Old habits die hard, sometimes: history and civil service politicization in Europe
| Author | Kim Sass Mikkelsen |
| Published date | 01 December 2018 |
| Date | 01 December 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020852316652487 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
International Review of
Administrative Sciences
2018, Vol. 84(4) 803–819
!The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0020852316652487
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International
Review of
Administrative
Sciences
Article
Old habits die hard, sometimes:
history and civil service
politicization in Europe
Kim Sass Mikkelsen
University of Southern Denmark, Denmark
Abstract
This article examines relationships between historical administrative systems and
civil service politicization across Europe. I argue that to appreciate when and how
history matters, we need to consider public service bargains struck between politicians
and senior bureaucrats. Doing so complicates the relationship between historical
and current administrative systems: a bureaucratic, as opposed to patrimonial,
18th-century state infrastructure is necessary for the depoliticization of ministerial
bureaucracies in present-day Western Europe. However, the relationship does not
hold in East-Central Europe since administrative histories are tumultuous and fractured.
Combining data from across the European continent, I provide evidence in support of
these propositions.
Points for practitioners
This article addresses policymakers dealing with reforms of personnel policy regimes at
the centre of government. It considers the importance of history for politically attract-
ive reforms, as well as the limits of this importance. I argue that 18th-century state
infrastructures shape the extent to which political appointments are politically attractive
tools for administrative control. I show that only in countries that feature a bureau-
cratic, as opposed to patrimonial, 18th-century infrastructure are ministerial top man-
agement occupied by a permanent, as opposed to politically appointed, staff. However,
in East-Central Europe, a ruptured administrative history ensures that the distant past
does not similarly shape the extent of political appointments.
Keywords
administrative traditions, central administration, comparative public administration, his-
torical legacies, personnel policies
Corresponding author:
Kim Sass Mikkelsen, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Political Science and Public
Management, Campusvej 55, 5230 Odense M, Denmark.
Email: sass@sam.sdu.dk
Introduction
The past has always been alive in Europe. Accounts of regimes and state organ-
izations on the old continent in historical sociology often focus on long-term
developments, some drawing lines back to the Roman Empire (Ertman, 1997).
Administrative traditions, understood as persistent patterns of administrative
style and substance, are also studied increasingly by public administration research-
ers (Bezes and Lodge, 2007; Painter and Peters, 2010).
However, the link between historical administrative systems and civil service
politicization has remained under-studied. I define politicization as appointments
to public sector positions on personal or partisan criteria in exchange for loyal
service to the appointing entity. This definition, at least in the European context,
centres attention on the top of public sector hierarchies, where politicization is used
for administrative control, and away from the lower-level positions that may be
given in return for votes in elections.
Previous research has connected politicization to some administrative traditions
(e.g. Painter and Peters, 2010) but has paid less attention to whether historical
administrative systems help account for present-day patterns of politicization
(for an exception, see Kopecky´ and Spirova, 2011). This is unfortunate.
Politicization is a valuable tool for aiding policymaking and implementation: it
shapes reform capacity and direction; it is potentially hazardous to public sector
performance; and it can generate risks that state resources will be exploited
(Bezes and Lodge, 2007; Dahlstro
¨m et al., 2012; Kopecky´ et al., 2012; Lewis,
2008). Shedding light on what shapes politicization is both a natural and important
endeavour.
I examine whether, where and why a particular set of historical administrative
systems influence politicization in present-day ministerial bureaucracies. I develop
a theoretical framework and test it comparatively across 21 European countries.
One aim is to advance the literature by giving an empirical bird’s-eye view but the
main contribution is theoretical.
I distinguish between historically patrimonial and bureaucratic states according
to their 18th-century state infrastructure (Charron et al., 2012; Ertman, 1997).
In the patrimonial type, traditional elite groups historically controlled much of
public administration, whether through proprietary office-holding, as in Latin
Europe, or through principally unconstrained personal control by the monarch,
as in Russia. In the bureaucratic type, administrations were historically more pro-
fessional entities, access to which typically required educational and other types of
qualification rather than simply loyalty to ruling elites (Ertman, 1997: 8–9). I argue
that this traditional divergence has left a mark on the present-day extent
of politicization.
Comparative studies of politicization do exist (e.g. Kopecky´ et al., 2012;
Peters and Pierre, 2004) and some do emphasize historical developments. In the
comparative tradition, Shefter’s (1994) account in his Political Parties and the State
has been particularly influential. Briefly, Shefter emphasized that permanently
staffed bureaucracies, when they form early enough, become ‘constituencies for
804 International Review of Administrative Sciences 84(4)
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