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Abstract
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.
Acknowledgments
The author is grateful to László Andor and Zsófia Czoma for comments and suggestions on drafts of this paper.
Notes
1. See Conor O'Dwyer, ‘Runaway State Building: How Political Parties Shape States in Postcommunist Eastern Europe’, World Politics, Vol.56 (2004), pp.520–53 (p.521).
2. As argued by Anna Grzymala-Busse, ‘Party Competition and the Pace of State Reform’, paper prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, 27–31 Aug. 2003; Anna Grzymala-Busse, ‘Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East Central Europe’, Comparative Political Studies, Vol.36, No.10 (2003), pp.1123–47; O'Dwyer, ‘Runaway State Building’.
3. See Martin Shefter, ‘Party and Patronage: Germany, England and Italy’, Politics and Society, Vol.7, No.4 (1977), pp.403–52.
4. Quoted from B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre (eds.), Politicization of the Civil Service in Comparative Perspective (London: Routledge, 2004), p.2.
5. See Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling, ‘Getting on Track: Civil Service Reform in Post-communist Hungary’, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol.8, No.6 (2001), pp.960–79.
6. See Grzymala-Busse, ‘Party Competition and the Pace of State Reform’; Grzymala-Busse, ‘Political Competition and the Politicization of the State’; O'Dwyer, ‘Runaway State Building’; Antoanetta Dimitrova, ‘The Europeanization of Civil Service Reform in Central and Eastern Europe’, in Frank Schimmelfennig and Ulrich Sedelmeier (eds.), The Europeanization of Central and Eastern Europe (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005), pp.71–90.
7. For the further empirical analysis and conceptual foundation of the argument, see Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling, ‘The Institutionalization of Political Discretion in Post-Communist Civil Service Systems: The Case of Hungary’, Public Administration, Vol.83, No.3 (2006), pp.693–716.
8. See László Vass, ‘Politicians, Bureaucrats and Administrative Reform in Hungary: Who Stops Whom?’, in B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre (eds.), Politicians, Bureaucrats and Administrative Reform (London: Routledge 2001), pp.83–92.
9. Theodor Eschenburg, Ämterpatronage (Stuttgart: Curt E. Schwab, 1961).
10. See, for example, Wolfgang Müller, ‘Patronage by National Governments’, in Jean Blondel and Maurizio Cotta (eds.), The Nature of Party Government: A Comparative European Perspective (Basingstoke: Palgrave 2000), pp.141–60.
11. See, for example, Jorge Gordin, ‘The Political and Partisan Determinants of Patronage in Latin America 1960–1994: A Comparative Perspective’, European Journal of Political Research, Vol.41 (2002), pp.513–49; Grzymala-Busse, ‘Party Competition and the Pace of State Reform’; Grzymala-Busse, ‘Political Competition and the Politicization of the State’; O'Dwyer, ‘Runaway State Building’.
12. See Miriam Golden, ‘Electoral Connections: The Effects of the Personal Vote on Political Patronage, Bureaucracy and Legislation in Postwar Italy’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol.33 (2003), pp.189–212.
13. See, for example, Martin Brusis and Vesselin Dimitrov, ‘Executive Configuration and Fiscal Performance in Post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe’, Journal of European Public Policy, Vol.8, No.6 (2001), pp.888–910; Vesselin Dimitrov, Klaus Goetz and Hellmut Wollmann (eds.), Governing After Communism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).
14. See Barbara Nunberg (ed.), The State After Communism: Administrative Transitions in Central and Eastern Europe (Washington, DC: The World Bank 1999).
15. Discussed in András Körösényi, ‘A közigazgatás politikai irányítása és a patronázs’, Valóság, Vol.40, No.12 (1997), pp.46–71; István György, ‘The Civil Service System of Hungary’, in Tony Verheijen (ed.), Civil Service Systems in Central and Eastern Europe (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1999), pp.131–58; Zoltán Szente, ‘Közigazgatás és politika metszéspontján: a miniszterek és az államtitkárok rekrutációja Magyarországon, 1990–1998’, Századvég, Vol.13 (1999), Summer, pp.3–52; László Andor, Hungary on the Road to the European Union: Transition in Blue (Westport. CT: Praeger, 2000); László Vass, ‘Politicians, Bureaucrats and Administrative Reform in Hungary: Who Stops Whom?’, in Peters and Pierre (eds.), Politicians, Bureaucrats and Administrative Reform, pp.83–92; Tamás Fricz, ‘Kormányváltások vagy “rendszerváltások”?! Az eddigi kormányváltások személyi és szervezeti következményei Magyarországon, 1990–2003’, in Péter Sándor, László Vass, Ágnes Sándor and Ágnes Tolnai (eds.), Magyarország politikai évkönyve (Budapest: Democrácia Kutatások Magyar Központja Alapítvány, 2004), pp.122–39.
