Izvorni znanstveni članak
Bumpy Road of the Hungarian Administrative Reforms: From Political Over-Centralization to Public Policy Failures
Attila Ágh
; Department of Political Science at the Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary
Sažetak
The paper focuses on the Hungarian administrative reforms in the East-Central European context in order to show that the Hungarian developments have been the worst-case scenario in the process of Europeanization. CEE states have been reluctant to open up towards the Western type of participatory democracy.Therefore, they have not yet reached the stage of good governance, which has eroded their international competitiveness. In this respect, the paper has described the Hungarian developments as the bumpy road with its ups and downs that appeared in the first twenty years. This volatile feature of administrative reforms has been reinforced by the latest developments in the second Orbán government
(2010-2014) when the former patronage system in public administration has been turned into a complete merger, i.e. the whole public administration has been over-politicized. This invasion of politics into all levels of public administration with the appointments of loyal party soldiers to the top administrative positions has led to a drastic decline in governance capacity and effectiveness. The recent story of the “colonization of state” by politics in Hungary can be
described in the terms of transition from political over-centralization to publicpolicy failures. Furthermore, this failure has to be considered as a sharp divergence from the Europeanization process.
Ključne riječi
public administration – Hungary; reforms; Europeanization; merger of politics and administration
Hrčak ID:
130523
URI
Datum izdavanja:
18.12.2013.
Posjeta: 1.467 *