Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 21st NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview PA Reform Author(s) Jolanta Urbanovic Mykolas Romeris University Vilnius Lithuania Minkevicius Aleksandras, Vainius Smalskys Title Development of civil service reforms in Lithuania File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Jolanta Urbanovic Abstract The civil service plays the vital role in the organisational structure of public sector. It is, in great part, the professionalism in the civil service which determines the quality of implementation of public policy solutions. Max Weber stated that the more professional the civil service is, the better life quality is in the state. To analyse the civil service, first it is necessary to emphasise that it is designed not to serve the material needs of people serving in the system, but to ensure the functioning of the very state in different fields, to organise the satisfaction of the needs of its citizens, to defend human rights and freedoms, and to guarantee safe internal and external environment. Every country continually reforms its public management system. States which did not undergo enduring and constant shake-ups could improve their state governance step by step taking over the experience of other countries in various fields of state governance. The formation of modern civil service system in Lithuania took barely two decades. Assesing the public policy reforms that were implemented in Lithuania after regaining its independence, one might claim that they were sometimes coincident with the democratic ideology of reforms; however, these coincidences were determined not only by certain value attitudes, but also by the necessity and/or pressure by certain interest groups and international organisations. Lithuania could not afford ongoing experiments and explore which public administration models would be better for its system. The country chose European democratic values. It had to take over the Western public management practices fast and without any great shake-ups. In adapting the state governance models from Continental Europe and Anglosaxon countries, mistakes were made. The aim of this article is to analyse the development, formation and stages of reforms of the civil service in Lithuania from 1990 until present, and to emphasise the assumptions, circumstances and trends of civil service organisation and design processes. As research methods the analysis of scholarly literature and legislation was employed.
