Governing the Czech Republic and Slovakia: Between State Socialism and the European Union 9781626373549

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GOVERNING THE CZECH REPUBLIC AND SLOVAKIA

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GOVERNING THE CZECH REPUBLIC AND SLOVAKIA Between State Socialism and the European Union

John A. Scherpereel

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Published in the United States of America in 2009 by FirstForumPress A division of Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.firstforumpress.com and in the United Kingdom by FirstForumPress A division of Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2009 by FirstForumPress. All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A record of the Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress ISBN: 978-1-935049-01-2 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library. This book was produced from digital files prepared by the author using the FirstForumComposer. Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992. 5 4 3 2 1

For Melinda and Catherine

Contents Acknowledgments

ix

1

Introduction

1

2

Socialist State Building

25

3

Transitional Moments: Institutional Legacies and Choices

67

4

Two States, Two Paths, One Destination

105

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The EU and State Reform: A Deepening Relationship

143

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The Czech Republic and Slovakia in the European Union

203

List of Acronyms References Index

225 229 255

vii

Acknowledgments I have benefitted greatly, throughout the long process of researching and writing this book, from the support and encouragement of various institutions, colleagues, friends, and family members. It is a pleasure to be able to thank them publicly. The project began while I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and wrapped up during my time as an assistant professor at James Madison University. I appreciate the financial, intellectual, and moral support of both of these institutions. In particular, I am indebted to UW-Madison’s Center for Russia, Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CREECA) for underwriting my language training and to UW-Madison’s European Union Center for supporting research trips and a semester of write-up for the dissertation on whose foundation this book builds. At James Madison, the College of Arts and Letters and the Office of International Programs have supported field trips during the project’s later stages. The J. William Fulbright Foundation and the American Political Science Association have also supported critical phases of the project; to them, too, I am very grateful. The project would have been much more difficult to complete were it not for the welcome extended to me by various institutions in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. I was based, during the project’s early stages, at the Sociological Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences. The fact that the Institute provided me with an office in the center of Prague’s Old Town was valuable enough; the fact that researchers at the Institute supported and helped to improve the project was an outstanding bonus. I would have had a more difficult time coming to know and understand Slovak politics and society were it not for Comenius University’s Department of Political Science—special thanks to Ľudmila Malíková for providing me with space, assistance, and connections. So many individuals have helped to make this a better book, some in big ways, others in small. These individuals deserve much of the credit for any of the book’s strengths and none of the blame for any of its weaknesses. Mark Beissinger, Chris Blake, Jiří Blážek, Ľubomír Falťan, Philip Gorski, Anna Grzymała-Busse, Miloslav Hetteš, Michal Illner, Kevin Krause, Tomáš Lebeda, Carol Skalnik Leff, Petr Pavlík, Mark Pollack, Graham Wilson, Jason Wittenberg, and René Wokoun have provided stimulating intellectual challenges and support. Lynne

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Acknowledgments

Rienner has offered similar gifts and has helped to shepherd me through the manuscript preparation process. I am also grateful for research assistance provided by Dana Palíčková (Prague) and Petronela Holečková (Bratislava) and for Rachel Mulheren’s clerical help. The great majority of the bureaucrats, politicians, consultants, academics, and others who sat for interviews during the project were gracious, open, and stimulating interlocutors. I could not have hoped to understand institutional dynamics without their reflections and suggestions. I have protected their anonymity throughout the course of the text. They may rest assured, though, that I have not forgotten them and that I have learned much from them. My final words of thanks go to the two family members to whom the book is dedicated—Melinda Adams and Catherine Scherpereel. I have written some parts of this book in Europe, other parts in Africa, and other parts in North America. My moods throughout the writing process have swung from despair to elation. Melinda has been there at all of these extremes. She has been a constant source of insight, patience, and love. Catherine, our daughter, has yet to weigh in on arguments about institutional change, but she has long since changed the way that her father sees the world.

1 Introduction In the early months of 1990, Czechoslovakia’s government of national understanding met with the leaders of ascendant political movements to discuss changing the inherited socialist administrative system. They agreed to overhaul that system by establishing self-governing municipalities as the institutional building blocks of the new democratic state and by transforming the existing system of territorial state administration. The creation of truly self-governing municipalities was an important step on Czechoslovakia’s road toward democracy. But what political leaders decided not to do in those early months was as important as what they did decide to do. The administrative system that politicians inherited was in miserable shape. Patently centralized, unaccountable, politicized, internally fragmented, ill-suited to the demands of a marketbased economy, and illegitimate from most citizens’ points of view, it cried out for total reform. Yet new democratic politicians chose a modest course. They did not establish self-governing regions, as many of their European counterparts had recently chosen to do. Nor did they establish a legally protected corps of civil servants, as politicians across democratic Europe had done long ago. Thus, hidden beneath sweeping institutional decisions were equally important “non-decisions.” New democratic elites consciously decided not to establish institutions that played central constitutional roles in established democratic polities. Despite the massive changes that the following years would bring— including the dissolution of the Czechoslovak state—politicians in both of Czechoslovakia’s successor states would continue to deflect pressures to establish self-governing regions and a protected civil service throughout the 1990s. It was only at the beginning of the twenty-first century, when, quite quickly, Czech and Slovak governments created these long-neglected institutions. This book seeks to explain the causes and consequences of postsocialist leaders’ administrative reform choices and “non-choices.” It asks four closely related questions: (1) Why did democratic politicians establish certain administrative institutions and eschew others, even when the creation of the latter institutions might have supported democracy’s survival and vitality?, (2) Why did they continue to neglect self-governing regions and independent civil services over the course of

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the 1990s?, (3) Why did they ultimately relent, creating the very institutions they had disregarded for the better part of a decade?, and (4) Why have some of the new institutions, once legally established, succeeded, while others have failed? It generates insights into democratic transition and consolidation by stressing that transitions are not merely moments of institutional choice, but also moments of institutional “non-choice.” It deepens the literature on comparative public administration, which has yet to develop a theory of why postsocialist leaders do (and don’t) establish state institutions at certain historical moments. And, because the European Union (EU) figures prominently in the answers to the third and fourth questions, it extends throws light on Europeanization by specifying the ways that the EU has mattered and continues to matter in central and eastern Europe (CEE). The book argues that answers to the four questions require an appreciation of the historical position of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and their counterparts in CEE between state socialism and the European Union. The question of why politicians initially established certain institutions (particularly self-governing municipalities) while neglecting others (self-governing regions, civil services) involves historical legacies of the socialist state. When communist parties across CEE ascended to power in the late 1940s, they pursued a distinctive strategy of rebuilding and maintaining states. On one hand, they constructed elaborate networks of sub-national territorial administration. On the other hand, they destroyed the legal and operational independence of civil services. In the state-socialist system, state employees enjoyed no special legal rights or responsibilities, and lines between party and state bureaucracies blurred to an extent where it became difficult to distinguish between the two. A two-headed socialist state- building project facilitated the consolidation of single-party rule but had serious unintended consequences. When regimes liberalized and political opportunity structures shifted, citizens used institutions originally designed to facilitate monopolistic governance to lobby for fundamental administrative reforms. In 1989, leaders of municipal “soviets” (in Czechoslovakia, these bodies were called national committees) redeployed resources generated under the socialist regime to pressure politicians in Prague and Bratislava; though central politicians did not concede to all of their demands, they did quickly establish the institutions for which the municipal leaders lobbied. The inherited administrative system did not bequeath similar resources to advocates of self-governing regions and civil service reform. Though a significant regional (Moravian) movement emerged as the socialist regime crumbled, the movement lacked the inherited

