Are Agencies Special Administrative Units? ¿Las agencias son unidades administrativas especiales?

Abstract

Proposed article topic: “Are agencies special administrative units?”, the article herein shall address two ostensibly different concepts in terms of content and origin. On the one hand people are aware of special administrative unit that have been created with the objective of undertaking activities related to a ministry or administrative department and as a consequence, following judicial decisions, they should be part of the structure of one or the other. However, the doctrinal critique that some administrative units have been granted legal personhood is highlighted by a shift in the jurisprudential approach that endorses them and how these bodies became regulated, regardless of their legal personhood status, after the 1991 constitution. Addressing the topic of State Agencies, this paper calls attention to their Anglo-Saxon origins and the absence of any identifying characteristics, such as the absence of a common regime. Special reference is made in the 2011 reform and how these various special administrative units and state agencies were created; some were established as special administrative units. This demonstrates that the question of whether agencies are in fact special administrative units lacks relevance since its administrative, financial, budgetary and technical autonomy depend on an act or acts of creation and does not possess varying conceptual identities that would allow for it’s differentiation.