Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling

Political time in the EU: dimensions, perspectives, theories

The manner in which time is institutionalized is critical to how a political system works. Terms, time budgets and time horizons of collective and individual political actors; rights over timing, sequencing and speed in decision-making; and the temporal properties of policy matter to the distribution of power; efficiency and effectiveness of policy-making; and democratic legitimacy. This article makes a case for the systematic study of political time in the European Union (EU) – both as an independent and a dependent variable – and highlights the analytical value-added of a time-centred analysis. The article discusses previous scholarship on the institutionalization of political time and its consequences along the dimensions of polity, politics and policy; and then reviews dominant perspectives on political time, which centre on power, system performance and legitimacy. These perspectives tie in with diverse theoretical traditions in the study of the EU. Taken together, dimensions, perspectives and theories help to guide time-centred analyses of the EU political system.

Civil service reform in post-communist Europe: the bumpy road to depoliticisation

This article seeks to explain why civil service reform trajectories have differed in post-communist Europe, and why reforms have so far not led to the de-politicisation of personnel policy. It argues that the communist legacy of over-politicised personnel policy, the mode of transition and the constellation of actors after the first free elections shaped the personnel policy and civil service reform dynamics in the period directly after the change of regime. However, in terms of reform outcomes, the road to de-politicisation of post-communist civil services posed too many obstacles to lead rapidly to successful reforms. Neither governments of the left and the right nor new generations of senior bureaucrats have an incentive to engage in efforts to de-politicise post-communist civil services. The context of post-communist transformation has tended to lock in a pattern of civil service governance that is characterised by high levels of political discretion.

Governing the post-communist state: government alternation and senior civil service politicisation in Central and Eastern Europe

Recent debates on the transformation of the state in Central and Eastern Europe have centred on the impact of political competition on state politicisation. The presence of robust competition, including coherent governments and critical oppositions are said to reduce the potential for state politicisation. This article challenges this perspective. It concentrates on the impact of patterns of government alternation on senior civil service politicisation. The article emphasises problems of political control of senior bureaucrats, which are argued to emerge after regular wholesale alternations between ideological blocs as opposed to other types of alternations. The article relies on data from an expert survey that was conducted in eight Central and Eastern European countries that joined the EU in 2004. It develops an index of politicisation that captures the range and intensity of senior civil service politicisation. It then conceptualises senior civil service politicisation as a mode of governing the post-communist state and traces the variation in politicisation to patterns of government alternation in Central and Eastern Europe since their transition to democracy.

The EU timescape : from notion to research agenda

This article outlines how the notion of an EU timescape may be developed into a fruitful research agenda. It sets out central tasks involved, including clarification of the concept of an EU timescape; of the key empirical questions to be asked; and of the status of political time in variable-oriented research. The article illustrates the potential value-added of a time-centred approach to the study of the EU by highlighting temporal issues in EU enlargement, differentiated integration and democratization. It concludes with thoughts on the comparison of democratic timescapes.

Varieties of legacies: a critical review of legacy explanations of public administration reform in East Central Europe

This article examines the status of historical legacies in debates on the reform of public administration in East Central Europe. It identifies limitations of existing accounts and derives three dimensions for the further development of legacy explanations of administrative reform in East Central Europe. First, legacy arguments tend to zoom in on the negative effects of the communist past. Yet there is not one but many legacies that matter for post-communist reforms and these many legacies have to be carefully distinguished and conceptualized. Second, legacy explanations tend to search for broad similarities between the administrative past and the present set-up of East Central European administrations in order to demonstrate the importance of the legacy. The identification of similarities is, however, not sufficient for the identification of legacy effects. Instead, the article argues in favour of the identification of causal mechanisms of legacification to explain recent administrative developments in East Central Europe. Finally, the article draws attention to the interaction of legacy effects with other determinants of administrative reform such as European integration and political parties. Points for practitioners This article addresses primarily policy-makers who deal with the reform of public administration in Central and Eastern Europe. It addresses the issue of how administrative traditions and, generally, historical legacies affect the design of administrative reforms and the successful implementation of reforms. Conventional wisdom concentrates on the negative effects of the communist-type administration on contemporary reform in Central and Eastern Europe. This article advances a more differentiated perspective on the impact of historical legacies. It argues that communist administrations evolved over time and differed considerably across countries. The administrative experience of other historical periods further interacts with the communist legacy of the past. The article also identifies various mechanisms that help to ‘transport’ the legacy of the past into the contemporary administrative reform context. For administrative policy-makers this approach implies that they cannot take for granted that the effect of the communist legacy is identical across countries and they cannot even assume that the communist administration will be long-lasting after transition. Instead, it is recommended that the specifics of local administrative traditions and the kind of mechanisms that produce legacy effects in the context of contemporary reform efforts be examined more closely.

The rise of the partisan state? Parties, patronage and the ministerial bureaucracy in Hungary

It is problematic to classify the relationship between political parties and the state in post-communist Hungary as a case of low or no party patronage and state politicization. A study of the ministerial bureaucracy reveals that the passing of public administration reforms has not provided an effective constraint against politicization, and that the politicization of the ministerial bureaucracy has increased over time in terms of extent, intensity and scope. Comparison of four post-communist governments in Hungary permits one to relate the politicization of the ministerial bureaucracy to the desire of governing parties to enhance their political control over the formulation and implementation of public policies under conditions of polarized political competition between former communists and their political allies, on the one side, and anti-communist parties, on the other.

Silent professionalization: EU integration and the professional socialization of public officials in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper applies theories of international socialization to examine the impact of European Union contact on the professional socialization of public officials in Central and Eastern Europe. Based on a survey of officials in seven new member states, the paper finds that daily work on European Union issues is associated with favourable attitudes towards merit-based civil service governance. The distinction between types of European Union contact shows that officials dealing with ‘reception’-related European Union activities such as the transposition and implementation of European Union policies develop more meritocratic attitudes. By contrast, ‘projection’-related activities that involve personal contact with European Union officials have no effect. The paper concludes that the small but consistent impact of European Union contact on professional socialization promotes the silent professionalization of public administration in Central and Eastern Europe.

In Search of the Shadow of the Past: Legacy Explanations and Administrative Reform in Post-Communist East Central Europe

Legacy explanations have been prominent in studies of democracy and democratization in post-communist East Central Europe (Ekiert and Hanson 2003; Linz and Stepan 1996).1 They claim that ‘resource endowments and institutions that precede the choice of democratic institutions have a distinct impact on the observable political process under the new democratic regime’ (Kitschelt et al. 1999: 12–13). The legacy of the past has also played a prominent role in discussions of public administration reform in East Central Europe. In particular, the legacy of the ‘real-existing socialist administration’ (Konig 1992) has often been identified as an obstacle to successful reforms in the post-communist context.