Civil Service Reform in Slovakia and Hungary: The Road to Professionalisation?

Staroňová, Katarína; Gajduschek, György

doi:10.1057/9781137316813_8

Cited by 15 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…For example, Meyer-Sahling and Veen (2012, p. 6) considered the previous political experience of senior bureaucrats, their turnover after elections, and the importance of political connection for their career advancement, all indicators of active firing and hiring by the new ministers. A strong role of Slovak ministers in influencing the outcomes of the supposedly objective and merit-based selection of civil servants has also been well-documented (Meyer-Sahling, 2009), as was the existence of the rules that had given the ministers the right to sack the civil servants without justification (Staroňová & Gajduschek 2013). Reports of international bodies (e.g., European & Commission, 2012, 2018) also highlight the unusually high fluctuation of top civil servants, especially at the beginning of electoral cycles.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal or Party Roots of Civil Service Patronage? Ministerial Change Effects on the Appointments of Top Civil Servants

Staroňová

Rybář

2020

Administration & Society

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Patronage is typically studied following government terminations when political parties appoint their nominees into the state administration. However, patronage is understudied in cases when a change of minister takes place without government termination. Taking individual government ministers as the units of analysis, we identify four modalities of ministerial alterations: replacing, successive, incumbent, and switching ministers. We show that politicization occurs under “replacing ministers” following government termination, but the bureaucratic turnover is equally high under “successive ministers.” That suggests that patronage can be seen as an individualized power resource of autonomous ministers who exercise influence independently of their political parties.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Personal or Party Roots of Civil Service Patronage? Ministerial Change Effects on the Appointments of Top Civil Servants

Staroňová

Rybář

2020

Administration & Society

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“…Th e system was a classical nomenclatura system, as all positions -whether in the administration or to personal offi ces of executive leaders -depended on the decisions of the Communist Party (Staronova and Gajduschek 2013). Aft er the fall of Communism in 1989 it took another 13 years for the main Civil Service Law (CSL) in 2002 to enter into force; most countries in the region had already enacted comprehensive civil service legislation.…”

Section: Ministerial Advisers In a Politicized Model: A Case Study Onmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ministerial Advisers in Slovakia: Profiles and Career Paths, 2010 – 2020

Krajňák

Staroňová

Pickering

2020

NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy

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This study examines the transparency of the regulatory framework under which ministerial advisors exist within the politicized context of a Central and Eastern European perspective. We compare profiles and career paths of ministerial advisers under five different types of coalition governments and examine if variance across government types can be explained by type of party – established vs. new parties. Empirically, the article draws on a cohort of 162 ministerial advisers in Slovakia across five governments from 2010 to 2020. We arrive at multiple findings. Firstly, we suggest the limitation in the availability and reporting of data is an important finding as it highlights accountability gaps and lack of government transparency irrespective of the party in power. Secondly, within the low regulatory environment, ministers appoint multiple types of staff including both formal “visible” ministerial advisers and “invisible” ministerial agents that, if one could accurately measure, would likely demonstrate that the ministerial advisory system is more inflated than we currently present. The ad-hoc nature of the advisory system also creates fluctuations in the size of the ministerial adviser cohort across governments and across different ministries. This would also help to explain the next finding, which is that, contrary to the experience in many countries, the overall size of the advisor population does not grow, probably because executive politicians have other avenues of appointing advisory agents. Fourthly, the advisers have a fairly equal distribution of prior employment from both the public sector and the private sector, but we do see some evidence of more established political parties preferring to recruit from the public sector and newer parties preferring to recruit from the private sector. Lastly, the appointment process appears to be highly controlled by individual ministers, suggesting personal ties are essential (link between ministerial and advisor education) and party-political criteria are a low consideration. The research is conducted using a biographical approach in which freedom of information requests and open source data is scrapped and then triangulated via a dozen interviews with current and former advisers. It argues that regulation is weak, lacking public scrutiny, which provides loopholes for employing ministerial agents in informal ways that could create, at worst, the opportunity for corrupt behavior, or at least, lead to poor practices in good governance. Therefore, future research should focus on both the formal “visible” and informal “invisible” ways that ministers recruit their advisory agents, how their agents function, and whether existing regulatory measures create a transparent and accountable governance framework.

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“…Th e legal-institutional framework seemingly contained all the customary, Westerntype elements of a classic career-type civil service (such as competitive, merit-based recruitment and promotion, protection against arbitrary dismissal, etc.). Still, as indepth legal and empirical analyses showed, the details and the practical operation of the institutional framework, especially on the managerial levels, showed clear signs of politicisation (Staronová and Gajduschek 2013).…”

Section: Civil Service Reform Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%