Administrative tradition is an established research approach to the classification and comparison of national administrative systems and is often used in the literature as an explanation of the variety of reforms that they undertake, the success of these reforms, of preferred policies and the process of their making. The core of the administrative tradition as a term is formed by continuity in the management, the organisational life of the public sector, and the influence of inherited practices.
The administrative tradition is a set of values, structures, relationships with other institutions that define the essence of good public administration. Those are relative stable models of a given country’s public administration style and content. They explain why some countries are more capable than others to realize effective reforms in the public sector. This concept assumes that the modern administrative systems are partly shaped by their past and by the idea of good administration implied in the administrative culture. The literature offers two opposite theoretical arguments on the matter.
The first argument is that the different types of public policy tools require different capabilities to be able to function optimally. The hierarchical forms of state interference, such as regulations, demand supporting laws and judicial measures and should be guided by clear administrative procedures and guidelines. This is the approach of states that tend to be legalistic in their practice.
The second argument switches the focus to the inherent weaknesses of regulations: too much and too strict regulation leads to overregulation, and this means substantial costs for both the target group and for the authorities responsible for its enforcement. In counties where the public administration is traditionally focused on the management of public policies and not just on their enforcement, the approach is more flexible and accounts of the diversity of target groups, which results in more freedom of action for both the regulator and the regulated.
In the current programming period one of the European Commission’s objectives for the public administration of the member states is to turn them into an attractive employer so that they can meet the challenges of the dynamically changing world we live in. In a recent talk show the social anthropologist Haralan Alexandrov stated that his students’ orientation to a future professional realisation has modified in the direction of public sector employment. Does that mean that Bulgaria has achieved the objective and its public sector has become an attractive employer and at what cost?
An interesting analysis of the Italian administrative style is offered by Lorenzo Castellani of the Free University Luiss Guido Carli in Rome, member of the International Public Policies Association[1]. Castellani attributes it to the South European tradition along with Spain, Portugal and Greece whose administrative systems demonstrate stable common characteristics.
The article examines four main characteristics:
- formal legal regulation
- widespread political patronage
- clientelism from below
- lack of administrative lite.
Regarding the legal regulation, it is indisputable that the actions of the bureaucracy are based on the principle of legality. However, the study outlines that in the South European tradition this principle is applied in an excessive and fragmented way that leads to overproduction of laws and regulations. This excessive regulation is related to the tendency to view everything through legal lens and solve any newly emerged social or political problem with the adoption of new legislation or amendments to the existing one. This practice is in turn related to formalism, i.e. the discrepancy between what is provided in the law and what actually happens is greater than the usual. The tendency for such formal regulation is accompanied by the desire to conveniently accommodate narrow sectoral interests in the law. The laws and regulations reflect these interests, but the effect is that equal interests are subject to unequal treatment. One example will be the local network of politicians, civil servants and businessmen, sometimes trade unionists who have managed to secure a particularistic legal framework corresponding to their sectoral interests, which in turn contributes to the abundance of regulations and contradictions in the legislation.
With regard to the second characteristic of widespread political patronage Castellani says that the political clientelism in the civil service of the studied states exhibits strong politicisation of the highest level in the state bureaucracy. He asserts that with each change of government a large number of high positions in the administration are occupied by people who are not necessarily civil servants, appointed by the governing elite. Even the most senior positions that are traditionally reserved for career civil servants there is a visible political interference. The article underscores that in the case of the South European administrative tradition this political interference may go down to the middle levels in the hierarchy of the civil service and out to the public enterprises as well.
Clientelism on the low levels is aligned with the politicisation of the high levels and that is the third identified characteristic. The essence of this clientelism is the hiring of low-level employees and internal transfers with application of particular criteria, most commonly party affiliation. The two types of clientelism have always been tightly bound. Logically, it would be hard to build a meritocratic and effective civil service at the high levels if the employees at the low levels are recruited and promoted on the basis of clientelist criteria. This mass clientelism from below is used in the public sector as a “social shock absorber” – with the intermediation of political parties its function is to mitigate the social pressure from unemployed, unemployable or inadequate categories of the population.
The fourth characteristic refers to the absence of the typical European administrative elite in the South European bureaucracies, the so-called „esprit de corps“ of the senior civil servants secured by the tradition of the Grandes Ecoles in France or Oxford and Cambridge in the UK for example to select and train the next generations. Overall, the political networks and personal connections are more important for a successful career in the administration than elite education. Thus, a large cohort of the public administration employees have developed the skill of using party ties in order to protect or develop their career.
To wrap up, the public sector in the states of South Europe differs from that of the other West European states in terms of its relationships with the society. These relationships have been studied by numerous analysts in these countries. In a broader sense the public sector is an attractive variant for employment for large segments of the active workforce, and for the middle class in particular.
At least with regard to the first characteristic there are sufficient grounds to attribute Bulgaria to the South European administrative tradition. Concerning the remaining characteristics opinions will differ, but the answer to the question about the attractiveness of the public administration as an employer remains ambiguous.
[1] Lorenzo Castellani, Administrative traditions matter. The Italian style and the New Public Management. LUISS Guido Carli. International Public Policy Association