Designed Diffusion? The Impact of an EU Instrument for Public Management Reform in the Western Balkans

Abstract

In pursuit of the European Union’s (EU’s) agenda to promote public sector reform in countries beyond the member states, the EU has relied on softer instruments to induce domestic reforms through technical and financial support. The impact and durability of such measures are contested and the research findings are mixed. This article examines the Tempus program, a core neighborhood policy instrument the EU has used to promote public management reforms. Tempus is the oldest and most dominant instrument to modernize higher education in central and east European countries. It promotes the adoption of key managerial reforms elements. Drawing of these perspectives on policy diffusion, we analyze the relative impact of the program. Based on data from over 50 Western Balkan universities, we compare institutions deeply involved in the Tempus program and those minimally involved or non-affiliated with Tempus. Results show that Tempus projects had minimal direct effects in terms on adoption of public management reforms in the region.

Key Words:

• Policy diffusion
• public management reform
• EU
• higher education
• Tempus program
• Western Balkans

Acknowledgements

This work was conducted while a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Education University of Oslo, Norway, and I gratefully acknowledge its support (Papadimitriou Antigoni). The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to improve an earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The EU level does not have the competency to instruct the member states on national administrative and public sector reforms. However, there are codes of conduct, treaty provisions for the right to ‘good administration,’ and not in the least specific pieces of EU legislation that might entail consequences for the organization of domestic administrations. For accession, countries’ administrative reform has been a major issue and one where candidate countries have been subject to close scrutiny by the European Commission as to the extent to which they have progressed toward standards of ‘good administration’ and assessment of whether administrative reforms are in line with principles of the ‘European administrative space’ (see Koprić et al. 2011).