Authors: Maria-Eliana Pravita

Title: Top staff appointments in the State. Politico-administrative leadership in Public Administration

Abstract

‘Politicization’ process in Pubic Administration exhibits itself in the appointment of civil servants, and in particular in the top staff choices in the public sector. This practice presents an instance of the wider phenomenon of submitting public bureaucracy under the control of government in order to guarantee its accountability to the representatives of the people. If excessively exercised, it runs however the risk of reducing the relative professional autonomy as well as the efficiency and effectiveness of the administrative machinery of the State; that may in turn impede the smooth implementation of public policy, including its necessary reform and revision.

It is of interest, therefore, to examine the particular institutional profile of top echelon cadre that provides the leadership in Public Administration, and see whether its relative de-politicisation may advance the quality of administrative performance, as it has been consistently suggested from a number of sources recently.

Despite the fact that in principle civil servants should operate in a spirit of strict neutrality (sine ira ac studio) in the Weberian perspective, in practice quite often the need to hold the bureaucracy under the control by the elected politicians of the day, that form the Government of the country, points to the opposite direction. As a result, a certain conflict if not collision of influences and of interests is rather likely to come about. Newly elected Governments often declare their determination to reform and modernize public bureaucracy and the civil service; but to the extent they attempt to attain this objective through the politicization of its top echelons, they tend to undermine its professional autonomy and curtail its neutrality, effectiveness and capability. As a consequence, a vicious circle of poor performance, political intervention, further inefficiency, and so on, is perpetuated.

The paper will try to explore the above practices and draw the relative conclusions.