In this study, only national-level agencies with exclusive competences will
be analyzed. They are selected from the Dutch national budget of the year
2009, which includes for each ministry a list of independent agencies which
are linked to the ministry.
For 2009, the budget lists 116 single authorities and
27 clusters of authorities. In 2009, the organizations had at their disposal an
amount of public funds of almost 5.4 billion Euro. This study does not focus
on the clusters of agencies, and also excludes those agencies which were
dissolved in 2009, or stripped of their public authority