Abstract
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This paper focuses on politicisation of a civil service in Slovakia, in terms of various implications for political appointments based on what type of actor is responsible for these appointments. In particular, it aims at comparing and analysing contradictions in collective and ministerial political appointments.
In the CEE countries, many questions regarding character and the extent of politicisation of civil service have been raised so far, with a special emphasis on adoption and implementation of civil service reforms in these countries (Meier Sahling, 2009; Gajduschek, 2007), as well as the limited impact of EU membership on further achievements in this area (Randma-Liiv, Järvalt, 2011; Beblavý, 2009; Malíková, 2006). However, much less attention has been paid to examining various types of political appointments according to different groups of actors responsible for these appointments. Especially in Slovakia, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how the number of such positions has changed over time, and if there are differences in political criteria for these different types of top positions.
In this paper, three types of top positions in Slovak civil service will be distinguished and compared:
- Collective political positions are conceptualized as positions which are filled by a decision of a collective political body, such as the parliament, the government and the president, where the responsibility of these bodies for appointments that are made is indirect, meaning that these bodies would not be in a risk of dismissal in case of an appointee’s failure.
- Ministerial political positions are positions which are filled by a decision of an individual, with direct managerial and political responsibility for these appointments.
- Non-political positions are such positions, which are filled by an advertised competition and meritocratic criteria.
- The methodology is in the first stage based on mapping of appointment and dismissal procedure for a large scale set of senior officials in the public sector ranging from senior civil servants in the ministries through senior officials in the deconcentrated regional branches. Based on legal acts review, these changes will be explored, since the independence of the SR in 1993, yearly. Milestones will be identified and explained.
In the 2nd stage, de jure and de facto state will further be compared, focusing on personal changes in these three types of top civil service positions. For selected ministries and its agencies, personal turn-over will be summarised, especially focusing on election years. Here the general hypothesis is that The number of personal changes at the civil service positions has decreased, especially after the adoption of civil service act in 2001.
- Finally, different motivations in collective / ministerial appointments will be examined. Here the main hypothesis is that party patronage appointments are more likely to occur in case of collective appointments and coalition bargaining, whereas political control and responsiveness would be a dominant criterion for ministerial appointments, due to ministers themselves politically responsible for these appointments.
- Thus an assessment will be done on what kind of political criteria have been applied for collective / ministerial appointments: party patronage based, responsive or mixed ones. Here the main indicator is previous political activities of an appointee, namely if he / she was a member of parliament / government, or of presidency of a political party.
- Key findings will be discussed in terms of policy improvements in this area as well.
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