The Politics of Appointment of Top Civil Servants : Career Backgrounds and Civil Service Politicization in the Czech Republic
The result's identifiers
Result code in IS VaVaI
<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14230%2F20%3A00114633" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14230/20:00114633 - isvavai.cz</a>
Result on the web
<a href="https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/nispa/13/2/article-p75.xml" target="_blank" >https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/nispa/13/2/article-p75.xml</a>
DOI - Digital Object Identifier
<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.2478/nispa-2020-0015" target="_blank" >10.2478/nispa-2020-0015</a>
Alternative languages
Result language
angličtina
Original language name
The Politics of Appointment of Top Civil Servants : Career Backgrounds and Civil Service Politicization in the Czech Republic
Original language description
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.
Czech name
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Czech description
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Classification
Type
J<sub>SC</sub> - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the SCOPUS database
CEP classification
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OECD FORD branch
50601 - Political science
Result continuities
Project
<a href="/en/project/GA18-15700S" target="_blank" >GA18-15700S: Biography and the Performance of Politicians in the Czech Republic and Slovakia</a><br>
Continuities
P - Projekt vyzkumu a vyvoje financovany z verejnych zdroju (s odkazem do CEP)
Others
Publication year
2020
Confidentiality
S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů
Data specific for result type
Name of the periodical
NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy
ISSN
1337-9038
e-ISSN
1338-4309
Volume of the periodical
13
Issue of the periodical within the volume
2
Country of publishing house
DE - GERMANY
Number of pages
18
Pages from-to
75-92
UT code for WoS article
000599609200005
EID of the result in the Scopus database
2-s2.0-85098641991