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related pay and indicators—have led some observers to conclude that the model followed is more of a mixed one between the classical admin and NPM.19

Why aim to create administrations, which come closer to the classical Weberian model, to the German or French tradition than to popular Anglo-Saxon ideas of administrative reform inspired by business and managementprinciples?Atfirstglance,onecouldbeleftwiththeimpres- sion that reformers in Central and Eastern Europe simply lagged behind intheirreformideas.However,theargumentsofferedabovesuggestthat the starting position of reform in CEE required first establishing civil service systems which were stable and somewhat insulated from daily political interference and, then, dealing with issues such as performance indicators or quality control. The debate regarding the extent to which civil servants should have been offered job security in the new legislation is still open, and there are those who believe that more possibilities to hireandfirebasedonperformancewouldhaveensuredmoreflexibleand efficientadministrations.However,therewasasecondsetoffactors,which ensured that new legislation leaned more towards the classical model than towards NPM—international factors.

The Role of International Factors in Reform

While domestic arenas and the interaction of important actors remained decisive for the success or failure of legislative reform, there was also constant and considerable pressure for change exercised by the European Union, the OECD, the World Bank, in some cases the IMF and NATO.

Evidence that external pressures played a significant role can be found in the very array of civil service legislation adopted as a response to EU conditionality in almost all of the post-communist states.20 After the meeting of the European Council in Madrid in 1995, the European Union made administrative capacity to implement its acquis a formal criterion for membership. Standards and principles for the development of the civil servicesweredevelopedbytheOECD’sgroupSIGMA21 attherequestof the EU. Compliance with OECD criteria and standards and EU require-

19See D. Bossaert and C. Demke, Civil Services in theAccession States: New Trends and the Impact of the Integration Process, Maastricht 2003.

20Op.cit. note 15.

21SIGMA stands for Support for Improvement in Governance and Management in Central and Eastern European Countries and it was established in 1992 as a joint initiative of the OECD Center for Cooperation with Non-Member Economies and the EU’s PHARE program.

ments became a main condition for the success of new legislation which was often written with these criteria in mind.22

In defining standards for the emerging civil service systems, the

OECD/SIGMA experts attempted to extract what they saw as principles common for European public administrations such as accountability, transparency, rule of law, predictability, effectiveness and efficiency.23

OECD experts had even claimed that administrations of the EU member states were becoming more alike with time; thus, there was an emerging European Administrative Space. The existence of such a space is itself a disputed idea,24 but—as a consequence of such ideas—OECD experts were able to formulate the general principles which were to underpin the civil service systems established with the new legislation.

For the CEE countries aiming to join the EU, the significance of the push from outside is also in the fact that the laws were reformed from above and—in only a very few cases—there has been sufficient domestic debate, among politicians, experts and the general public on the form and model of their civil service systems. The lack, in many CEE states, of public debateon issues of administrative reform is significant andmay be expected to have some negative consequences in the future such as administrative resistance and inertia. Yet given the reluctance of political elites to protect civil servants from their own political interference, external pressure may have been—at least for some CEEs—the only way to start real reforms.

It is, however, too simplistic and Western centric—even if not un- common—toexplainpost-communistadministrativereformasastruggle between the good practices and principles disseminated by the West and the bad organizational legacy of in the East. A more realistic picture of the complex interplay between domestic and external factors would be a sequential one whereby once conditionality has helped tip the scales in favor of reform in the political arena, a process of lesson-drawing has started and has ensured that CEE states look to Western practices for inspiration for the exact shape of reform.25

22See, for example, the evaluation of the Polish law which states that: “[t]he system is compliant with the standards of political neutrality, impartiality and professionalism adopted in the EU member states and in the OECD countries” at: <http://usc.gov. pl/gallery/24/249.doc> accessed 23 March 2004.

23TheseprinciplesweredefinedinanOECD/SIGMApaper,SIGMA1999.“European

Principles for Public Administration”, Sigma Paper No. 27, CCNM/SIGMA/PUMA (99)44/REV1, Paris (OECD).

24Johan P. Olsen, “Towards a European Administrative Space?”, Arena Working Paper, WP 02/26, 2002, at: <http://www.arena.uio.no/publications/wp02_26htm>.

