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CZECH REPUBLIC |
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CZECH REPUBLIC |
HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK
Until the 1940s, faculties of law provided the only training for civil servants in former Czechoslovakia. At that time, faculties of law also offered programmes for specialists in the theory of the national economy. In principle, completion of the state examination in the Theory of State in a faculty of law also qualified an individual for the civil service. There was little understanding of the need to establish the academic field of public administration by integrating legal studies, economics and fundamental arts and humanities courses. This was not only the case in Czechoslovakia, but public administration studies were also unusual on the international level.
Even in the pre-war period, a law degree did not meet the needs of the civil service, especially in areas where a synthesis of law, economics and technical processes was required (mining industry, light and heavy industry, agriculture, transport). In these fields, it was not unusual for civil servants to hold two university degrees, one in law and a second in a technical field of study.
After the Second World War, a number of new colleges and universities were established and new major fields of study were introduced. From 1945 to 1950, the School of Social and Political Sciences educated senior civil servants and politicians. The founding of the School of Economics (Vysoká škola ekonomická) was important for the study of public administration as well. Graduates were provided a broader qualification than those of the School of Commerce (Vysoká škola obchodní). As a result, faculties of law were secondary in the education of economists, although the study of the national economy retained an important role (the state examination in economics remained obligatory for several years).
Eventually, the founding of a program in sector economics at the School of Economics, strong links between the civil service and company management in the state-controlled economy and a strictly controlled education system reduced the need for dual degrees, especially with regards to civil servants.
Concurrently, technical and agricultural institutes began offering majors in economics and technology, including subjects focused on various public administration sectors. Faculties of medicine placed greater emphasis on the organisation of health services, and later social medicine in general. In addition, an independent faculty of medicine and hygiene was established in which a new academic field, public health problems, played a major role. In teaching these theoretical disciplines, greater stress was placed on practical connections with public administration and management processes. In general, however, public administration disciplines were ideologically oriented, and schools provided training to employees and officers of the political apparatus and army, especially at the Political Institute of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Vysoká škola politická ÚV KSČ) and at the Institute of National Security (Vysoká škola SNB).
The excessive presence of political ideology in the civil service interfered with objective decision-making and led to political criteria guiding civil service appointments over professional qualifications. This clearly had a negative effect on the education of civil servants to the detriment of individuals with the necessary skills for such positions. Other factors, in particular the constant economic downgrading of the “non-productive” sphere and the civil service, also affected the quality of public administration. In addition, arts and humanities education, and, particularly in the fifties, legal education were undervalued and preference was given to technical subjects, which were more distant by their nature from public administration.
A lack of well-qualified civil servants need not be as evident as in other sectors (e.g. education, justice or health services) as public administration issues are primarily interdisciplinary, and the prerequisites for addressing them are mostly connected with some familiarity with general subjects and social affairs rather than with a specialised university degree. In spite of this, civil servants do, in fact, need specialised education. The lack of well-qualified personnel and the need for at least a certain amount of familiarity with organisational principles led to postgraduate study programmes and other institutionalised forms of facilitating the professional development of civil servants, e.g. the “cyclical training” of managers. In addition to universities, specialised institutes, including the Institute of State Administration (Ústav státní správy) and the Institute of Management (Institut řízení), offered these programmes.
During this period, contrary to general trends, faculties of law (especially the Faculty of Law of Charles University) taught legal disciplines, including administrative law, in an ideological manner. To a certain extent, this contributed to graduates of these faculties encountering difficulties in establishing themselves in the civil service. Despite this, significant attempts were made to change legal programmes both from the pedagogical point of view (e.g., the introduction of the Social and Legal Construction course at the Faculty of Law of Charles University in the 1960s) and in terms of research (administrative research was introduced at the Institute of State Administration and at the Brno Faculty of Law’s Research Institute of Economics and Management of the Public Sector). Due to a general lack of lawyers caused by an underestimation of the need for legal education after the Second World War, legal professionals were underrepresented in the civil service. With the growing demand for lawyers in all sectors, graduates of law faculties preferred to pursue employment in legal firms for economic reasons. Moreover, their specialised education was typically less well utilised in the civil service, where work was less independent than in the legal profession.
The contradiction between the need for specially trained civil servants and the fragmentation of public administration education led to discussions on establishing a public administration higher educational system in the 1980s. In the meantime, public administration had developed substantially in Western Europe after the Second World War. As a result of these discussions and general European trends, a programme in the “Economics of ‘Non-Productive’ Services and Public Administration” was introduced in Prague, Ostrava and Brno.
After 1989, conditions were favourable for developing specialised public administration courses as (a) people realised the need for public administration programmes, and (b) the political and professional barriers had been removed. Universities made full use of this environment, and as a result several public administration majors were established in various universities and institutes. Institutions of higher education also began to offer majors in “Public Administration and Regional Science” or “Public Economics and Public Administration.” The Commission for the Development of Education in Public Administration of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports played an important role in establishing a public administration education system on the university level. The commission’s efforts resulted in the founding of a programme in public administration and regional studies at the Faculty of the National Economy of the Prague School of Economics and, to some extent, at the Faculty of Territorial Administration of the School of Chemical Technology in Pardubice, among others.
The initial years of university public administration studies was complicated both by problems normally associated with introducing new disciplines and other challenges. First, the liberal attitude towards establishing new disciplines, as set forth in the Universities Act, led to poor coordination in creating public administration programmes. The Commission of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports had only a transitory role in establishing new public administration programmes, and later it was not capable of effectively regulating their development due to new legal regulations. Secondly, the strong regional interest in public administration studies stimulated the development of public administration education, but also, in some cases, led to founding programmes without adequate professional teaching staff. Third, public administration studies began to develop not only at institutions that had already taught similar disciplines (e.g., universities and the School of Economics) but also in technical universities, partly as a result of decreasing interest in technical disciplines. Although these institutions succeeded in attracting highly qualified teachers through cooperating with well-known universities or institutes of the Czech Academy of Sciences, in a majority of cases the curricula and teaching staff were not interdisciplinary enough. As a result of these factors, the primary need at present is to improve the quality of public administration education rather than opening new public administration programmes or courses in other faculties.
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