Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 25th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview IX. Transition, Change and Uncertainty Author(s) Gyorgy Gajduschek Corvinus University of Budapest Budapest Hungary Zemandl Eva, Title Mapping Omnipresent Change and Sticky Uncertainty in Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe: A Concept Paper for Future Research File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Gyorgy Gajduschek Abstract The annual NISPAcee conference in 2014 in Budapest inaugurated a new working group treating the notion that the post-transition governance context in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) harbors frequent and ongoing major changes and, thus, sticky uncertainty in public administration. The relatively large number of applications to this working group, as well as discussions with researchers from 2014-2016, suggests that we have an immense but implicit understanding that (a) these concepts are strongly interrelated; and (b) this set of concepts has a special meaning and a relevant message about governance in CEE. As such—presented in a first draft at the NISPAcee Annual Conference in Tbilisi, Georgia in 2015 (May 21-23)—this concept paper is an attempt to conceptualize this „tacit knowledge”. Our argument is two-fold. More generally, the phenomenon of change and uncertainty in the post-communist world is a particular pathology in which frequent large-scale changes in governance institutions and policymaking results in a general feeling and experience of uncertainty pervading the political, social, and economic spheres of society. More specifically, the pattern of governance we observe in CEE is one where key institutions, including the public administration or civil service, remain largely unconsolidated and where executive power-holders dominate political deliberation and the policy cycle. Consequently, this entails a system that disincentivizes long-term institution-building and policy-making, leaving public administration (a) largely incapacitated in dealing with external uncertainties from the political environment and (b) trapped in its own perpetual cycle or “sticky” internal uncertainty, which compromises policy outputs.
