in the period 1990–1996.The average of 5.7 organizational changes a year during thisperiod was lower compared to that of 8.1 changes during thepreaccession period. However, the number of agencies thatexisted in the transition period was much lower. For instance,this period did not completely cover two policy areas coor-dinated by the Ministry of National Defence (reestablishedin 1991) and the Ministry of Environment (establishedonly in 1994). The most intense changes in the period1990–1996 occurred in three policy areas coordinated bythe Ministry of Transport and Communications (11 changeevents), the Ministry of Social Security and Labor (9 changeevents), and the Ministry of Finance (8 change events).

According to the mapping data presented in Table 3,births (twenty) were the most frequent type of organizationalchange, pointing to the expansion of Lithuanian agencies inthe transition period. As a result of pure birth, the Lithuanian

TABLE 3Annual Number of Organizational Change Events According

to Their Type

Change Event 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 Total

Events leading to expansion in the number of agencies (21)

Birth 3 3 5 3 1 3 2 20Secession — — — — — — — 0Splitting — — 1 — — — — 1

Events leading to contraction in the number of agencies (4)

Absorption — — 1 — — — — 1Merger — — — 1 1 1 — 3Death — — — — — — — 0

Other change events (15)

Replacement 1 2 — 3 2 1 2 11Transfer of function — — — — — — — 0Change of name — — 1 — 1 — — 2Change in affiliation — — — 2 — — — 2Total 4 5 8 9 5 5 4 40

Source: Institute of International Relations and Political Science (2011)

5As noted above, it was not possible to calculate the exact number ofthe agencies within the six policy areas in the beginning of 1990 becausethe precise birth years of a small number of agencies are unknown, but thisdid not affect the overall pattern.

Labor Exchange under the Ministry of Social Security andLabor, the State Tax Inspectorate under the Ministry ofFinance, and the State Road Transport Inspectorate under theMinistry of Transport and Communications were establishedin 1990–1996. Also, a relatively high number of other changeevents (especially eleven agency replacements) occurredduring this period. For instance, such agencies as theLithuanian Hydrometeorological Service under the Ministryof Environment, the Transport Investment Directorate underthe Ministry of Transport and Communications, or theInsurance Supervisory Commission under the Ministry ofFinance replaced the former agencies. Moreover, only afew mergers were recorded in this period. For example, theDepartment for the Protection of Cultural Properties underthe Ministry of Culture was established through the mergerof two previous agencies.

However, organizational changes in this period did notensure agency stability. Ten agencies were reorganized justseveral years after their establishment, and nine more werereorganized during the period 1997–2004. For instance, suchagencies as the National Bridge Inspection or the CivilAviation Inspection disappeared from the Lithuanian agencylandscape in 1997–2004. Also, the period 1993–1996 sawthe termination of eleven agencies, whose average age wasonly 2.72 years.

Other sources of data corroborate the findings from theagency mapping. For instance, the study of twenty-five exec-utive tasks included in the CRIPO study (van Thiel, 2011)revealed that fourteen Lithuanian public sector organizationswere established (in their current form) during the period1990–1996 (see Figure 2).6 In contrast to the mapping data,this data set points to a decreasing intensity of births from1990 (when five organizations were established) to 1996(when only one organization was set up). This is attributableto the fact that a large number of the level 2–4 organizationswere set up early in transition.7

Therefore, Lithuania’s transition to democracy and a mar-ket economy produced a proliferation of new agencies andother public sector organizations through either birth or, lessfrequently, through the replacement of old organizations.The mapping data also indicated rapid agencification in thepolicy areas that faced important institutional challenges dur-ing transition (especially social policy, public finance, andtransport). In addition, the mapping data and the analysis oforganizational termination revealed the limited stability ofLithuanian agencies in the transition period.

6These organizations are in charge of prosecution, unemployment ben-efits, labor exchange, road maintenance, tax service, broadcasting, nationalmuseum, immigration, student loans, national airport, statistics, meteorol-ogy, intelligence, and national railway.

7They include one state institution (the prosecutor’s office in 1990),two state-owned companies (Lithuanian Railways and Vilnius InternationalAirport in 1991), and one public nonprofit institution (the LithuanianNational Radio and Television in 1990).

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826 NAKROŠIS AND BUDRAITIS

FIGURE 2 Year of establishment (in current form) of the Lithuanian public sector organizations included in the CRIPO study according to their tasks (2009).

Note. in this data set, 1990 is treated as the birth date of the National Security Department (despite its reestablishment in 1994). Data from the data set of theCRIPO study.