25See the volume by F. Schimmelfennig and U. Sedelmeier, The Europeanisation of Eastern Europe, Ithaca, NY 2005.

Evaluating Progress Thus Far

Therealquestionbehindthisstorystillis,however,whethertheadoption of legislation and strategies for reform (as well as training) has led to a real change in the way administrations operate in CEE. A few years ago, the experts following attempts at administrative reform since the 1990s, evaluated them as a partial, not very successful, effort.26 Today, there is— perhaps—more evidence that some of the rules introduced a few years ago are beginning to result in changes in behavior. The picture, however, remains a mixed one.

Officials themselves point to a sequence of reform steps: there is a unanimous belief that the installing of the rules has been a first step.27 Some civil servants tend to find fault with the quality of the legislation, seemingly pointing to an explanation of remaining deficiencies linked to the character of the adopted rules. Mostly, however, those directly involved define the problems of reform in normative terms such as the lack of shared expectations and beliefs among bureaucrats regarding themselves: they should function as neutral and professional servants of the public rather than as authoritarian and arbitrary cliques.Thus, it seems as if the identity of civil servants, their self-image has been slow to change. They do not yet perceive themselves as servants of the public (the word “civil” servant does not even exist in many local languages) and even less so as service providers.

Although the progress made in some states—for example Estonia or Hungary—is much more significant than what has been achieved in

Bulgaria, Slovakia, or Romania, on the whole, serious problem areas remain. The legitimacy of public service in Central and Eastern Europe is still quite low even if we factor in the fact that administrations all over the world are often criticized by the public. Perceptions of corruption are widespread from the Czech Republic to the Balkans.28

26For example, see T. Verheijen, “Civil Service Systems in EU Candidate States: Introduction” in T. Verheijen, (ed.), Civil Service Systems in Central and Eastern Europe, Cheltenham, UK 1999, 85-92 and idem, “Administrative Capacity Development: A Race Against Time?”, WRR Working Document 107, (Scientific Council for Govern- ment Policy),The Hague 2000; also K. H. Goetz, “Making Sense of Post Communist CentralAdministration: Modernization, Europeanisation or Latinization?”, 8 Journal of European Public Policy December 2001 No.6, 1032-1051.

27This paragraph is based on interviews with senior civil servants in Bulgaria in 2002.

28As witnessed in the last pre-accession report of the European Parliament which noted “persistent high level of corruption” in Latvia, “continuing damage inflicted by corruption in Poland” and in a separate report, the “high level of corruption” in Romania. See European Parliament, “Report on the Comprehensive Monitoring

Allegations of corruption often point not only to the phenomenon of using public positions for private gains as to the mistrust in authority and dissatisfaction with government. In fact, asAlina Mungiu-Pippidi has persuasively argued, “corruption is singled out only for a lack of a better word” to refer to a host of phenomena such as the “blurred boundaries between politics and business”, “the partisanship of the media”, “the failure of politicians to construct a public-interest space, a failure that leaves blatant partisan interests to reign over every aspect of life”. It is, she sug- gests, an accountability deficit to which citizens refer when they answer questions on corruption in surveys or refer to it in daily discourse.29

Citizens’perceptionofalackofaccountabilityandserviceculturein the administration are a real indicator of the true state of reforms both in politics and administrations. Without further changes to respond to citizens’ expectations, all legislative reform until now may be rendered useless. The overwhelming perception that bureaucracies do not serve the public represents a serious warning of the limitations of reforms thus far. However, if there is any reason for optimism, it is in the role that citizens themselves could play in making administrations (and politics) more accountable. However imperfect post-communist politics are, a generally free and fair electoral process—and the numerous mechanisms introducedtoensureaccountabilitybetweenelections—givecitizensand non governmental organizations many more opportunities to hold elites and bureaucracies (more) accountable.Again, it is a fact of post-communist politics from Prague to the Black Sea that apathy and disenchantment with those in power (and the presumably reformed bureaucracies) are often the predominant responses of citizens. Nevertheless, the increasing use of a number of legislative instruments to challenge governments on issues ranging from human rights to access to information points to the emergence of an opposite tendency of civic activism.The new rules—for example the access to information legislation mentioned above—open the way for non-state actors to monitor the administration and name and shame bad practices. It cannot be stressed enough that none of the remaining tasks of administrative reform can be accomplished without citizen participation.This is also true of the fight against corruption in a narrowersense:howevermanycommitteesonthefightagainstcorruption governments establish, they will not go beyond strategy and top-down