Introduction 3

institutional resources to which the municipal actors were privy. The movement performed surprisingly well in Czechoslovakia’s first postsocialist elections and won symbolic concessions from central politicians, but their ultimate goals of a reconfigured Czechoslovak federation and/or significant regional reform within the Czech half of the federation failed. The ersatz civil service, for its part, remained a supine institution, and state employees were stained by association with reeling communist parties. Civil servants had no legitimate network from which to draw, and ascendant democratic politicians took advantage of the short-term opportunities inherent in a politicized (but non-communist) state apparatus. While eager to expel and disqualify politically compromised individuals from prominent state positions, counterelites elected not to overhaul a civil service system that opened opportunities to build parties by awarding loyalists with state positions. The answer to the second question (of why post-transitional elites continued to neglect self-governing regions and civil service) involves interactions between the political goals of the predominant parties of the 1990s and the reconfigured state structures established in the early 1990s. Before the Czechoslovak state was formally dissolved on January 1, 1993, advocates of self-governing regions and legally protected civil service continued to press politicians to create these institutions. They pursued their goals in an arena of deep constitutional uncertainty, nascent party development, and party-system flux. This environment discouraged politicians—even those who supported the new institutions in principal—from introducing legislation to create them. After the state had been dissolved, new constitutional balances had been established, and parties had become more cohesive, prime ministers in both states (Václav Klaus in the Czech Republic, Vladimír Mečiar in Slovakia) continued to reject these reforms. Though the two prime ministers were very different ideologically, they both preferred to use their strong constitutional positions—which gave them significant influence over their respective executive branches—to parry further institutional reforms. The answer to the third question (which asks why policymakers eventually pursued administrative reform, effectively disrupting the equilibria that had emerged since the early 1990s) involves the process of preparing for accession to the European Union (EU). Both the Czech Republic and Slovakia formally applied for EU membership in the mid1990s. From 1993 forward, EU actors expressed interest in administrative reform in applicant countries. Throughout the mid-1990s, though, the EU’s expectations of applicants’ administrations were poorly elaborated, and the EU’s conditions remained unclear. During

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those years, domestic politicians on both sides of reform debates integrated the EU as material and rhetorical fodder into domestic reform games. As the accession process gained steam in the late 1990s, though, the EU’s conditions became more concrete, and the Union began to insist that accession would require civil service legislation and a stable, democratic structure of sub-national governance. The nature and mechanisms of EU pressure and influence varied considerably across CEE and between the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In both of the latter cases, though, EU pressure was eventually causally significant, encouraging domestic politicians to establish self-governing regions and legally protected civil services even when the shapes those institutions took were sub-optimal from politicians’ short-term points of view. The answer to the fourth question (about the fate of the finally established “missing institutions”) also involves the European Union. The leverage that EU actors possessed in the run-up to enlargement was based on their ability to threaten exclusion from the EU club. As the accession process wound down and CEE countries joined the Union, this leverage evaporated. The absence of EU pressure restored many, if not all, of the freedoms that domestic policymakers had enjoyed in the mid1990s. In the case of the young civil services, politicians have used their restored discretion to undercut the notion of depoliticized civil service. In the case of the young self-governing regions, politicians have been constrained by the exigencies of EU regional policy. Sub-national actors have used EU regional policy to establish themselves as strong domestic policy players, effectively checking the baser treatment to which Czech and Slovak “civil services” have been subjected. Though rooted in the Czech and Slovak cases, the book engages comparisons with Poland and Hungary—two other CEE that have contended, over the past two decades, with post-socialist legacies and the pressures of EU accession. The book’s central argument is that CEE politicians’ choices about administrative reform are dominated by historical institutional legacies and considerations of partisan advantage. Credible international conditionality can overcome historical and partisan obstacles and push administrative reform forward, but the disappearance of credible conditionality and the absence of international, integrative policy regimes allow historical and partisan variables to reassert themselves. In this chapter, I set the stage for the rest of the book. I begin by defining and discussing the book’s key concepts: “public administration,” “institutions,” “administrative reform,” “self-governing regions,” and “civil service.” I then canvass diverse literatures on comparative public administration, Europeanization, and democratiza-

Introduction 5

tion and present alternative hypotheses about the dynamics of establishing self-governing regions and legally protected civil services. Next, I outline a positive conception of institutional reform that emphasizes the centrality of historical legacies and European integration as variables affecting institutional choices. I close the chapter with a brief discussion of the theoretical significance of the Czech and Slovak cases, sources of data, and the methods I use to answer the book’s four questions. Conceptual Baselines: Public Administration, Institutions, Administrative Reform

The book seeks to explain the causes and consequences of politicians’ choices about two key institutions—self-governing regions and civil services. Before discussing these institutions in greater detail, it is useful to consider three logically prior concepts—public administration, institutions, and administrative reform. Administration can be conceived as activity undertaken in pursuit of goals. The book is concerned with public administration, or activity that is undertaken in pursuit of public goals and that is generally financed by public monies. Public administration is often, but not always, performed by the state itself. States frequently use their own staffs to pursue policy goals, but they also delegate this responsibility to alternative actors— supranational organizations, sub-national self-governments, private contractors, non-governmental organizations, families, and others. How is the labor between states and these alternative actors divided, and how do states establish policy goals in the first place? These questions lead directly to the concept of institutions. Institutions govern relationships among the actors who make and implement public policy. In Peter Hall’s formulation (1986, 19), institutions are “the formal rules, compliance procedures, and standard operating practices that structure the relationship between individuals in various units of the polity and the economy.” In the case of public administration, institutions determine which of the alternative actors is responsible for pursuing particular policy goals; they structure relationships among the potential administrators of policies. Thus, when Czech and Slovak leaders decided to establish self-governing municipalities and to redefine territorial state administration, they initiated significant institutional reforms: they changed the rules that governed which actors were responsible for implementing policy and (in the case of the municipalities) which actors had the authority to make political decisions in the first place.

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As the latter point makes clear, institutions do more than to specify which actors implement which decisions. They also help to determine which actors have the authority to make which decisions, which actors have the authority to challenge which decisions, and which actors have the authority to punish defectors. As Valerie Bunce has noted (1999, 17), institutions have far-reaching consequences, affecting “the distribution of roles, interests, incentives, and resources” within a given system. Because institutions are so important, scholars have devoted significant attention to institutional change at moments of democratic transition. If new democratic elites want to effect reform, they must reconfigure relationships among different actors and, often, constitute new actors altogether. As the discussion below will demonstrate, though, scholars have not devoted as much theoretical attention to administrative institutions as they have to the institutions governing political decisionmaking in national capitals. There have, for example, been many explanations of the choices that transitional politicians make to govern relations between heads of state and heads of government, between governments and parliaments, between legislatures and courts, between the state and citizens, between the state and interest groups, and among political parties. Important studies have also focused on rules governing relations between central and national bodies in federal states. Still, comparatively little attention has been paid to choices elites make about administration—and particularly about relations (a) between central and sub-central bodies other than federal units, and (b) between administrative staffs and their political “bosses.” The relative lack of attention to administrative reform by scholars of democratization is somewhat surprising, given that many (though certainly not all) such scholars proceed from Weberian foundations. Weber famously defines the state as a “human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (Weber 1962, 78). Embedded within this definition, and within the broader expanse of Weber’s thought, is a conception of the state that involves control of territory, administrative personnel, and the military. This study is concerned with the first two of those components. It seeks to understand why democratic politicians chose, for such a long period, not to establish self-governing regions (which would have reoriented territorial administrative and political relationships), why they chose not to create an independent, legally protected civil service (which would reorient the relationship between politicians and administrative staffs), why they eventually passed laws

