Suchergebnisse

Th is contribution seeks to answer the question whether the new civil service legislation that entered into force in 2015 in the Czech Republic led to the depoliticization of the country's ministerial bureaucracy. To that end, we compare the career backgrounds of top civil servants before and aft er the entry into force of the new Civil Service Act. Th e article examines the career backgrounds of the persons appointed as ministerial deputies between 2013 and 2018, focusing on their last "pre-deputy" jobs and considering a broader set of their career attributes. A focus on the previous job reveals that even before the law was introduced, bureaucrats constituted the largest share of appointees, and their share even increased with the new legislation. Th e incidence of deputies appointed directly from party-related jobs dropped considerably. However, when a broader set of career attributes is considered, the share of partisans among the pre-2015 deputies nearly matches that of the career bureaucrats. Ostensibly political careers among the post-2015 deputies declined but remain signifi cant. Hence, there has been a decline in the open politicization of the ministerial bureaucracy aft er 2015. Party political eff ects also matter, as the new ANO party, aft er entering the executive, has taken a diff erent approach to top bureaucratic appointments than the other major governing Czech parties. Typically, deputies appointed into the positions under the ANO's control would not have links to the party itself but would be recruited via non-party channels, e.g. from pre-political networks of the ANO ministers and leaders. Consequently, though less politicized by party agents, the current Czech system is more a product of choices made by government ministers of the day than a stable arrangement resulting from fi rmly established norms and rules.

Michal Klíma: INFORMAL POLITICS IN POST-COMMUNIST EUROPE: POLITICAL PARTIES, CLIENTELISM AND STATE CAPTURE. London: Routledge. 2020. 222 pages.

This paper shows that the dominant theory of European integration, the liberal inter-governmentalism, contains several assumptions about the process and character of national preference formation that may not be fully met in the post-communist EU member states. It argues that the primacy of economic and societal interests in influencing positions of national governments should not be taken for granted. Using Slovakia as an example, it demonstrates the autonomy of political and bureaucratic actors and importance of their preferences. It is also argued that ideational and exogenous factors should not be left out in constructing a realistic framework of national preference formation.

The article aims to assess the extent of transformation of the Slovak party political scene since the 2002 general election. It does so by focusing on three interrelated questions. First, what were the origins of the ascendance of the left-right political competition after 2002? Second, have there been significant differences between party organizational changes before and after 2002 e? Third, how have the second-order election during the 2002-06 parliamentary term influenced the course of party political developments, particularly existing patterns of party interactions? It is argued that the party competition cannot be reduced to a single left-right, socio-economic dimension. Instead, three divides are identified: a socio-economic left-right divide, a cultural-conservative versus liberal division, and an ethnic Slovak-Hungarian cleavage. These divisions are significant across the population and have successfully been exploited by deliberate strategies of political parties.