The Impact of the EU on Agencification

The mapping data illustrate the influence of Europeanizationon organizational changes. Figure 1 indicated that the num-ber of agencies under the six Lithuanian ministries morethan doubled in the period 1997–2004 (from thirty-seven toseventy-five). Agencification was particularly pronounced inthe environmental policy area (where the number of agen-cies grew by eighteen), followed by defense policy andsocial policy (where the number of agencies grew by nineand eight, respectively). This is associated with Lithuania’saccession to the EU, especially affecting the environmentalpolicy area governed by the conditionality of EU accessionbut also influencing the social policy that was exposed tosofter instruments of the EU’s governance. Also, Lithuania’saccession to NATO affected agencification in the area ofnational defense.

Out of 133 change events identified in the mappingdata set, 65 organizational changes (49%) occurred in thepreaccession period (1997–2004). This period was the mostintensive in terms of organizational changes, whose aver-age number amounted to 8.1 per year. The highest numberof organizational changes were identified in 1998, 2001,and 2002 (15, 11, and 13 change events, respectively; seeTable 4). Also, 19 agencies were terminated in the preac-cession period, with 9 terminations identified in the policyarea of environment. The majority of these terminations areassociated with Lithuania’s accession to the EU.

The mapping of organizational changes also revealed thatLithuanian agencies under the six ministries continued toexpand during the period 1997–2004 (with sixteen births,

three secessions, and three splits identified; see Table 4).Also, three mergers, three absorptions, and two deathsoccurred in the preaccession period under the six Lithuanianministries. For instance, as a result of three mergers in 2003,the Environmental Protection Agency under the Ministryof Environment, the Central Project Management Agency,and the Publishing and Information Provision Service of theMinistry of National Defence were set up.

TABLE 4Annual Number of Organizational Change Events According

to Their Type

Change Event 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 Total

Events leading to expansion in the number of agencies (22)

Birth 2 4 2 1 — 4 1 2 16Secession — — — — 2 1 — — 3Splitting — — — — 1 2 — — 3

Events leading to contraction in the number of agencies (8)

Absorption — 1 — — 1 1 — — 3Merger — — — — — — 3 — 3Death — — — — 2 — — — 2

Other change events (35)

Replacement 2 1 — 1 2 4 1 — 11Transfer of function — — — — 1 — — — 1Change of name — 1 1 — 1 — 2 3 8Change of affiliation — 8 — 4 1 1 — 1 15Total 4 15 3 6 11 13 7 6 65

Source: Institute of International Relations and Political Science (2011)

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The fact that the establishment of some regulatory (suchas the State Inspectorate of Inland Waterways Navigation)or implementation (such as the National Paying Agencyunder the Ministry of Agriculture) agencies or the reor-ganization of these agencies (such as the merger of theState Seed Inspection and the State Grain Inspection intothe State Seed and Grain Inspection or the reorganizationof the Civil Aviation Administration) were mentioned inthe European Commission’s progress reports illustrates theEU’s direct influence in the areas of regulation and policyimplementation.

These mapping findings are supported by other sources ofdata. According to the 2008 COBRA survey, about 39% ofLithuanian public sector organizations claim that the EU hada large influence on their set up or reorganization (Instituteof International Relations and Political Science, 2008). Themajority of these organizations (twenty out of thirty-three, or61%) were established in the preaccession period. Accordingto the COBRA survey, the establishment of new organiza-tions was the main type of organizational change both in1990–1996 and 1997–2004 (see Table 5). Also, between1997 and 2004 (inclusive) many organizations were estab-lished by transferring the functions of previous organiza-tions, which is broadly in line with our mapping data.

In addition, the literature review and case studies founda strong influence of the EU in the areas of business reg-ulation and policy implementation. It was argued that anetwork of semi-autonomous regulatory agencies emergedin Lithuania during the EU preaccession period. A numberof relatively independent regulatory agencies were set up orstrengthened in the policy areas of competition, telecommu-nications, energy, water, railways, post, public information,environment, food safety, and personal data in order tomeet the regulatory requirements of the EU (Maniokas,2003). In addition, the study of regulatory agencies revealedthat the establishment of the Communications RegulatoryAuthority could be explained by a combination of transitionand Europeanization pressures, and the need to implementvarious EU expenditure programs was found to explainthe reorganization of the European Social Fund Agency(in 2002) and the Central Project Management Agency (in

2003) and largely the establishment of the National PayingAgency (in 1999; Nakrošis, Vijeikis, & Polka, 2011).