Introduction 7

establishing these bodies, and what the consequences of those decisions have been. Why focus in on the processes of creating self-governing regions and civil service? These are but two of a multitude of administrative reforms that politicians might consider effecting. Creation of new levels of state administration, creation of new levels of self-government, civil service reform, privatization of tasks previously performed by the state, reform of the system of administrative courts, decentralization and deconcentration of competencies from central state bodies to lower units of self-government and state administration, reconcentration of previously decentralized and deconcentrated competencies, federalization, “defederalization”—these all constitute reforms of states’ administrative systems. What is so special about self-governing regions and civil service? The simplest answer to this question is that these reforms have mattered most to various political players in CEE since 1989. Citizens, movements, parties, and international actors have all pressured governments to establish these institutions, and pressures to implement other reforms have not been as intense. Also, and relatedly, selfgoverning regions and legally protected civil service are often seen as preconditions for other reforms. For example, politicians have occasionally defended their decisions to delay increased decentralization of decisionmaking powers to municipal self-governments by suggesting that such a step would be impossible in the absence of functioning selfgoverning regions. The most important reason to zero-in on these institutions, however, is that strong logical and theoretical currents suggest (a) that these institutions strengthen democracy, and (b) that new democratic elites should establish both institutions relatively early in the transition process. The fact that they did not do so, and that they waited for over a decade to create them, is theoretically puzzling and, for democrats, normatively troubling. This situation calls out for sustained attention. 1 Self-Governing Regions and Civil Service: Two Missing Institutions

Before considering hypotheses about the creation of self-governing regions and legally protected civil services, it is necessary to discuss these institutions in greater detail. This section defines the two institutions and discusses their status (or rather, their lack of status) in state-socialist Czechoslovakia. Subsequent chapters of the book discuss CEE communist parties’ approach to both institutions in greater detail,

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paying particular attention to the intended and unintended consequences of socialist-era state networks. The current discussion gives only a fingernail sketch, which suffices to show that democratic elites, when they assumed power at the conclusion of 1989, inherited systems where truly self-governing regions and legally protected civil service had long since disappeared. Self-governing regions can be defined as territorial units existing between the lowest territorial unit of a state and the central state, which possess the legal responsibility and actual capacity to reach and pursue goals in multiple policy areas, and whose leaders gain their positions through free and fair elections to regional bodies, or through indirect election by representatives who themselves have been elected to regional bodies. This definition is technically applicable to both federal and unitary states; both the German Länder and Scotland and Wales, for example, meet the conditions of the definition. For the book’s purposes, however, the definition applies exclusively to unitary and “sub-federal” contexts. Self-governing regions, as the book conceives them, may exist both in unitary states (which the Czech Republic and Slovakia became on January 1, 1993) and in federal states that are subdivided into further intermediate units. Thus, one could have conceived (and many actors did conceive) of regional self-governments within the borders of the Czech national unit and the Slovak national unit of the federal Czechoslovak state, just as one can conceive of self-governing counties within individual American states. “Civil service,” though a commonly used concept, has different connotations in different contexts. In certain locales (i.e., the UK), “civil service” connotes a sense of status or distinction that it does not connote elsewhere (i.e., the United States). Moreover, “civil service” is alternately used in a legal sense to denote employees subject to similar legislative codes and an informal sense to identify people who work, in any capacity and within any legal regime, for the state. These nuances notwithstanding, this book begins with a universal definition of civil service—as an institution in which full-time, salaried, and systematically recruited functionaries work within a unified system of clear hierarchical relations, under uniform legal rules, and with adequate provision for pension benefits (Parris 1969; Raadschelders and Rutgers 1996). 2 Before 1989, CEE countries lacked both self-governing regions and legally protected civil services. While leaders of neighboring countries began reforming their respective state architectures in the years preceding the demise of state-socialism, Czechoslovak leaders clung loyally to it. The various levels of sub-national administration were “self-governing” in name only, and the two intermediate sub-national

Introduction 9

levels (regions and districts) served as links in an integrated system of state administration. This system, which was familiar to citizens from Berlin to Vladivostok, consisted of three territorial tiers—municipalities, districts, and regions. A speciously elected legislature—known variously as a “national committee” or a “people’s committee”—governed each tier. Executive councils of the committees were checked by a system of “dual subordination.” They were theoretically accountable, both to their respective local committees, and to the executive office at the nexthighest tier of administration. The latter (vertical) check dominated, however, and the pyramid of vertical accountability reached a pinnacle in the central ministries. National systems functioned under the principle of “democratic centralism,” which implied that conflicts between tiers of socialist administration were theoretically impossible given the state’s unified guardianship of the proletariat. The transplanted soviet model effectively eradicated local initiative, wiped out independent local decisionmaking, and transformed national committees at all levels into glorified administrative offices. Czechoslovakia had a history of regional self-government in the pre-communist era. By the time postcommunist leaders took over, though, self-governing regions did not exist. Regional bodies had long since been elected via unfair procedures, and regional politicians had long since lacked independent decisionmaking authority. A similar story can be told with regard to civil service. When Czechoslovakia was established in 1918, ministerial personnel were protected by the Dienstpragmatik, the Austrian civil service law of 1914. The Dienstpragmatik governed Czechoslovak civil service for the duration of the First Republic (1918-1938) and remained on the books until 1950. At that point, though, the Communist Party, which had assumed total power two years earlier, passed legislation that gutted the law. The process of destroying the civil service reached its apex in 1965, when the National Assembly enacted a labor code that erased all legal distinctions between work for the state apparatus and other kinds of work. From that point through the regime’s demise in 1989, state workers (as such) had no special legal rights or responsibilities. They were generally recruited by and employed via contract to the particular ministry for which they worked. Again, a pre-communist institution had been replaced by a qualitatively distinctive system that persisted for decades. And again, leaders of countries where latter-day communist leaders had maintained a hard-line approach were faced with the task of rebuilding an institution long since reduced to rubble.

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Hypotheses: From Missing Institutions to New Institutions?

Self-governing regions and civil service figured prominently among the range of missing institutions that democratic politicians inherited at the moment of regime transition. The fact that new democratic elites decided not to create these institutions is puzzling from normative, historical, and theoretical angles. Self-governing regions have distinctive normative benefits. They bring decisionmaking and control closer to citizens and can institutionalize cultural particularities while simultaneously integrating sub-national elites into wider national networks. Regions can play particularly important roles in contexts, like CEE after 1989, of simultaneous economic and political transformation. In Kirchner and Christiansen’s words (1999, 3), [Regions] can provide efficient and effective measures in terms of economic development, service provisions (elected bodies offer a means of delivering services to meet local needs), environmental problems, and ethnic or minority problems. In addition, local and regional authorities can reinforce the activities and roles of nongovernmental organizations, including specialized interest organizations, in the process of democratization and market reform.

In addition to the normative attraction of regional self-government, notions of regional democracy enjoyed a renaissance in western Europe in the years preceding CEE’s regime transitions (Bomberg and Peterson 1998; Christiansen 1996; Scott, Peterson, and Millar 1994). In the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, citizens across western Europe protested centralization, the European Community developed an aggressive regional policy, and the process of completing the single market deepened the Community’s “democratic deficit.” Many governments (i.e., in France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Belgium, and the UK) reacted to these developments by creating regional self-governments or increasing the powers of existing self-governing regions. New European democracies thus had at least three intuitive reasons to establish selfgoverning regions. First, regions could augment the new state’s performance legitimacy by facilitating economic efficiency. Second, regions could promote internal symbolic legitimacy by transferring decisionmaking authority closer to citizens who were generally eager to put a centralized past behind them. And third, regions could generate external symbolic legitimacy by demonstrating that new leaders understood the challenges and requirements of contemporary European politics.

