Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 31st NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG3: Public Administration Reform in CEE and CA Author(s) Simona Statneckyte Klaipeda University Klaipeda Lithuania Title The Establishment of Modern Senior Civil Service in Lithuania: The Role of Civil Servants File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Simona Statneckyte Abstract Senior civil service is one of the most important elements through which politicization can take place and politicians can gain influence over bureaucrats. A professional and politically impartial civil service ensures a high level of competence, integrity and continuity in developing policy advice and implementation that serves the public interest. Merit-based selection can also directly improve public trust in government institutions, if citizens believe that the public officials who are leading these institutions are there because they have the needed competencies, experience, values and ethics (OECD 1995, 2017, 2020). The politicization was one of the features of senior civil service in Central and Eastern European countries. It did not match common principles of European public administration. Common principles of European public administration were a cornerstone of civil service reforms in CEE countries and it was broadly in line with the neo – Weberian model of State (Pollitt, Bouckaert 2011). Lithuania, together with the CEE countries, was encouraged to embark on the reform of the senior civil service and to create a system for the management of the senior civil service, primarily with a view to promoting professionalism and ensuring de-politicisation of the civil service (Meyer-Sahling 2009). Currently, Lithuania is starting a new stage of modern reform, which it will try to establish the Senior Civil Service. It is important to underline that the outcomes of a reform are subject to a number of factors (Pollitt, Bouckaert 2011) and, compared to other areas of government, the civil service reform has a number of specific features. The civil service is both the object and subject of reform at the same time. It means that civil servants have a personal interest in the success or failure of the reform (Nakrošis 2015). The main question is what influence the bureaucrats had on the implementation of the modern higher civil service reform in Lithuania? The aim of the research is to present an analysis of the senior civil service development agenda in Lithuania, assessing the impact of civil servants on the process and the results of the reform. The research objectives: to review the main political initiatives to create a senior civil service in Lithuania throughout its entire period of EU membership, to discuss the positions of the bureaucrats on the initiatives to develop a corps of senior civil service, to evaluate the interaction between the political elites and senior civil servants in developing modern guidelines. The methods of the research include an analysis and generalization of scientific literature, an analysis of legislation and documents issued by the Government and ministries, qualitative content analysis of primary sources, statistics and surveys results, the records of the Lithuanian Government and Parliament activities, semi-structured qualitative interviews of parliament and government members, and civil servants. The research covers the successive reforms and the ongoing civil service reform in Lithuania. This research is directly related to conference session “Public Administration reform in CEE and CA?” because an issue of the bureaucrats’ attitudes towards modern reform directly related to the specifics of the senior civil servants activities will be explored. It is worthwhile to identify the the governance, policy, and administrative challenges experienced by the Lithuania in light of the EU challenges.