All of these findings show that the EU had a substan-tial impact on organizational changes (in particular theestablishment of new agencies) in the preaccession period.Furthermore, the evidence of rapid agencification in supportsthe findings of other sources that Europeanization stronglycontributed to the development of a regulatory and policyimplementation model in Lithuania.

The Postaccession Period

Though EU accession was the main driver of agencificationin the preaccession period, a set of national factors gainedimportance postaccession. The process of de-agencificationduring 2005–2010 could be explained by a combination ofthese national factors: the economic crisis of 2008–2010, thechange in government at the end of 2008, and the increasedimportance of public management reforms in the govern-ment policy (Nakrošis & Martinaitis, 2011). In response tothe economic crisis, the Lithuanian government adopted anumber of government-wide expenditure cuts that includedstaff layoffs as well as various organizational and efficiencymeasures.

The number of the Lithuanian agencies (including theirterritorial units and the county administrations) where thecivil service law is applied decreased from 597 (at the endof 2004) to 436 (at the end of 2010; see Table 6). The mainform of de-agencification was the abolition or reorganiza-tion of territorial units. For instance, fifty-nine local policeoffices (under the Ministry of the Interior) were reorganizedinto ten regional offices in 2008, and forty-six local laborexchanges (under the Ministry of Social Security and Labor)were reorganized into ten territorial exchanges in 2010.

Moreover, a few government agencies have beenabolished or reorganized since their review in the “Sunset”Commission in 2009. For instance, the QualificationsService and the National Minority and EmigrationDepartment (both formerly under the Lithuanian gov-ernment) were abolished, and both the Information Society

TABLE 5Type of Founding for Lithuanian Public Sector Organizations (N = 71, %)

Time Period

Type of Founding 1990–1996 1997–2004 2005–2008 Total

Newly established (N = 40) 65 53 50 56By transferring the functions of previous organizations (N = 19) 26 33 0 27Through a split (N = 6) 9 10 0 9Through a merger (N = 6) 0 5 50 9Total (N = 71) 100 100 100 100

Note. This table includes the Lithuanian public sector organizations that existed in the end of 2008. Data from the Instituteof International Relations and Political Science (2008).

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TABLE 6Number of Lithuanian Agencies According to Their Types in 2005–2010

Type of Agency 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Government agencies 100 101 100 100 97 96Agencies under the Ministry of Environment 59 59 61 61 55 55Agencies under the Ministry of Energy — — — — 1 1Agencies under the Ministry of Finance 21 21 21 22 22 20Agencies under the Ministry of Defense 61 55 55 57 54 53Agencies under the Ministry of Culture 5 5 5 5 5 5Agencies under the Ministry of Social Security and Labor 110 112 112 113 113 70Agencies under the Ministry of Transport and Communications 8 8 8 8 8 8Agencies under the Ministry of Health Care 14 14 24 24 23 23Agencies under the Ministry of Education and Science 2 2 2 2 2 3Agencies under the Ministry of Justice 33 33 33 33 33 31Agencies under the Ministry of National Economy 4 4 4 4 4 6Agencies under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs 0 0 0 0 0 1Agencies under the Ministry of the Interior 164 164 162 62 58 59Agencies under the Ministry of Agriculture 6 6 6 6 6 5Total: 587 584 592 497 481 436

Note. This data set includes the territorial units of Lithuanian agencies at the subnational level. Data from the Register of Civil Servants,the Civil Service Department under the Ministry of the Interior (2011).

Development Committee and the Lithuanian State Scienceand Studies Foundation were reorganized from governmentagencies into agencies under the ministries (the Ministryof Transport and Communications and the Ministry ofEducation and Science, respectively).

Finally, the agencies under the ministries experiencedcertain organizational changes in 2009–2010. For instance,in 2009 the number of agencies under the Ministry ofEnvironment decreased by six after the absorption oftwo agencies into the Environment Protection Agency, themerger of three agencies into a new agency (the State ForestService), and the merger of two sets of protected territoriesinto larger entities.

The mapping data also support the de-agencificationtrend in the postaccession period. Figure 1 indicates thatthe number of agencies under the six Lithuanian ministriesdecreased by six in the period 2004–2010, mainly as a resultof three mergers, two absorptions, and one death identi-fied for 2010. In addition to the establishment of the StateForest Service (through the merger of three other agen-cies) in the policy area of environment, two mergers wereidentified in the policy areas of national defense and socialsecurity. Furthermore, the mapping data point to the impactof the economic crisis and public management reforms onthe organization of public administration at the central level.Out of fifty-one agency terminations identified in the map-ping data set, eleven terminations (21.6% of all terminations)occurred in 2010. No organizational changes leading toagency expansion were identified in 2009–2010, pointing tothe importance of budgetary constraints.