Introduction 11

Legally protected civil services would seem to have conferred similar benefits. On one hand, the high personnel turnover that tends to characterize systems without civil service protections would discourage the accumulation of expertise in countries undergoing complex changes. High turnover would threaten the performance of the regime, and democratically accountable central politicians would presumably be anxious to establish a civil service to assure both systemic stability and their (politicians’) own popularity. Similarly, civil services serve important symbolic roles in democratic/constitutionalist polities (Bekke, Perry, and Toonen 1996; March and Olsen 1989; Pierre 1993). By establishing such provisions as merit-based (rather than politically based) recruitment, they demonstrate to skeptical publics that politicians recognize constitutional limits to their power and are committed to the lofty principles of the transition. It must be noted, as well, that the desire to rid or “lustrate” the state apparatus of “corrupted” civil servants can, in fact, be quite compatible with the desire to establish a common legal basis for the civil service. The particular provisions of civil service laws, for example, can exclude such individuals from work in certain positions by imposing loyalty-based requirements and/or excluding individuals convicted of collaboration with the ancien regime. There is no inherent contradiction between lustration and civil service legislation. Currents within the comparative public administration literature support the intuitive hunch that new elites would establish selfgoverning regions and independent civil services soon after assuming power. Scholars have devoted special attention, for example, to the fact that most advanced industrial liberal democracies sought to reorient their respective states in the 1980s (Aucoin 1990; Hood 1996; Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development 1990; Pollitt 1990). Specific reform programs varied marginally from one country to the next, and, even within single countries, reforms occasionally contradicted each other (Peters 1996). Still, efforts were generally similar enough to fly under a common banner—i.e., new public management or the new managerialism. These reforms often involved changes in states’ territorial and personnel dimensions. Territorially, they sought to decentralize, deconcentrate, devolve, disaggregate, and/or “contract out” services previously provided by higher-level state bureaucracies to lower level units, including self-governing regions. Demands to transfer authority from center to periphery in west European contexts thus presaged similar demands heard across CEE after 1989. In the realm of the civil service, reformers in OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries sought to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of rigid civil services by incorporating

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managerial techniques pioneered in the private sector. While hands-on management, performance pay, output controls and other innovations sought to redefine civil service, they did not do away with the concept of civil service all together. No reformers sought to restrict legal protections tout court or to suggest that the institution should be thoroughly politicized or transformed into a new spoils system. Advocates of the new public management sought to redefine civil service, not to eradicate it. These developments are relevant to the question of institutional creation in CEE, since students of administrative reform in OECD countries have identified diffusion as a key variable explaining the genesis of institutional innovations. One can build off of conceptual foundations lain by Eyestone (1977, 447) and Halligan (1996, 302) to define diffusion as a pattern of successive adoption of reforms aided by contact (voluntary or coerced) among representatives of different states, sub-national units, and/or other organizations. This suggestion, in addition to the fact that administrative reforms have developed more of a “flavor-of-the-month” quality than other institutional reforms (Ingraham 1996), raises the question of whether 1989’s transitions might have offered new avenues for the diffusion of particular institutional reforms. Many consultants after 1989 suspected that this question could be answered in the affirmative, and much theoretical literature supported their optimism. Tolbert and Zucker’s classic study (1983), for example, suggests that early and late reformers establish civil services for different reasons. Early reformers seek to eradicate intra-organizational operational pathologies, while late reformers act according to “logics of appropriateness” (March and Olsen 1984), adopting reforms because certain structures have, over time, become socially legitimate. Tolbert and Zucker concentrate on American municipalities, but their logic is easily extrapolated to the international level. Given post-socialist elites’ desire to “rejoin Europe,” one might have expected a process of mimetic institutional isomorphism (Dimaggio and Powell 1983) in the months and years following 1989. Ascendant democratic decisionmakers, bent on attaining international legitimacy, would configure domestic administrative institutions to resemble institutions in OECD countries. This hypothesis is a more fully elaborated version of the suggestion, made above, that the creation of new institutions would have increased foreign actors’ support for new democratic elites. Similar hypotheses arise from work on the relationship between government crisis and administrative reform. Bekke, Perry, and Toonen (1996, 323), for example, propose that incongruence between administrative systems and broader domestic constitutional

Introduction 13

environments increases pressure for institutional change. Given that a system with two “missing institutions” conflicted with post-socialist governments’ goals of democratic, multi-party governance in a marketized economic atmosphere, Bekke, Perry, and Toonen would expect elites to initiate a relatively rapid and fundamental reform. Similarly, and more directly vis-à-vis the question of diffusion, Halligan suggests that governments are particularly likely to identify and implement “off-the-shelf” reform modules when time is precious and the political agenda is cramped (Halligan 1996, 307-8). Given the enormity of the tasks facing counterelites, one might anticipate crude “snatching” of ready-made reforms (as opposed to more deliberate policy borrowing) within the complex post-socialist environment. Studies of Europeanization in western Europe suggest rather different—and significantly less optimistic—hypotheses. Early theorists of Europeanization defined their subject of interest in a multitude of ways (Olsen 2002). In recent years, however, the literature has approached a consensus that sees Europeanization as a process involving “the impact of the European Union on the policies, institutions, and identities of European nation-states” (Checkel 2007, 307). Students of Europeanization, like diffusion theorists, seek to understand the ways that international dynamics influence the organization and operation of states (Cowles, Caporaso, and Risse 2001; Goetz 2000; Graziano and Vink 2006; Harmsen 1999, 2000; Kassim 2003; Knill 2001; Olsen 2002). Whereas diffusion theorists track the international “commerce in ideas” about reform, though, students of Europeanization are more concerned with the domestic institutional effects of implementing the ever-growing corpus of EU law (the acquis communautaire). Officially, the EU lacks legal authority over the organization of member states; one EU regulation (Council Regulation (EEC) no. 2081/93), for example, explicitly stipulates that internal territorial arrangements remain the prerogative of member states. Most studies of Europeanization in the EU’s “old” member states (the EU-15), though, find that national administrations do, in fact, change in response to the integration process. These changes tend to be slow and piecemeal, characterized more by marginal adaptation and muddling through than by massive institutional innovation or convergence toward similar models. Studies of Europeanization in western Europe also suggest that EU-level actors have little direct agency in compelling particular institutional reforms. National reforms occur in response to the perceived necessity of implementing particular directives and regulations and not as a result, for example, of the European Commission’s pressure to overhaul

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domestic institutional rules in some particular way. Europeanization, in this sense, has more to do with institutional adaptation than with wholesale institutional reform. In recent years, though, the Europeanization literature has expanded to take in CEE. The “Europeanization East” literature raises interesting questions about the ways that Europeanization dynamics might differ between EU member states and states that aspire to be EU members. As Moravscik and Vachudova have stressed (2003), applicant states find themselves in positions of “asymmetrical interdependence” vis-à-vis member states. They have much more to gain through the enlargement process than EU incumbents, and this asymmetry grants EU actors more authority than they have versus EU member states to impose conditionality and promote reforms. There is significant debate within the literature about the extent to which the EU has actually redeemed this authority. Vachudova (2005) argues that EU pressures ushered in wide-reaching patters of political change, particularly in lagging candidates. Schimmelfennig and Sedelmeier (2005) agree, suggesting that the EU has had a massive impact indeed and that EU-supported institutional changes are primarily, if not exclusively, the result of CEE politicians responding rationally to EU conditionality. Other scholars (Grabbe 2006, Kochenov 2008) are more circumspect, positing that EU conditionality has been rather ineffective and that EU actors have squandered the opportunity to overhaul CEE states. Debates about the EU’s ability to compel change in CEE have also animated more specific analyses of regionalization and civil service reform. Baun (2002), Jacoby (2004), and Jacoby and Černoch (2002), for example, posit that the EU has played quite an important role in promoting CEE regional reforms, while Brusis (2006), Hughes, Sasse, and Gordon (2004), and O’Dwyer (2006) play down the EU’s importance. With regard to civil service legislation, Dimitrova (2005) suggests that the EU has been causally relevant in at least some CEE states, while Meyer-Sahling (2002, 2004, 2008), Verheijen (2002) and Grzymała-Busse (2007) imply that the EU has lacked strong influence. A deeper study of reform dynamics in the Czech Republic and Slovakia helps to clarify how, when, and why the EU matters and adds a critical “missing link” to existing studies by analyzing the postaccession fate of CEE’s regions and civil services. The broader literature on democratization, for its part, provides clues about how post-transitional administrative reform might develop but offers few specific hypotheses about elites’ decisions about whether to establish regions and civil services. The earliest studies of democracy’s “third wave” were in some sense ironic: just as the state

