Politically-driven public administration or co-creation? On the possibility of modernizing public services in rural Hungary

IMPACT

This article reports an empirical study of a pilot programme which aimed to help local initiatives to co-create services for supporting household economic activities in disadvantaged rural regions of Hungary. The authors show how local governments—functioning within centralized power structures—can answer the challenges of public service modernization. They also assess to what extent and in which areas leaders, mentors and service users are open to new and innovative forms of work.

ABSTRACT

This article highlights the unusual way in which public services were modernized in Hungary. The politically driven public administration (PDPA) model was characterized by an extremely centralized bureaucracy, combined with weakening professionalism that is increasingly subordinated to politicians. However, the conflicting interests of central and local power pushed local governments to expand their entrepreneurial activities in order to increase their scope of independent action, creating opportunities for innovative solutions. This article provides insights into the operation of this hybrid model therefore making an important contribution to the theoretical literature on public management.

KEYWORDS:

• asset-based approach
• Hungary
• local government
• new public governance (NPG)
• new public management (NPM)
• post-new public management (PNPM)
• public value creation
• public value management

Acknowledgements

The project reported in this article received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 770492. The content of the article reflects the authors’ views and the managing agency cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.