Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 27th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Panel: Politico-Administrative Relations in CEE Author(s) Jan Kohoutek Charles University Prague Czech Republic Nekola Martin, Title Developing Politicisation Research: Testing Hypotheses through a Quantitative Enquiry in the Czech Republic File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Jan Kohoutek Abstract The study of politicization of public bureaucracies is a significant, but underdeveloped policy concern. The existing literature is overwhelmingly qualitative lacking in sound conceptualisations allowing for internationally testable hypotheses to center on public bureaucrats as privileged insiders instead of external experts as proxy actors. This paper addresses these limitations by decomposing the politicization concept into testable types, bringing new quantitative evidence on the extent of bureaucrats’ policitization in the Czech Republic ministries and drawing internationally relevant conclusion on further research of this kind. The presented evidence comes from a large-N enquiry underlain by formulation of hypotheses, related to specific types of politicization and tested against four ministerial work positions, thus allowing for a higher degree of analytical precision. In these respects, the enquiry yielded the following findings: Politicizations of ministerial middle and low management as well as rank and file positions are predominantly low. The limitations in politicization of lower (managerial) tiers of Czech ministries are corroborated by minimal reach of partisan politicization to those positions as well as their disengagement from politics. On the other hand, politically motivated actions, namely though functional-hidden politicization, play a role in case of ministerial high management.