Introduction 15

was being reintegrated into the mainstream of comparative politics, students of democratization seemed anxious to “keep the state out” (Huntington 1993; O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986; Przeworski 1991). The pioneering studies paid attention to certain important institutional relationships—between executives and legislatures, legislatures and courts, parties and state institutions, etc.—but left other institutional decisions off the academic agenda. The disintegration of federal states and the salience of nationalism quickly led students of democratization to new appreciations for “stateness,” (Linz and Stepan 1996), for the importance of determining the territorial (unitary vs. federal) distribution of state authority (Przeworski 1995), and for the special challenges of redefining the political community during periods of political and economic reform (Offe 1991). Linz and Stepan’s landmark study of democratic transition and consolidation introduced state administration as an independent variable, suggesting that states with “usable state bureaucracies” were more likely to consolidate democracy than states without usable bureaucracies. Other scholars of democratization have followed Linz and Stepan’s lead, focusing on the relationships between politicians and bureaucrats (Baker 2002; Grugel 2002; Temmes 2000; also Peters 1995) and among different levels of the state (Kirchner 1999), scrutinizing the effects of these factors on democratic consolidation. The suggestion that “administration matters” in the context of democratization is welcome, but emphasis of “usable bureaucracies” is useful only to a point. What if states do not inherit usable bureaucracies? What if bureaucracies are in such poor shape that they threaten politicians’ authority (by direct confrontation, incompetence, or both)? When and why do leaders choose to try to make states more “usable”? In themselves, arguments about the importance of “usable bureaucracies” lead back to the questions with which this chapter began: If competent state institutions are desirable from the standpoint of building democracy, and if politicians desire to build democracy, then why do politicians deliberately choose not to establish competent institutions? Interestingly, if we extend the arguments that democratization theorists have made in other contexts to the case of administrative reform, we can generate a possible hypothesis. Though they have not systematically studied self-governing regions and independent civil services, scholars of democratization have emphasized that historical legacies shape the arenas within which transitional players operate. Pretransitional legacies, they stress, often help to explain post-transitional outcomes. Pre-transitional configurations, for example, have been

16

Governing the Czech Republic and Slovakia

shown to influence the modes of democratic transitions (Munck and Leff 1997), the varieties of post-transitional capitalism (Hanley 2000; Iankova 2002; Stark and Bruszt 1998), the contours of post-transitional party systems (Kitschelt et al. 1999), and the scope of policies that elites and counterelites deem politically plausible (Offe 1993). These studies cast doubt on the revolutionary character of regime transitions and suggest that specific historical arrangements limit the scope of posttransitional reforms. Might this insight help to solve the puzzle of why democratic elites chose not to establish the two missing institutions? The question of if and how pre-transitional administrative arrangements affect institutional reform priorities remains unexamined. There is a relatively welldeveloped professional/policy-based literature on various aspects of pre1989 administration and post-1989 administration in CEE. Unfortunately, these studies generally assume an artificial division between previous systems and present tasks. They rarely identify relationships between past and present, analyze the lobbying activity (and inactivity) of administrative personnel and citizens empowered (and disempowered) under old regimes, or dig deeply into the political battles and compromises that precede institutional reforms. Policyoriented studies (Dostál et al. 1992; Gajduschek and Hajnal 2000; Horváth 2000; Jabes 1997; Kimball 1999; Kudrycka 1999; Nunberg 1999, 2000; Verheijen and Nemec 2000) tend to consider reforms as a technical matter rather than a political process. They see reform as a task to be accomplished rather than a product of compromise among actors with different historical baggage and different reform priorities. Democratization studies hint that pre-transitional state conditions may affect post-transitional institutional outcomes but offer no specific hypotheses about the nature of this connection. Technically oriented studies, on the other hand, assume too facile a break between past and present and undervalue the politics of administrative reform. Broader literatures thus offer at least three hypotheses about the probability and nature of administrative reform in new European democracies. Diffusion theorists focus on international context and the wave-like nature of administrative reforms. They suggest that postsocialist ground is fertile for the quick transmission of reforms previously initiated in advanced industrial liberal democracies. The multiple currents within the Europeanization literature point in different directions. Studies of the EU-15 focus on muddling through and gradual institutional adaptation; they envision administrative reform as a slow process, highly dependent upon national administrative legacies. Studies of Europeanization in CEE are multivocal; some predict conditionality-

Introduction 17

driven change, while others suggest the limitations of EU-instigated reform. Scholars of post-socialist democratization imply the existence of some link between previous state practices and post-transitional administrative reform priorities without pursuing the question in sufficient depth. The book sets out to test these hypotheses and to fill the gaps they open. It explains why elites chose not to establish the two missing institutions, why they continued to delay creation of the institutions for the duration of the 1990s, why they eventually relented, and why the fates of self-governing regions and legally protected civil services have diverged since CEE states joined the EU. In so doing, it clarifies the conditions necessary for administrative reform, illuminates the depth and dynamics of Europeanization in CEE, and elucidates relationship between pre-transitional state legacies and post-transitional institutional choices. Towards a Theory of Post-Socialist Administrative Reform

In discussing institutional reform in post-transitional contexts, this study draws from a number of research traditions. The answer to the question of why counterelites neglected self-governing regions and civil service at the same time as they pursued other institutional reforms has to do, I argue, with historical institutional legacies of the socialist state. Articles written soon after 1989’s regime transitions gave the impression that discrete reforms could be exogenously identified and knocked off sequentially (König 1992; Rice 1992). One year, for example, state leaders could decentralize certain competencies. The next year they could pass civil service legislation. The following year they could establish self-governing regions, etc. This study suggests that such “sequentialism” was highly unlikely. State inheritances and political opportunism made some reforms (i.e., the establishment of selfgoverning municipalities) more likely than others (i.e., the creation of self-governing regions and a protected civil service) and conspired to keep the latter reforms off the agenda during and beyond the fateful months of 1989-1990. The book’s first two substantive chapters suggest that transitional decisions were highly path-dependent. In chapter two, I discuss the socialist state-building strategy—a historically distinctive two-pronged project by which Czechoslovakia’s communist leaders built party hegemony. In chapters two and three, I show that the system the Communists created empowered certain territorially based actors, especially leaders of municipal national committees. When the political opportunity structure shifted in 1989, municipal actors took advantage