Report of the European Commission on the State of Preparedness for EU Membership of the Czech Republic, Estonia, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia” (COM(2003) 675–C5-0532/2003–2003/2201(INI)), Final

A5-0111/2004, 25 February 2004 and European Parliament “Report on Romania’s progress Towards Accession” (COM(2003) 676–C5-0534/2003–2003/2203(INI)) A50103/2004.

29A. Mungiu-Pippidi, “Culture of Corruption orAccountability Deficit?”, EECR Fall 2002/Winter 2003, 80.

approaches without a leap of faith on the part of every citizen that s/he can cope with bureaucratic procedures without needing the grease of a bribe.

After the stage of intense legislative reform in CEE, it is now be- coming clear that it is time for efforts to implement adopted legislation and to introduce non-legal instruments (such as codes of ethics to support it). Implementation of the new legislation has clearly encountered obstacles—for example, in reported cases of circumvention of hiring throughcompetitionrequirementsinBulgaria.Itisalsobecomingclearer that reform is nowadays a question of creating a new generation of civil servants with different attitudes and the knowledge and skills needed to support a market economy. There is still a need for professional civil servants—notonlyinthesenseofpeoplepossessingexpertiseandtraining in a particular field, but also in the sense of members of a profession who carry a set of internalized norms (such as a commitment to serving the public).The response of governments to this challenge has thus far mostly comprised training. Comprehensive training programs in Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic states and public administration schools created almost in every Central and Eastern European country have the potential of training the new generation of civil servants with a new mentality. However, personnel policies in the civil services themselves need to be adjusted in such a way that idealistic new recruits do not get absorbed in a culture of bureaucratic inertia, for example by linking pay closer to educational backgrounds or by using techniques such as rotation of personnel.

The need to overcome the bureaucratic mentality of the past is not only linked to the demands and expectations of citizens but, also, to the needsofbusinessandthemarket.Itisaquestionoflimitingregulationby revising an overwhelming number of rules hindering business activities. Functional reviews and other diagnostic tools have been used as a means to identify possible cuts in overly heavy organizational structures, but institutional inertia and sense of self preservation often stand in the way of potential changes following such reviews. Still, with a view to facilitating businessandfightingcorruption,CEEgovernmentshavebeenadvisedby various international organizations and business representatives to limit the burden of licensing regimes and transfer licensing tasks to branch organizations. Today, measures to limit administrative and regulatory burdens on business are a task at least as important as the creation of the civil services themselves. They are also a component of reform that is likely to encounter much more resistance than the civil service legislation as it involves the streamlining of departments and units, which do not perform essential functions.

In Conclusion

The task of extracting the administrations from the ruins of the commu- nist state—which threatened to bury public authority by delegitimizing it—has been one of the unforeseen challenges of the post-communist transformations in the last ten years. It is part of the bigger problem of weak states—that are unable to perform public policy functions ef- fectively and are often dominated by networks—which undermine the ability of governments to uphold the rule of law. Administrative reform and reforms of the judiciary are both needed in order to strengthen the ability of post-communist states to deal with the real challenges of gover- nance.The carrying out of such reforms—increasing the effectiveness of administrations without endangering fragile new democratic practices of accountability,openness,andtransparency—willbeabalancingactwhich will remain central to the success of post-communist transformations in the coming years.

Post scriptum

Duringthepreparationofthisarticleforprint,therehavebeensignificant developments in public administration reform in Central and Eastern Europe. Even though it is not possible to summarize them here, one main trend should be highlighted: the reversal of some of the reforms through legislative amendments limiting the independence of civil services.

This process of backsliding has been analyzed and documented in a recent World Bank study (EU-8: Administrative Capacity in the New Member States: The Limits of Innovation, Washington, DC 2006) and should be taken into account when considering the state of administrative reform in the region.