The politics of bureaucracy: The Central and Eastern European perspective
| Author | Tiina Randma-Liiv,Wolfgang Drechsler |
| DOI | 10.1177/1369148119834835 |
| Published date | 01 August 2019 |
| Date | 01 August 2019 |
| Subject Matter | Breakthrough Commentaries |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148119834835
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2019, Vol. 21(3) 504 –512
© The Author(s) 2019
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DOI: 10.1177/1369148119834835
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The politics of bureaucracy:
The Central and Eastern
European perspective
Tiina Randma-Liiv1 and Wolfgang Drechsler1,2
Keywords
bureaucracy, Central and Eastern Europe, civil service reform, comparative public administration,
post-communist transition, public administration, regulation
We are honoured and pleased indeed to contribute to this special issue dedicated to Guy
Peters’ outstanding book, The Politics of Bureaucracy, within the ‘Breakthrough’ series
of the British Journal of Politics and International Relations. The Politics of Bureaucracy
is among the most significant books—both for the discipline at large and for us person-
ally—published in the field of Public Administration (PA) during the past half century.
The life of The Politics of Bureaucracy largely overlaps with, but is a decade older
than, the democratic changes in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), which started with the
fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Given the importance of Guy Peters’ work and his per-
sonal presence in that region, and especially of The Politics of Bureaucracy—both
because of the current context and because that importance is indeed prominent—our
contribution seeks to outline the impact of the book in and on that specific region and its
reform process. This is but one aspect of the Politics of Bureaucracy story, but, we think,
a significant one.
PA development in CEE
In this context, we consider CEE to encompass the new member states of the European
Union (EU): Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, although as a region and in gen-
eral parlance, CEE is larger, sometimes even blurring with the entire ‘Second World’
except China. With all difference and specificity of the CEE countries and their very
varied legacies and contexts acknowledged (see Meyer-Sahling, 2009), and with all
the problems of lesson-drawing as such realised (see Randma-Liiv, 2007, specifically
about CEE), we can still say that there have been some crucial common factors and
stages in their development, even if fading across the decades. And these become
1Tallinn University of Technology, Tallinn, Estonia
2Davis Center, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
Corresponding author:
Tiina Randma-Liiv, Tallinn University of Technology, Akadeemia tee 3, 12618 Tallinn, Estonia.
Email: tiina.randma-liiv@taltech.ee
834835BPI0010.1177/1369148119834835The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsRandma-Liiv and Drechsler
research-article2019
Breakthrough Commentary
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