18

Governing the Czech Republic and Slovakia

of inherited resources to lobby central politicians for particular reforms, effectively putting old structures to new uses. Their efforts ultimately succeeded; politicians acquiesced to municipal leaders’ demands as a result of municipal leaders’ successful utilization of inherited resources. At the same time, socialist legacies disempowered other groups— particularly advocates of self-governing regions and a legally protected civil service. The latter groups lacked the network resources and access to decisionmakers that the municipal leaders enjoyed. Politicians could, theoretically, have initiated regional and civil service reforms “on their own,” in the absence of pressures from below. They decided not to do so, however, as the maintenance of a politicized bureaucracy offered them significant short-term political advantages. Politicians neglected the potentially beneficial effects of the two missing institutions because they perceived the “non-creation” of regions and a civil service to be more desirable immediate outcomes. Historical institutionalists (Hall 1986; Hall and Taylor 1996; Krasner 1984; Pierson 1996; Thelen 1999; Thelen and Steinmo 1992) have defended similar claims in other geographic and policy contexts. Most historical institutionalists have focused on redistribution, seeking to explain persisting inequalities by demonstrating the ways that early policy decisions structure groups’ access to power, affect the distribution of resources, and constrain policy innovation at later historical moments. At least one observer (Reich 2000) has urged political scientists to make a virtue of this fact. According to Reich, one might apply a historical-institutional framework to other policy arenas, but the framework is less well-suited to non-redistributive policy realms than competing institutionalist approaches. This study, which points to the centrality of historical-institutional legacies in structuring group mobilization and access and affecting the course of post-socialist administrative reform, suggests that Reich overstates the affinity between historical institutionalism and redistribution. The book also parts ways with mainstream historical-institutionalist work by arguing that the period immediately following the socialist regime’s collapse was not, strictly speaking, a “critical juncture” or a moment of “historical punctuation.” 3 On the surface, this period seems to have represented a temporal seam between scrutinized past and uncertain future. Citizens witnessed intense political, economic, and social flux (Bunce and Csanádi 1993), and the collapse of previous controls implied major openings in political opportunity structures. On the other hand, sub-national actors utilized shifting structures by drawing on resources generated under the previous regime. Opportunities shifted in 1989, but the actors who perceived and took

Introduction 19

advantage of them drew from wells dug before the transition began. As I will argue in the third chapter, the dynamics of administrative reform point to closer affinities with the concept of “bricolage” (Campbell 1997; Campbell and Pedersen 1996; Stark and Bruszt 1998; Stark and Bruszt 2001)—conceived as an innovative process whereby new institutions differ from but resemble old ones—than with more familiar concepts of “critical juncture” and “punctuated equilibrium.” The explanation of why Czech and Slovak elites continued to neglect administrative reform throughout the 1990s—a question to which I turn in chapter four—involves the interaction of institutional structures and politicians’ priorities. From 1990 through 1993, the Czechoslovak constitutional order was in flux, and Czech and Slovak politicians butted heads about the future relationship between the state’s two federal units. These disagreements ultimately led, on January 1, 1993, to the dissolution of the state. Both successor states, however, afforded governments (and especially prime ministers) significant constitutional authority, informal influence, and room for maneuver. Despite their very different approaches to politics and their very different philosophies of the state, prime ministers Klaus (in the Czech Republic) and Mečiar (in Slovakia) used this authority to subvert persistent domestic calls to create the two missing institutions. Klaus preferred to maintain the existing, “unfinished” state structure, as this structure abetted party construction and facilitated control over the state bureaucracy. Mečiar took a more aggressive approach, overhauling the state’s territorial administrative structure and creating new regions of (deconcentrated) territorial state administration. Ironically, the Czech and Slovak governments’ opposing theoretical approaches to the state led in similar directions. In both cases, governments worked to keep establishment of the two key institutions off the political agenda. By the end of their respective tenures in office (1997 for Klaus, 1998 for Mečiar), both states still lacked the two missing institutions. All the while, international actors—and particularly the European Union—were developing an interest in CEE administration. As the decade progressed, the EU became increasingly convinced that “administration mattered” for countries aspiring to membership. In chapter five, I show how this conviction remained vague through the mid-1990s and stress that, during this era, the EU had few tools to encourage potential applicants to initiate major reforms. The EU’s ambivalence played into the hands of domestic actors who were already engaged in domestic battles about whether to establish the two institutions. These actors had pre-formed preferences, and they integrated the resources and rhetoric of the European Union into

20

Governing the Czech Republic and Slovakia

domestic debates in two ways. First, anti-reform governments used EUsponsored projects to deflect domestic opposition. Second, politicians across the political spectrum (including both government and opposition) evoked “European standards” as rhetorical props to defend particular institutional arguments. The fifth chapter reinforces the suggestion that decisions about reform through 1997 were the products of domestic interactions and short-term political considerations. Through 1997, the EU was not causally relevant. At the same time, the analysis shows that the EU was substantively relevant throughout this period, being integrated as a political pawn and a rhetorical object into domestic political games. The chapter draws certain insights from the international relations literature on norms by applying Schimmelfennig’s (1999, 2001) concept of “rhetorical action” to the realm of domestic politics in EU candidate states. It stresses, though, that because of the indistinctness of the EU’s administrative reform policy, European norms failed to entrap domestic actors or push toward new institutional outcome. Vague norms allowed actors with opposing substantive orientations to invoke them. They provided cheap legitimacy to arguments but did not carry specific causal weight. The analysis shows that the dominant impetuses for reform were domestic and that international actors played only marginal roles in influencing institutional outcomes. Chapter five also shows, though, that as the first post-socialist decade came to a close, the nature of EU involvement changed in important ways. Though the EU continued to serve as an object of domestic manipulation, EU institutions also became active subjects on domestic reform scenes. EU actors came to identify self-governing regions and a legally protected civil service as priorities. Despite the fact that there was no acquis communautaire for public administration, they eventually established stable, democratic territorial structures and legally protected civil services as membership conditions. They pressured candidates who lacked these institutions—including the Czech Republic and Slovakia—to create them. They did so in multiple ways, some rather aggressive, others less so. Frequently, EU actors offered substantively neutral recommendations, pressuring candidates to create institutions but not remarking on the form that such institutions should take. On other occasions, they offered substantively engaged recommendations, defending the creation of institutions with certain characteristics and relative weights vis-à-vis other domestic institutions. EU actors used different methods in different sectors and in different countries, demonstrating a context-specific approach to enlargement. Specifically, they followed a substantively neutral course

Introduction 21

in the case of regional self-governments in both states, a substantively neutral course in the Czech case of civil service legislation, and a simultaneously neutral/engaged course in the case of the Slovak civil service law. The Union’s direct impact on institutional outcomes was most evident in the latter case. Still, EU pressure affected domestic institutional choice in all four cases by forcing pro-EU parties to compromise with each other in ways that would have been very unlikely in the absence of EU pressure. Chapter five, which scrutinizes the transformation of the EU’s policy and the subsequent interactions between EU actors and domestic politicians after 1997, thus supports the proposition that Europeanization dynamics were at play without minimizing the importance of domestic reform conditions. In all cases, EU pressure helped to disrupt the equilibrium that had developed between domestic politicians seeking to maximize short-term political benefits and an institutional system that allowed for significant political control. EU conditionality played a central role in politicians’ eventual decisions to support legislation establishing the two missing institutions. In addition to laying out specific explanatory assertions and engaging a preliminary test of these assertions in the Polish and Hungarian contexts, the book’s final chapter examines the fate of regional self-government and legally protected civil service in CEE in the years since the EU’s pre-accession leverage evaporated. It shows that self-governing regions have fared relatively well, increasing their resources and viability across the region. Civil services, on the other hand, have fared poorly; governments of all political stripes have aggressively undermined laws passed during the period of strong EU conditionality. I explain this variation by showing how EU regional policy is reinforcing regional viability while the lack of an analogous external policy regime is allowing domestic politicians significant discretion over ministerial personnel policy. Case Selection, Data, and Research Strategies

Despite the proliferation of monographs (Bunce 1999; Innes 2001; Leff 1997; Stein 1997), edited works (Kraus and Stanger 2000; Musil 1995), and articles (Elster 1995a, 1995b; Kopecký 2001a; Wilson 1992; Wolchik 1994) explaining the collapse of the Czechoslovak state, one continues to hear mention, both in the broader public and in the political science community, of “Czechoslovakia,” as if such a state still existed. This fact alone may justify continued work by American scholars on the Czechoslovak, Czech, and Slovak states.