16. In 1990, the number of appointments is higher than the number of positions because a few positions experienced two personnel changes within about six months or even less. For the other election years, the values represent the appointments within the entire year of 1994 and 1998. Because new governments took office in the summer, in both cases a few appointments were still made by the outgoing government in the first half of the year.
17. See, for example, Edward C. Page and Vincent Wright, ‘Conclusion: Senior Officials in Western Europe’, in Edward C. Page and Vincent Wright (eds.) Bureaucratic Élites in Western European States (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999), pp.266–79.
18. See Erzsébet Szalai, Post-Socialism and Globalization (Budapest: Új Mandátum Könyvkiadó, 1999).
19. The mode of partisan politicization is one of four modes of politicization that indicate correspondence to different western modes of politicization and divergence from western traditions of politicization. Partisan politicization points to a distinctive, post-communist mode of politicization: see Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling, ‘The Changing Colours of the Post-Communist State: The Politicization of the Senior Civil Service in Hungary’, European Journal of Political Research (2007 forthcoming).
20. The similarities can be drawn further. For instance, the mobility between the ministerial bureaucracy, the party (headquarters), the economy, and what is now referred to as the third sector, are more common career paths of senior appointees than careers that are limited to the ministerial bureaucracy alone.
21. See Grzymala-Busse, ‘Party Competition and the Pace of State Reform’; Anna Grzymala-Busse, ‘Political Competition and the Politicization of the State in East Central Europe’; O'Dwyer, ‘Runaway State Building’.
22. Grzymala-Busse provides several criteria to distinguish a critical opposition: see her ‘Party Competition and the Pace of State Reform’, p.10.
23. See Ágnes Batory, Hungarian Party Identities and the Question of European Integration, Sussex European Institute Working Paper No.49 (Brighton: University of Sussex, 2001).
24. See Attila Ágh, ‘Defeat and Success as Promoters of Party Change: The Hungarian Socialist Party after Two Abrupt Changes’, Party Politics, Vol.3, No.3 (1997), pp.427–44.
25. O'Dwyer, ‘Runaway State Building’.
26. See Jan-Hinrik Meyer-Sahling, ‘Civil Service Reform in Post-Communist Europe: The Bumpy Road to Depoliticization’, West European Politics, Vol. 27, No.1 (2004), pp.69–101.
27. Timothy Frye, ‘The Perils of Polarization: Economic Performance in the Post-Communist World’, World Politics, Vol.54 (2002), pp.308–37. This is not to say that other political divides do not matter for the politicization of the bureaucracy, but the pressure can be expected to be particularly serious if former communist and anti-communist forces face each other.
28. Obviously, a third condition is that the formal-legal basis of personnel policy makes possible the politicization of the bureaucracy. However, we can consider the formal-legal basis to be endogenous to the politicization hypothesis. If governments feel constrained by civil service legislation because they are troubled by problems of trust vis-à-vis the ministerial bureaucracy, they can amend the law in order to increase the ‘degree of political discretion’ built into legislation and thereby increase their opportunities to politicize civil service policy: see Shefter, ‘Party and Patronage’; Meyer-Sahling, ‘Civil Service Reform in Post-Communist Europe’ and ‘The Institutionalization of Political Discretion’.
29. See András Körösenyi, Government and Politics in Hungary (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), p.36.
30. See Miháhly Bihari, ‘Change of Regime and Power in Hungary’, in Sándor Kurtán, Péter Sándor and László Vass (eds.), Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve (Budapest: Ökonómia Alapítvány, 1991), pp.32–47.
31. Herbert Kitschelt, Zdenka Mansfeldova, Radoslav Markovski and Gábor Tóka, Post-Communist Party Systems: Competition, Representation, and Inter-Party Cooperation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1999); Batory, Hungarian Party Identities.
32. Attila Ágh, ‘The Year of Incertitude’, in Sándor Kurtán, Péter Sándor and László Vass (eds.), Magyarország Politikai Évkönyve (Budapest: Demokrácia Kutatások Magyar Központja Alapítvány 1994), pp.16–37.
33. See Anna Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming the Communist Past: The Regeneration of Communist Parties in East Central Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
34. Quoted from György Márkus, ‘Cleavages and Parties in Hungary after 1989’, in Kay Lawson, Andrea Römmele and Georgi Karasimeonov (eds.), Cleavages, Parties, and Voters: Studies from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Romania (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999), pp.141–57 (p.148).
35. See András Bozóki, ‘The Ideology of Modernization and the Policy of Materialism: The Day after the Socialists’, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, Vol.13, No.3 (1997), pp.56–102 (p.78).
36. See Attila Ágh, ‘Partial Consolidation of the East–Central European Parties: The Case of the Hungarian Socialist Party’, Party Politics, Vol.1, No.4 (1995), pp.491–514.
37. See Tamás Fricz, ‘Democratization, the Party System and the Electorate in Hungary’, in Mária Schmidt and László Gy. Tóth (eds.), Transition with Contradictions: The Case of Hungary 1990–1998 (Budapest: Kairosz Publishing, 1999), pp.93–124.