THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF POLITICAL DISCRETION IN POST‐COMMUNIST CIVIL SERVICE SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF HUNGARY
| Date | 01 August 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9299.2006.00608.x |
| Published date | 01 August 2006 |
Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 3, 2006 (693–716)
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF POLITICAL
DISCRETION IN POST-COMMUNIST CIVIL
SERVICE SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF HUNGARY
JAN-HINRIK MEYER-SAHLING
This article addresses the discrepancy between attempts to establish professional,
de-politicized civil services and the politicization of personnel policy at the central
government level of post-communist countries. It develops the concept of formal
political discretion as an analytical tool for the assessment of how and to what extent
legislative frameworks governing civil services provide institutional conditions for
the de-politicization of personnel policy. The case of Hungary shows that since the
change of regime in 1989/90, four civil service reforms have led to the adoption,
implementation and revision of civil service legislation that has gradually reduced
the possibilities for government ministers to exercise political discretion over person-
nel policy. Civil service reforms have also led to the institutionalization of various
discretionary instruments which ministers can and have used to politicize civil
service affairs. The adoption and implementation of civil service laws therefore does
not necessarily lead to the de-politicization of civil services.
INTRODUCTION
One of the major puzzles in the development of civil services in East-Central
Europe, including here the eight new member states of the European Union
plus Bulgaria and Romania, is the discrepancy between attempts to establish
a professional, de-politicized civil service and the continuing politicization
of personnel policy at the central executive level. One decade after the change
of regime in Hungary, the record of civil service reform in East-Central
Europe as a whole suggests that governments have had diffi culties in estab-
lishing even the ‘ legal minima ’ for the development of a professional civil
service that is insulated from political interference. As Hesse (1998 , p. 176)
argues, ‘ [w]ithout a legal framework, provided by a comprehensive civil
service law, it will be impossible to attract an elite into public services. Con-
fi dence ( … ) will only be ensured if employment duties as well as rights are
guaranteed and made enforceable ’ . Since Hungary passed civil service leg-
islation shortly after the change of regime in 1990 and 1992 and has subse-
quently embarked on a path of continuous civil service reform leading to
several amendments of the original legislation, it is widely regarded as the
frontrunner in East-Central Europe. In other countries, civil service reforms
have been subject to delays, incomplete reforms and failures to implement
Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling is a Lecturer in European Politics at the School of Politics and International
Relations, University of Nottingham.
694 JAN-HINRIK MEYER-SAHLING
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2006 Public Administration Vol. 84, No. 3, 2006 (693–716)
legislation. In contrast to Hungary, it was only towards the end of the 1990s
and thereafter that most of the East-Central European governments consid-
ered here adopted formal legal frameworks governing their civil services.
Poland, Lithuania and Latvia adopted laws governing the civil service in the
mid-1990s but, failing to implement them, adopted revised laws in 1998, 1999
and 2000 respectively. Among the other East-Central European countries that
have adopted civil service legislation, Estonia passed its fi rst Act of Parlia-
ment in 1995, Bulgaria and Romania in 1999, Slovakia in 2001, and Slovenia
and the Czech Republic in 2002.
At the same time, empirical research on civil service developments in East-
Central Europe has found little evidence that the adoption of civil service
legislation spurs the creation of professional, de-politicized civil services.
Verheijen (2000 , p. 29) argues, ‘ civil service laws have seldom been the expected
catalysts for the stabilization, depoliticization and professionalization of the
central administration ’ . Similarly, the World Bank has sought to evaluate the
performance of East-Central European civil services in the context of European
Union accession with reference to international best practice. It concludes that
real progress is evident when it comes to ‘ credible efforts to delineate the basic
legal and institutional foundation for a professional, de-politicized civil ser-
vice. [However, the] study ’ s fi ndings reinforce the impression from previous
analyses ( … ) that administrative development in Central and Eastern Europe,
has been incipient or intermittent [and that] considerable distance still needs
to be travelled to achieve sound international practice ’ ( Nunberg 2000 , p. 7).
The discrepancy between the ostensible intention of civil service legisla-
tion and the practice of personnel policy has been especially evident with
respect to the senior civil service. Verheijen and Rabrenovic (2001 , p. 411)
argue that politico-administrative relations are characterized by ‘ instability ’ ,
that is, ‘ [t]he prevailing pattern in [post-communist] states is still one of the
top echelons of the civil service changing with each election, or, in worse
cases, government re-shuffl e ’ . Similarly, Goetz and Wollmann (2001 , p. 880)
observe a ‘ persistent infl uence of party politics in the management of person-
nel policy ’ and the tendency of ministers to ‘ surround themselves with
entourages of political advisors ’ .
The coincidence of: (1) efforts to professionalize and de-politicize civil
services; and (2) the continuing politicization of personnel policy raises
questions with respect to the content of the civil service legislation that has
been adopted in post-communist Europe. Empirical research on administra-
tive developments in post-communist Europe has provided several country-
based surveys that open the black box of national civil service systems
( Nunberg 1999; Verheijen 1999; Baker 2002; Bossaert and Demmke 2003 ) as
well as country-based studies of emerging politico-administrative relations
at the central executive level ( Verheijen 2001 ). However, this research has
paid curiously little attention to the impact of newly established formal-legal
frameworks governing post-communist civil services on the kind of person-
nel policy processes that may and do occur within these frameworks.
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