22

Governing the Czech Republic and Slovakia

There are also, however, strong theoretical reasons to study state dynamics in these countries. Insofar as this study examines Czechoslovak state socialism and developments between 1989 and 1993, it might be classified as a single-country study. The case is more complicated, though, not only because the Czechoslovak state disintegrated, but also because Czechoslovak inheritances continue to affect developments in both successor states. In addition to allowing one to hold many variables constant and facilitating Czech-Slovak comparison, this phenomenon directs attention to an undertheorized reality—post-federalism. Czech and Slovak experiences can shed light on processes of state reformation across CEE but can also inform broader discussions of state and nation building in southeastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and perhaps future post-federal contexts. Also, given the importance of the EU enlargement process to which the book points and the fact that enlargement is likely to continue in the coming years, the cases can generate hypotheses that are testable in future enlargements. The study draws on analysis of three major sources of data: (1) archival data, parliamentary records, legal documents, and other primary sources, (2) newspapers, popular periodicals, and professional journals, and (3) elite interviews. Archival research was carried out at the Czech Republic’s State Central Archives and at the Archives of the Czech Interior Ministry in Prague. The majority of the archival research was conducted between August 2000 and June 2001. The book also makes frequent use of parliamentary records recently published on the Internet, at the web sites of the Czech parliament and the National Council of the Slovak Republic. These resources contain a wealth of information but are occasionally (particularly in the Slovak case) cumbersome to use. In the book’s bibliography, I have made every effort to denote the precise location of utilized archival material. Between August 2000 and June 2007, various professionals were interviewed, all of whom could be considered experts on administrative reform, and most of whom could be classified as political, economic, or academic elites. The interviews took place in Prague, Bratislava, Brussels, Paris, and various Czech and Slovak towns outside of the national capitals. The set of interviewees included parliamentarians; municipal and regional politicians and bureaucrats; retired and incumbent bureaucrats in the respective administrative reform headquarters (the Interior Ministry in Prague, the Government Office in Bratislava); bureaucrats and advisors from various line ministries; representatives of public sector trade unions; EU civil servants at the delegations of the European Commission in Prague and Bratislava; EU

Introduction 23

civil servants at the European Commission’s Enlargement DirectorateGeneral in Brussels; members and staffs of the Committee of the Regions in Brussels; and a range of domestic and international consultants who had worked on EU-funded projects. All interviews were conducted in the language (Czech, Slovak, or English) of the interviewee’s choosing. In order to protect interviewees’ confidence, I have not included direct quotations in the text. One methodological strategy which the book employs—the embedded case study (Yin 1994, 41-44)—deserves particular mention. At various points in the study, general findings are brought to life through detailed narratives of particular episodes. When discussing the ineffectiveness of the EU’s administrative reform policy in the mid1990s, for example (Chapter 5), I focus on the ways that the Klaus government manipulated resources made available by the EU to parry the attacks of domestic political opponents. The point of the narrative is not (at least not primarily) to tell an interesting story, but to represent a general phenomenon to which other sources of data—project evaluations, interviews, audits—simultaneously point. The fact that the embedded cases are more than just stories should emerge clearly from the text, as they are routinely juxtaposed to other data that can be interpreted in similar ways. Notes 1 One point bears emphasis in the context of this theoretical discussion. First, self-governing regions and civil services will be referred to throughout the book as “institutions.” The foregoing discussion argued for a conception of institutions as rules, procedures, and practices that structure relationships among individuals and among collective units. Institutions are, by definition, relational, and the text uses the institutions that govern interactions between different state actors as an example. It may seem inaccurate, working from this conception, to maintain the convention of referring to “self-governing regions” and “the civil service” as institutions, as there seems to be no relational “other” implied in these labels. Nonetheless, these two organizations are institutions in their own right. Each organization is enmeshed in a series of structured relationships with other organizations in the polity. At the same time, each organization structures relationships among the individuals who comprise the organization through a series of “internal” rules, procedures, and practices. 2 This definition is a very slightly amended form of Raadschelders and Rutgers’s definition (1996, 68), which itself is a slightly amended version of Parris’s definition (1969, 22). 3 I understand Collier and Collier’s “critical junctures” and Krasner’s “punctuated equilibriums” as essentially synonymous. Collier and Collier (1991, 29) define a critical juncture as “a period of significant change, which

24

Governing the Czech Republic and Slovakia

typically occurs in distinct ways in distinct countries . . . and which is hypothesized to produce distinct legacies” (29). Krasner (1984) does not give a simple definition of punctuated equilibrium. Drawing from evolutionary biology, he suggests that the image of punctuated equilibrium implies “short bursts of rapid institutional change followed by long periods of stasis” (242) and that “once institutions are in place they can assume a life of their own, extracting societal resources, socializing individuals, even altering the basic nature of civil society itself” (240).

2 Socialist State Building Communist parties in Central and Eastern Europe took control of their respective states between 1945 and 1948. During this period, the parties pursued, with minimal national variation, an aggressive, historically novel approach to governance, an approach I call the socialist statebuilding strategy. Twin imperatives animated this strategy. On one hand, the strategy involved the construction of a network of party-controlled territorial administrative units. In Czechoslovakia, these units would have different boundaries, different responsibilities, and different relationships to political power than the institutions of sub-national selfgovernment and administration that pre-communist politicians had bequeathed. On the other hand, the socialist state-building strategy involved the destruction of the legal and operational independence of the civil service. The twin projects were opposites in terms of “directionality.” The territorial project was constructive; the civilservice project was destructive. Both projects, though, aimed to consolidate party power over the administrative state. Though late socialist leaders in neighboring states moved away from the socialist state-building strategy in the 1970s and 1980s, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa, or KSČ) continued to pursue the strategy. The results of the strategy’s twin projects—an inflated network of territorial administrative units coupled with a non-existent civil service—affected opportunities for political mobilization throughout the state-socialist era and set the parameters within which counterelites would operate after 1989. This chapter examines the two sides of the socialist state-building strategy and the ways that the strategy affected political mobilization before 1989. It begins by summarizing the dynamics of state building in pre-communist Czechoslovakia and contrasting the KSČ’s approach to territorial administration and ministerial personnel policy with precommunist approaches. Next, it shows the ways that the socialist statebuilding strategy affected political dynamics during Czechoslovakia’s most acute socialist-era crisis, 1968’s Prague Spring. I argue that the strategy afforded significant mobilizational resources to the leaders of sub-national territorial units while isolating and staining central-level bureaucrats with the taint of association with party hard-liners. When the political opportunity structure—defined following Tarrow (1998, 19-20)

25

26

Governing the Czech Republic and Slovakia

as “consistent dimensions of the political struggle that encourage people to engage in contentious politics”—shifted, leaders of sub-national units were well-equipped, and central-level bureaucrats were ill-equipped, to challenge the status quo. This section suggests that the socialist statebuilding strategy was not merely constructive, but constitutive: it successfully eradicated the civil service as a site of potential subversion but unintentionally empowered reformists based at sub-national levels. The chapter’s final section examines the return by Czechoslovakia’s post-1968 leadership to the doctrinaire socialist state-building strategy. Building Czechoslovakia: The Pre-Communist Approach

Czechoslovakia was born in 1918, a product of cooperation among its two titular national groups and of world leaders’ willingness to redraw the map of CEE. Czechoslovakia resembled its neighbors in some ways and differed from them in others. Like other states in the region, it bore markers of the empires from which it emerged. Nowhere was this clearer than in the new country’s inherited systems of territorial administration. Czech territory had been governed under the Austrian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This territory had been divided into three historic “lands”—Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia—and subdivided into 141 small districts and approximately 11,000 municipalities. Slovak territory had been governed under the Hungarian half of the same empire. Its territorial administrative divisions differed significantly from imperial divisions in the Czech half of the state. Before WWI, Slovakia had been divided into 17 large political districts and approximately 3500 municipalities. An asymmetry therefore divided the Czech and Slovak “halves” of the state. There existed no Slovak counterpart to the Czech historic lands, and while both halves of the state could boast of “districts,” these units were very differently sized and functionally incongruent. An imperial footprint also marked the state’s civil service system. The first generation of Czechoslovak citizens inherited a civil service system governed by the Austrian Civil Service Code (the so-called Dienstpragmatik) of 1914 (Maier 1930). The Dienstpragmatik entrusted civil servants with specific duties and responsibilities, set out ethical guidelines for public service, and granted certain special rights to state employees. It divided public servants into four classes—administrative, executive, clerical, and sub-clerical. Traditionally, civil servants at the administrative level enjoyed significant responsibility, independence, and prestige. Czechoslovakia also resembled other new (e.g., Yugoslavia) and restored (e.g., Poland) CEE states in that it was ethnically very diverse.

