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BULGARIA |
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BULGARIA |
HISTORICAL FRAMEWORK
As part of the Turkish Ottoman Empire until 1878, Bulgaria did not exist as an independent state, and the government was Turkish at each level. Bulgarians generally did not participate in government with rare exceptions in some cities or regions in which the central Sultan or local Turkish feudal authorities officially introduced a portion of self-governance. Furthermore, no Bulgarians graduated from the famous Sultan School of Administration, which was established in the mid-1850s and is today a division of the University of Ankara.
After Bulgaria established its independence in 1878, Russian military officers initially managed the public sector in Bulgaria. At this time, Bulgarians joined the local and central governments and gained some experience in serving the nation. After the withdrawal of the Russians in the 1880s, the authorities became purely Bulgarian. The country adopted a very liberal constitution (modelled after Belgium’s), and Bulgarians managed to set the foundation of a strong administration in a surprisingly short period of time, especially during the government of Stefan Stambolov in the 1890s. Bulgaria was considered the “Prussia of the Balkans” in Europe, partly for its properly excellent administration.
The first professionals in the field of public management appeared alongside the self-educated administrators at this time. Some were graduates of the newly established university (1880), and others returned to Bulgaria with foreign degrees in law or finance. The latter group consisted of graduates of various European universities who brought back different administrative traditions and established the foundation for a complex mixed pan-European approach to public administration, which became the new Bulgarian style of administration. This replaced the old feudal Turkish system as virtually no specific local habits of administration existed.
With its new administration, Bulgaria made quick, decisive steps towards modernisation. Cities rapidly enlarged, new infrastructures were developed, industry grew considerably, and civil service developed in transportation, medical care, mass education, arts, water and electrical supply, etc. This development slowed considerably as a result of Bulgaria’s involvement in World War I. Nevertheless, educated individuals who graduated from local or other European universities continued joining the administration. The period between the wars was full of examples of admirable civil servants in Bulgaria, especially at the local government level – mayors of Sofia, Gabrovo, Varna, Rousse, and many other places are a source of national pride.
There was no special school of administration after the communist party came to power after World War II. The most common educational backgrounds among civil servants were law, finance and engineering (all types). The communist party established what could be considered the first school of administration in the country, the Party Academy. However, this institution was not open to the public and emphasised political obedience and aparatchik skills. In fact, it was successful in producing thousands of communist party members who replaced the pre-war civil administration. They graduated from all three schools of the academy: party construction, social management and international workers movement (partly equivalent to political science, public administration and international relations, of course under the auspices of communist ideology).
The Party Academy was closed down as a consequence of the pluralisation of the Bulgarian political structure in 1990 and the adoption of a democratic constitution. However, its educational functions were not transferred to other institutions. These types of programmes did not emerge in Bulgaria until the mid-1990s, with one exception – a centre for training local government personnel in the Ministry of Civil Engineering and Regional Development, which had existed for eighteen years and re-trained local administration staff in the past. Thus, there was a vacuum in public administration education in Bulgaria for at least half of a decade after the changes of 1989.
An interesting phenomenon in the field of education emerged in the country during the same period: the number of universities skyrocketed from sixteen to forty-two. Most of the new institutions were private universities that relied on academic staff from the old state universities, and they began offering programmes entirely in the sphere of the humanities and arts. Disciplines such as business, law and political science boomed. This situation resulted in positive innovations in the sphere of higher education. New disciplines were introduced, more flexible curricula were developed, students were given the opportunity of choice and far more Bulgarian citizens had the opportunity to obtain some form of higher education. Along with these positive contributions, at least for the initial period of 1990 to 1995, most of the new private universities offered programmes of inadequate quality, and students were admitted on the basis of unchallenging entrance tests. One notable exception was New Bulgarian University.
During this period, diplomas were issued without institutional accreditation as the Accreditation and Assessment Agency was not established until 1997. However, after this agency was created, legislation was adopted to filter out lower-quality PA programmes in Bulgaria. Many universities with significant academic problems rapidly adapted their strategies and started fulfilling the new, formal legal requirements. As a result, the activities of the Accreditation Agency faded.
Public administration programmes at the Baccalaureate and MPA level were first introduced in the early 1990s in the new private universities. The only exception was the state Economics Academy in Svishtov, which launched the first PA programme in Bulgaria in 1993, in the same year as New Bulgarian University. State universities were not as open to offering revolutionary programmes, and thus succeed in earning profit and prestige. State universities gave fixed salaries, had experienced bureaucratic relations with the Ministry of Education for decades, and their prestige was based on tradition; these factors did not foster innovation. As a result, state universities were more conservative and slower in developing new educational fields. Therefore, PA programmes were established in state universities only after 1997, two to three years after such programmes were opened in many of private universities.
The first PA programmes were established for a variety of reasons, depending on the type of university. Some private universities opened their PA schools as a reaction to the conservatism of the old state universities, exploring new promising fields and for profit. Other private universities were opened by former educators of the Communist Party Academy or by academics who had previously taught communist ideology courses such as Scientific Communism or Marxist Political Economy. As skilled educators in many cases, they made an effort to modernise their old “social science” fields and return to academia. Of course, profit was a major stimulus in these cases as well. State universities opened their PA schools partly as a late reaction to the challenge of the private universities and partly as a consequence of the Ministry of Education officially approving PA as academic discipline in March 1997 by including it in the “State Registrar of Scientific Fields.” At the oldest state university in Bulgaria, Sofia University, the PA school emerged for these reasons but also as a result of the political struggle in departments such as political science and law between older followers of the left-wing communist-related ideas and the younger supporters of the anti-communist democratic forces. PA was considered a new field to develop, establish control over and use as a means of academic power. Some political motivations might be related to the creation of most other PA programmes as well.
It is important to note that once created, the PA programmes of state universities developed very rapidly and were high quality. The availability of a broader choice of academic professional staff from the different departments, the high calibre students due to rigorous selection procedures and the experience of some professors obtained through involvement in PA programmes in private universities greatly contributed to the quality of these programmes. Importantly, some basic criteria for the new discipline already existed via published and widely announced educational programmes, annual analyses of the programmes with self-assessment reports and business plans, innovative criteria for the selection of students and lecturers, etc., developed basically at the New Bulgarian University. Two other events eventually fostered the development of PA programmes: the official recognition of academic degrees in PA by the Bulgarian state in 1997 and the publication of the first Bulgarian textbook, Public Administration, by Professor Emil Knave (1998). For the early development of PA programmes in Bulgaria see William W. Boyer’s Public Administration Issues in Bulgaria (1996) and the “Public Administration Education in Bulgaria” report from the second regional meeting of PA schools, held in Bratislava (1994).
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