Quango - WikiHQ

A quango (quasi-autonomous non-governmental organization; also QUANGO) is a corporation, authority or other organisation, formed outside of government-proper, to which a government has devolved power over certain public functions; the organisation has some independence but still partly or ultimately controlled or financed by ministers or other government officers. The acronym was originally derived from quasi-NGO, where NGO is the abbreviation for a non-government organization, the quasi thus qualifying the 'non'. Subsequently, the term acquired the additional "-autonomous" to emphasise the partial separation and semi-independence of the typical quango from its creating government.

The substitution into the name of near (in place of non), to yield quasi-autonomous near-government organisation (also abbreviated QUANGO), is perhaps the most accurate and most descriptive nomenclature, capturing the proximity to the public sector—and the 'almost'-governmental nature—of such bodies.

As all versions of the name suggest, quangos are hybrid organizations, with elements of their structure, organisation and governance taken from both NGOs, on the one hand, and regular or mainstream public sector bodies on the other. Although originating in the United States,

The Irish majority party, Fine Gael, had promised to eliminate 145 quangos should they be the governing party in the 2016 election. Since coming to power they have reduced the overall number of quangos by 17. This reduction also included agencies which the former government had already planned to remove.

New Zealand

In New Zealand, quangos are referred to as 'Crown Entities', with the shift occurring in the 1980s during a period of neoliberalisation of the state sector. In 1996, there were an estimated 310 quangos in New Zealand, and an additional 2690 school Boards of Trustees (similar to the American model of boards of education). Other quangos from 1996 include: "...63 Crown Health Enterprises, 39 tertiary education institutions, 21 Business development boards and 9 Crown Research Institutes. But there were also 71 single crown entities with services ranging from regulatory (e.g. Accounting Standards Review Board, Takeovers Panel) to quasi-judicial (e.g. Police Complaints Authority, Race Relations Conciliator), to the arts (e.g. New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, NZ Film Commission), to social welfare (e.g. Housing Corporation of NZ) and to substantial enterprises (e.g. Auckland International Airport Ltd)." This appointment of people to governance boards has been widely criticised by political parties and political commentators as a form of cronyism.

In 2010, there were 2,607 crown entities (including Board of Trustees) with annual expenditure of $32 billion in 2009/2010.

United Kingdom

Despite a 1979 commitment from the Conservative Party to curb the growth of non-departmental bodies, their numbers grew rapidly throughout that party's time in power during the 1980s. One UK example is the Forestry Commission, which is a non-ministerial government department responsible for forestry in England.

The Cabinet Office 2009 report on non-departmental public bodies found that there were 766 NDPBs sponsored by the UK government. The number had been falling: there were 827 in 2007 and 790 in 2008. The number of NDPBs had fallen by over 10% since 1997. Staffing and expenditure of NDPBs had increased. They employed 111,000 people in 2009 and spent £46.5 billion, of which £38.4 billion was directly funded by the government.

According to an analysis done by the Cabinet Office, there were 302 ALBs (or quangos) in the UK in 2022/23, 244 of which were non-departmental public bodies. ALBs employed just over 390,800 staff. By far the biggest ALB was NHS England, receiving over a third of the total funding for all ALBs. NHS England is currently being dissolved, with most of its functions and employees due to be absorbed into the Department for Health and Social Care. Paul Krugman has stated that the US Federal Reserve is, effectively, "what the British call a quango... Its complex structure divides power between the federal government and the private banks that are its members, and in effect gives substantial autonomy to a governing board of long-term appointees."

Other U.S.-based organizations that fit the original definition of quangos include the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), the National Endowment for Democracy, the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac).

By the broader definition now used in the United Kingdom, there are hundreds of federal agencies that might be classed as quangos.

Indonesia

The Indonesian Ulema Council is considered a quango for its status as an independent, mass organization-like public organization but supported and financed by the state while keeping its status as independent organization outside the Indonesian state organizational system in other side. As a quango, MUI is empowered to issue religious edicts (fatwas) comparable to state laws which are binding upon the Indonesian Muslim population and can exert influence upon state policies, politics, and the economy due to its status and prestige.

It describes an ostensibly non-governmental organization performing governmental functions, often in receipt of funding or other support from government. (By contrast, charities and other traditional NGOs mostly obtain revenues from donations from the public, foundations and other organizations which support their cause.)

An essential feature of a quango in the original definition was that it should not be a formal part of the state structure. The term was then extended to apply to a range of organisations, such as executive agencies providing (from 1988) health, education and other services. Particularly in the UK, this occurred in a polemical atmosphere in which it was alleged that proliferation of such bodies was undesirable and should be reversed. In this context, the original acronym was often replaced by a backronym spelt out as "quasi-autonomous national government organisation, and often rendered as 'qango' This spawned the related acronym qualgo, a 'quasi-autonomous local government organisation'.

The less contentious term non-departmental public body (NDPB) is often employed to identify numerous organisations with devolved governmental responsibilities. Examples in the United Kingdom include those engaged in the regulation of various commercial and service sectors, such as the Water Services Regulation Authority.

The UK government's definition in 1997 of a non-departmental public body or quango was:

Criticisms

The Times has accused quangos of bureaucratic waste and excess. In 2005, Dan Lewis, author of The Essential Guide to Quangos, claimed that the UK had 529 quangos, many of which were useless and duplicated the work of others.

The term has spawned the derivative quangocrat; the Taxpayers' Alliance faulted a majority of "quangocrats" for not making declarations of political activity.

References

External links

Read Before Burning: Arm's length government for a new administration – report by the Institute for Government about the quango landscape
Civil Service – Government Departments and Accredited NDPBs
Economic Research Council – online database of all UK quangos 1998–2006
Richard Allen and Dimitar Radev, "Managing and Controlling Extrabudgetary Funds", OECD Journal of Budgeting, Vol. 6, No. 4, 2006
Carsten Greve, Matthew Flinders, Sandra Van Thiel (1999), Quangos—What's in a Name? Defining Quangos from a Comparative Perspective, Governance 12 (2), 129–146
UK government site about the process of making public appointments
Quango name 'source of ridicule', files from 1980 show