Governing the post-communist state: government alternation and senior civil service politicisation in Central and Eastern Europe

Recent debates on the transformation of the state in Central and Eastern Europe have centred on the impact of political competition on state politicisation. The presence of robust competition, including coherent governments and critical oppositions are said to reduce the potential for state politici...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:East European politics 2012-03, Vol.28 (1), p.4-22
Main Authors: Meyer-Sahling, Jan-Hinrik, Veen, Tim
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Baltic States
Bureaucrats
Civil service
East-Central Europe
Governmental reform
Ideology
Political behavior
political parties
post-communism
Public administration
state-building
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Recent debates on the transformation of the state in Central and Eastern Europe have centred on the impact of political competition on state politicisation. The presence of robust competition, including coherent governments and critical oppositions are said to reduce the potential for state politicisation. This article challenges this perspective. It concentrates on the impact of patterns of government alternation on senior civil service politicisation. The article emphasises problems of political control of senior bureaucrats, which are argued to emerge after regular wholesale alternations between ideological blocs as opposed to other types of alternations. The article relies on data from an expert survey that was conducted in eight Central and Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004. It develops an index of politicisation that captures the range and intensity of senior civil service politicisation. It then conceptualises senior civil service politicisation as a mode of governing the post-communist state and traces the variation in politicisation to patterns of government alternation in Central and Eastern Europe since their transition to democracy.
ISSN:2159-9165
2159-9173
DOI:10.1080/13523279.2011.635651