Senior Civil Servants and Bureaucratic Change in Belgium

Abstract

The Belgian civil service used to be a Weberian bureaucracy, with a strict division of labor between civil servants and politicians, administrative careers based on both seniority and partisan patronage, and a technocratic culture coupled with a high level of alienation from both politics and politicians. Administrative reform came in the wake of the constitutional reform that transformed unitary Belgium into a federal state with several governments, each with a civil service of its own. The fiscal crisis prompted them to look favorably on the promises of New Public Management (NPM). The new Flemish government was first to take advantage of this opportunity, as it had the financial resources, the tendency to refer to Anglo‐Saxon and Dutch examples, and the right political and administrative leadership.The staying power of these as yet precarious reforms depends on the continuity of political leadership, the establishment of an administrative culture matching the institutional innovations, and resistance to the endemic temptation to use them for partisan purposes.

Understanding Employee Motivation to Innovate: Evidence from Front Line Employees in United States Federal Agencies

“…Compared to other industrialised countries like Germany, France, Belgium and Italy, the US and Australia score low on the cultural dimensions of power distance and uncertainty avoidance (Hofstede 2001), factors believed to promote innovativeness among public employees (Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004). In addition, for practically three decades, public employees in both countries have been under seemingly continuous pressure to devise and implement new ways of increasing public sector productivity, unlike other countries such as Canada, where New Public Management reforms have occurred in a more disjointed manner (Lindquist 1997), or France or Germany, where improvements in productivity have taken a back seat to efforts to redefine the relationship between elected officials and bureaucrats and restructure government (Bezes 2001; Dierickx 2009). The US and Australia are also similar in the sense innovative proposals from public employees must compete in a marketplace of ideas where private consultants and think tanks wield considerable influence (Halligan 2001; Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004).…”

Two Myths of Convergence in Public Management Reform

“…Decentralization of the Belgian state and fiscal pressure then caused the new federal system to look towards NPM models, including performance contracts and employing 'contractuals' (persons employed on limited term contracts and without the same protection as core public servants). However, as Dierickx (2009) notes, reform has been piecemeal and since the 1990s some reform initiatives have slowed and/or halted. In Canada, the complexity of inter-provincial politics in Canada's federal system limited the NPM agenda and saw considerable divergence across Provinces (Tomblin 2009).…”

Political‐Administrative Relations: Impact of and Puzzles in Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman, 1981

“…German civil servants are still left of center (Derlien 2003). For Belgium, the civil service is ideologically moderate and right of center (Dierickx 2003). 9 Bigger change has been reported with regard to educational background.…”

“…The Belgian bureaucracy is an interesting case. Belgian senior civil servants are marginalized, since ministerial staffers assist ministers and act like a hub of contacts among parliamentarians, ministers, and civil servants (Dierickx 2003, 328–329).…”