This paper aims to determine where the Hungarian civil service system might be situated on an imaginary merit system – spoils system scale. In doing so, the Hungarian system is analyzed from two angles. Firstly, regulation is scrutinized as it is manifested in the Civil Service Act. Secondly, practice is examined relying on available statistical and survey data. The author argues that, contrary to the conclusions of most of scholarly publications, the Hungarian Law is a pseudo-merit system law, not in fact preventing the prevalence of a spoils system. Practice generally reveals, however, features of a modestly politicized system with signs of increasing professionalization. The last two sections investigate the potential explanations for these somewhat surprising findings and whether the findings for the Hungarian civil service may be generalized to some or most of the Central and East European countries.
The array of public affairs programs has been growing in the past 27 years in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe. Traditionally, public administration programs concentrated primarily on legal and formal institutional aspects of governing, whereas public policy and management programs were entirely absent and remain relatively new. This article discusses the contents of the MPA/MPP programs in five CEE countries (the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia and Slovenia) in order to identify major features in terms of the disciplinary and methodological character of these programs. Our ultimate question is to assess whether these programs reveal a clear, relatively robust public administration "identity," and whether there is a convergence among programs in the region toward the so-called mainstream programs in the world.
Most contemporary scholars regard bureaucracy as an inefficient phenomenon. At the same time, we may find a great number of bureaucratic organizations in the various social spheres. Max Weber, who introduced the concept of bureaucracy into the social sciences, however, was convinced that bureaucracy is superior to any other organizational form and explained its prevalence by the immanent rationality of bureaucratic organizations. In analyzing Weber’s text, the author argues that Weber was mistranslated into English and then misinterpreted. Weber’s term rationality is not at all identical to efficiency. Rationality includes also uncertainty reduction regarding internal organizational procedures as well as outputs. Uncertainty reduction may induce several advantages, which, in several cases, ensure organizational superiority.
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