Development of Institutional Structure in Estonia: dynamics in the core of government

This is a work in progress. Please do not cite or quote. Comments welcome. The paper focuses on the change of administrative structure in the core of Estonian government. It is based on a mapping exercise started in 2008. The exercise has been led by an aim to find out what has happened to the government structure since regaining independence? How has it developed after the change of political system? The focus of the paper is on the ministries and their underlying government agencies (boards and inspectorates, as established by the Government of the Republic Act). Most of these agencies can be characterized today as regulatory agencies. The research is based on the analysis of various documentation (coalition agreements, legislative initiatives and their accompanying notes, records of discussion in the parliament Riigikogu) in which the intentions and details of the many establishments, mergers and reorganizations of government agencies have been conserved. It is concluded that the general trend of changes the core of Estonian government can be characterized as de-specialization, both on the vertical and horizontal dimensions of the structure. Most of the structural reshuffling has been sector-based. The reforms have been different from the NPM-type structural reforms in the Western democracies, both by their initial conditions and their content