These findings of mapping and organizational terminationare supported by other sources of data. The desk researchrevealed that despite three initiatives of government-wideorganizational reforms (in 1999–2000, 2006–2008, and

2009–2010), the systemic effect on the agency landscapewas produced only by the organizational reforms imple-mented by the 2008–2012 government in response to theeconomic crisis that started at the end of 2008 (Nakrošis& Martinaitis, 2011). Also, the study of the InformationSociety Development Committee explained that this agencywas reorganized from a government agency into a ministe-rial agency following its review in the governmental SunsetCommission.8

All of these findings largely confirm that in the con-text of the economic crisis, public management reformsled to de-agencification according to the post-NPM model(organizational changes in the form of deaths, mergers, andabsorptions) because of its potential to contribute to fiscalconsolidation. The mapping data were sufficient to deter-mine the overall trend of de-agencification, but the data setfrom the Register of Civil Servants captured more accuratelythe scope of organizational changes, especially those at theterritorial level.

The Impact of Government Changes on(De-)agencification

This section analyzes the impact of government changesand ministerial reorganizations on organizational changes(including terminations). Any organizational event at theagency level—whether an agency birth or death—is alwaysa political act because it should be determined by a polit-ical authority (the parliament, government, or its minister).This is clearly illustrated by our mapping data, suggesting

8The purpose of the advisory commission was to optimize the structureof public administration and cut down the number of public administrationorganizations and civil servants.

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a close relationship between governmental and agency-levelchanges.

We start from the analysis of ministerial reorganizations.Changes in the government structure prompted significantorganizational changes at the agency level between 1990 and2000. Many change events in the subordination and namesof agencies were identified in the mapping data set (seeTables 3, 4, and 6 concerning each period of time). Theseagency-level changes can be explained by the precedingreorganizations of their parent ministries. For instance, adecision to reduce the number of ministries from seven-teen to fourteen in 1998, which was influenced by theelection of President Adamkus in that year, produced anumber of organizational changes at the agency level. Outof fifteen change events identified for 1998, eight changesof agency affiliation were associated with this ministerialreorganization. The abolition of the Ministry of Constructionand Urban Affairs marked an end to its agency set up in1990 (the Department of Amenities and Services). In addi-tion, the abolition of the Ministry of Public AdministrationReforms and Local Authorities (MoPARLA) in 2000 pro-duced a similar outcome. Out of six change events identifiedfor 2000, three events involved the transfer of agencies toother ministries that undertook the functions of the abolishedministry. The Lithuanian Standards Board, the LithuanianNational Accreditation Bureau, and the State MetrologyService became subordinate to the Ministry of Environmentas a result of this ministerial reorganization.

In order to assess the impact of government changes atthe agency level, we divided all Lithuanian governments intotwo groups: seven Lithuanian governments that came intopower after a large change in the parliamentary majority(governments 1, 3, 5, 8, 11, 12, 15) and eight governmentsthat started their terms after a small change in the parlia-mentary majority (governments 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14).The analysis of the mapping data indicates a link betweenthe government and organizational changes, with the firstgroup of governments more actively pursuing their polit-ical aims compared to the second group of governments.These governments enacted the majority of organizationalchanges (89 out of 133 or about 67%) in the Lithuanianagency landscape. This table also indicates the influence ofgovernment changes on agency termination. Out of fifty-oneterminations, thirty-two terminations (63% of all ministerialagencies) were adopted after wholesale changes of gov-ernments, and nineteen terminations (37%) occurred afterpartial alternations in government. However, it is difficult todisentangle the political influence on organizational changesfrom other factors. For instance, the majority of organiza-tional changes made by government 11 (2000–2001) wereassociated with Lithuania’s accession to the EU and theabolition of the MoPARLA.

Other sources of information corroborate the findingsof mapping concerning the impact of government changes.For example, Bakaveckas (2008) found that, in part,

organizational reforms were connected to the abolition andreorganization of the ministries, leading to the establish-ment of new government agencies or agencies under theministries, as well as changes in their name or subordination.

