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Over the past decades, Public Administration (PA) education programmes in Europe shifted their focus from a predominantly law-oriented approach to a more multidisciplinary, social science and managerial one. This paper deals with the tenacity of traditional, law-oriented PA education programmes that can be found in a limited, but not insignificant, range of countries throughout Europe. The paper has two aims. Firstly, it attempts to test hypotheses which seek to explain this tenacity. Secondly, it wishes to examine the extent to which this tenacity is related to new forms and paradigms of government emerging in certain Central and Eastern European countries, sometimes referred to as "illiberal democracy". The method is a two-case comparative study of Germany and Hungary.

The article explores the changing patterns of disciplinary orientation in European public administration (PA) education. The study builds on an earlier research, which defined three distinct clusters of countries, based on their specific PA education tradition. It asks whether countries' movement away from the Legalist paradigm has continued since then and if yes, what were the factors triggering the shift and towards which cluster: corporate or public. The empirical basis of the article is a small-scale expert survey involving ten European countries. The key finding of the research is that since the early 2000s the geographical scope of Legalism in PA teaching has shrunk further with a number of formerly more Legalist-based countries having moved towards at least one of the two alternative clusters. These changes can be attributed to the demonstration effect of the international PA education field and a shift in actual needs triggered by domestic reforms. However, some countries in the response set – notably, Germany and Hungary – seem to remain largely unaffected by these trends and continue on an overwhelmingly Legalist PA education path.

Existing research results concerning governments' failure to run effective policies mainly concern, and emanate from, Western democracies. Therefore, it is not surprising that problems of the so-called transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are little discussed and understood. The article's aim is to narrow this gap in knowledge by analyzing policy failures from one of the region's countries, Hungary. The article proposes three, possibly novel, types of policy failure. The first one originates from an unusually strong imbalance between policymakers' personal interests and the formal policy goals, reflecting the lack of even a minimum level of the (party) political elites' ability to counteract centrifugal forces driven by individual interests. The second type of failure — coined "regulatory impotence" — is related to a dysfunctionally strong protection of lawbreakers' right to fair procedure vis-à-vis the state. Finally, the third factor of policy failure, "implementation bargain," emerges when key implementation actors, even in the lack of a proper legal mandate, set out to bargain and strike deals among themselves about the extent to which they are going to implement the given policy.

Existing research results concerning governments' failure to run effective policies mainly concern, and emanate from, Western democracies. Therefore, it is not surprising that problems of the so-called transition countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) are little discussed and understood. The article's aim is to narrow this gap in knowledge by analyzing policy failures from one of the region's countries, Hungary. The article proposes three, possibly novel, types of policy failure. The first one originates from an unusually strong imbalance between policymakers' personal interests and the formal policy goals, reflecting the lack of even a minimum level of the (party) political elites' ability to counteract centrifugal forces driven by individual interests. The second type of failure coined "regulatory impotence" is related to a dysfunctionally strong protection of lawbreakers' right to fair procedure vis-a-vis the state. [Abstract shortened by ProQuest]. Adapted from the source document.

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to examine whether the incentivizing type of performance appraisal (typical of New Public Management) has indeed been superseded by a post-New Public Management (NPM), developmental type of performance appraisal in European Civil Services.Design/methodology/approachThe literature review lead to a unidimensional, twofold typology: incentivizing (NPM) and developmental (post-NPM) performance appraisal. The empirical basis of the research is two surveys conducted among top civil servants in 18 European countries.FindingsFirst, there are crucial discrepancies between performance appraisal systems in contemporary European central government administrations and current theorizing on performance appraisal. Contrary to our expectations developed on the basis of the latter, "developmental" and "incentivizing" do not seem to be two distinct types of performance appraisal; rather, they are two independent dimensions, defining altogether four different types of performance appraisal systems.Practical implicationsThe authors results give orientation to policymakers and public service managers to engage in designing or applying performance appraisal systems, in particular by identifying assailable presumptions underlying many present-time reform trends.Social implicationsCitizens and communities are direct stakeholders in the development of public service performance appraisal both as possible or actual employees of public service organizations and as recipients of public services.Originality/valueThe paper proposes a new fourfold typology of performance appraisal systems: incentivizing, developmental, symbolic and want-it-all.