The study of Lithuanian public security organizationsfound that the State Security Department was set up justfifteen days after the reestablishment of the Lithuanian inde-pendence in 1990 in order to safeguard the new Lithuanianstate, its sovereignty, and the constitutional order againstencroachment. This new government agency was reorga-nized into the Security Agency in 1991 (after the changein the parliamentary majority in 1991 under government3 led by Vagnorius), but by 1994 (after the adoption of theLithuanian constitution and another change of parliamentarymajority in late 1992) a new state institution was establishedunder the name of the State Security Department accountableto parliament and the president (both controlled by the sameleft-wing party, the Lithuanian Democratic Labor Party, atthat time).

This section illustrates how the changes in governmentand the ministerial reorganizations affected organizationalchanges of political and formal nature at the agency levelin Lithuania. Although it is easy to link the ministerialreorganizations with certain organizational changes, a rela-tionship between the changes in government and organiza-tional changes is not straightforward because of other factorsaffecting organizational changes.

CONCLUSIONS

Lithuanian public sector organizations are relatively young.The average age of the public sector organizations that par-ticipated in the COBRA survey was 9.14 years (N = 69).According to the mapping data, the average age of the agen-cies under the six Lithuanian ministries was also 9.1 years(N = 111). This could be contrasted with the average age of32.25 years for all public organizations included in the jointCOBRA data set covering 16 countries (COBRA (CRIPO)network, 2011). Despite their adolescent age, they haveexperienced intensive organizational changes in their orga-nizational history. The period 1990–2010 was marked by thehasty establishment, reorganization, and abolition of agen-cies and other public sector organizations, producing aninstitutional drift in Lithuania. The inconsistent developmentof public sector organizations was observed in all CEE coun-tries that participated in the COST network (Croatia, Estonia,Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia, and Romania; Randma-Liivet al., 2011).

The analysis of the mapping data and other sourcesof information confirmed that organizational changes inLithuania depended on a combination of exogenous andendogenous factors, whose influence varied across differ-ent time periods. Though the expansion of governmentalfunctions during Lithuania’s transition to democracy and a

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market economy and its accession to the EU resulted ina period of agencification during 1990–2004, the adoptionof government-wide organizational reforms during the eco-nomic crisis explains the process of de-agencification in2009–2010. In contrast to the previous government-wideinitiatives of organizational reform, the current reforms areachieving a systemic change in the Lithuanian agency land-scape due to the stability of the Lithuanian government15 and the continued implementation of its deliberate reformactions (Nakrošis & Martinaitis, 2011).

Furthermore, the turnover of governments after a largechange in parliamentary majority in the absence of a clearagency model is an important factor explaining frequentreversals in the trajectory of Lithuanian agencification. Ourinitial research illustrates that the politicization of CEE pub-lic administrations can extend beyond senior civil servants,whose turnover has been the focus of many CEE studies. Forinstance, higher politicization scores in the CEE civil ser-vices were associated with wholesale changes of governmentinvolving alternations between competing ideological blocs(Meyer-Sahling & Veen, 2012). Therefore, it is important tocontinue assessing the impact of political factors on orga-nizational, personnel, and other managerial changes in CEEpublic administrations.

Overall, the main results of the article support the assump-tion of the transformative perspective that international pres-sures are transformed by interacting state-specific factorsrelated to the polity, politics, and policy in the processof organizational changes. This confirms the relevance ofthis institutional explanation for the study of organizationalchange, which was indicated in the introduction to this spe-cial issue. However, more in-depth studies sensitive to theparticular CEE context (Zubek & Goetz, 2010) could provideinteresting insights about the influence of various factors onorganizational change in the future.

Although the findings of mapping are crucial for the studyof (longitudinal) organizational change, this article showedthat quantitative approaches can also provide valuable evi-dence. Because organizational change is path dependent andstems from a complex interplay of various internal and exter-nal factors, the study of this phenomenon should remainbased on a mixed-methods approach in the future. In addi-tion to the case studies of particular agencies, it is possibleto undertake case studies of particular governments, explain-ing organizational changes and terminations during theirpolitical terms.

Agency mapping enabled the capturing of importantorganizational changes (including agency terminations) inLithuania. However, longitudinal analysis suffered fromfragmented data sets with time-series data. Unlike Norwayand Ireland, Lithuania has no single database covering allpublic sector organizations and their change events since1990. Collaboration between the Lithuanian universities andthe state institutions is needed to develop a more comprehen-sive database that could be used for the purpose of scientific

research and informing decisions of public managementreforms or other organizational changes.

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