Socialist State Building 27

Czechs and Slovaks shared the new state’s territory with ethnic Germans, Jews, Hungarians, Ruthenians, Roma, Poles, Russians, and others. Unlike its counterparts in the region, though, Czechoslovakia managed to sustain liberal democracy, albeit with significant stresses, throughout the interwar era (1918-1938). This First Czechoslovak Republic enjoyed more regime stability and more industrial development (particularly in the Czech lands) than other states in the region, but its party system tended to encourage ethnic mobilization and gave voice to parties with radically different ideas about how the new state should be structured and staffed. Faced with these conditions, First Republic elites followed a statebuilding strategy that was based more on political “muddling through” than on systematic planning. The structures and constraints of First Republic party competition militated against any attempt to build radically new administrative structures. Czechoslovakia’s electoral system was highly proportional and facilitated broad party representation in parliament. This reality made multi-party governments the First Republic norm. From 1918 to 1938, fifteen governments came and went. Most Czechoslovak parliaments in this era contained between ten and thirteen parties, and the average First Republic government contained 5.75 parties (Leff 1989, 55). These institutional conditions granted parties with strong ethnic interests and diverse ideological tendencies an institutional means of forcing compromises before laws reached parliament, and, occasionally, of blocking implementation once laws had passed. Competitive party politics worked against systematic state-building. In the realm of territorial administration, a law (Zákon 126/1920) that sought to rationalize the territorial structure of the Czechoslovak state by abolishing old territorial levels and establishing new, similarly sized units throughout the state fell victim to the exigencies of party competition. The Czechoslovak National Assembly passed this law (the župní zákon, named after the territorial unit, the župa, which it sought to create) after months of inter-party debate and compromise (Peroutka 1991b). The law radically changed Czechoslovakia’s inherited territorial structure. It (a) eliminated the three historic Czech provinces, (b) established twenty intermediate units (župy) throughout the state, and (c) established 78 small districts in Slovakia; these districts corresponded to the 141 extant Czech districts. Despite its legal passage, the župní zákon ultimately fell victim to multi-party politics. Parliamentary elections held soon after the law had passed empowered parties that took ex-post action against the župní zákon. Two parties expressed particular misgivings about the law: the

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Governing the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Czechoslovak Populists, a Christian Democratic party that appealed to a diverse Christian electorate, and the National Democrats, an increasingly rightist Czech party that consistently played an antiGerman card. The Populists (who garnered 11.3% of the 1920 vote) were well established in the Bohemian, Moravian, and Silesian lands (země) and opposed the implementation of a law that would abolish that administrative level (Peroutka 1991b, 1010-11). The National Democrats (6.2% of the 1920 vote) feared that the German population would use the two Bohemian župy that it was likely to control as platforms for irredentism. Both the Czechoslovak Populists and the National Democrats joined the government in 1920. Together possessing almost 20% of cabinet seats, they managed to delay implementation of the župní zákon. For the Populists and National Democrats, this result was a victory. For government partners interested in a symmetrical state, it was an embarrassment. In 1923, the župní zákon was indeed implemented, but only in Slovakia. The effect was not the intended transition from asymmetry to symmetry, but from one asymmetry to another. Six župy and 78 small districts were now operational in Slovakia; three země, no župy, and 141 small districts in the Czech lands. 1 This new asymmetry was only corrected once a new government had taken office four years later. A “symmetrizing” law was enacted at least partially to meet the demands of an exclusively Slovak party— Andrej Hlinka’s Slovak Populists (HSĽS). From 1923 forward, the HSĽS, had opposed administrative arrangements in Slovakia, arguing that the six Slovak župy obstructed Slovak unity and promoted Czech domination. The most vocal Czech defenders of the status quo had, by the late 1920s, lost electoral steam. The Czechoslovak Populists were weakened (achieving 9.7% of the 1925 vote) despite their representation in successive government coalitions, and the National Democrats (with only 4% of the 1925 vote) had entered opposition. These circumstances gave proportionately more weight to proreform parties and facilitated the passage laws that finally symmetrized the territorial state in 1927 (Zákon 125/1927). The law did not satisfy the HSĽS. It failed to recognize any autonomous Slovak decisionmaking body, and the Interior Ministry in Prague continued to dominate staffing and to influence decisionmaking at all intermediate sub-national levels. Far from institutionalizing the vision of any single political party, the law reflected a pragmatic inter-party compromise. Specifically, it: (a) established four země throughout Czechoslovak territory (Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia, Slovakia, and Sub-Carpathian Ukraine); (b) established 148 slightly redrawn districts in the Czech territories while maintaining

Socialist State Building 29

the 78 recently established small districts in Slovakia and adding 12 similarly sized districts in Sub-Carpathian Ukraine; and (c) abolished the Slovak župy. The result, after figuring municipalities into the scheme, was a uniform, three-tiered system of territorial administration. First Republic politicians took a similarly compromise-based, pragmatic approach to issues surrounding the new state’s civil service. The slightly amended (Zákon 495/1921, Zákon 394/1922, and Zákon 286/1924; Zákon 103/1926) Austrian Dienstpragmatik continued to govern the civil service after 1918. The Dienstpragmatik enumerated civil servants’ rights and responsibilities and set out ethical guidelines for public service. It established a system of four service classes (administrative, executive, clerical, and sub-clerical) and gave parties some power over the composition of the administrative and executive levels. Opposition politicians frequently criticized the civil service system for being beholden to governing parties. At the same time, certain constitutional and statutory provisions checked politicization, opened room for civil service independence, and prohibited single parties from capturing large patches of the administrative “turf.” This regime of limited patronage suited the large, diverse governments that characterized the First Republic exceptionally well. For the First Republic’s politicians, the Dienstpragmatik offered certain patronage opportunities. The Code did not include party neutrality on the list of civil servants’ duties. There existed no central civil service office to monitor personnel policy across the state or to censure ministers for appointing unqualified allies. Applicants did not have to pass specific examinations to be admitted to the service. The laws governing Czechoslovak civil service thus lacked most, if not all, of the tools most commonly used to limit political influence. From governing parties’ points of view, the situation was attractive: ministers could distribute posts to allies and freely court civil servants for electoral support. Still, the absence of traditional checks did not grant parties carte blanche. Constitutional procedures, certain sections of the Dienstpragmatik, and informal inter-party pressures restricted overambitious patrons and facilitated civil service independence. The constitution stipulated that the government as a whole could reject particular ministers’ appointments to most administrative-class positions and all executive-class positions for any reason (Zákon 121/1920). It also required the president to approve recruits to the administrative class and the highest executive-class grade. In short, the constitution assured that the highest state positions would be filled by people acceptable to

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both the government as a whole (or at least a majority of its members) and the president. Also, what the Dienstpragmatik granted with one hand, it limited with the other. The four service grades, for example, were distinguished by level of educational achievement. “Administrative” status required a university degree, while “executive” status required a maturity diploma. The service code also protected bureaucrats against arbitrary dismissal. At the end of a three-year probationary period, all new civil servants took a written and/or oral exam (procedures varied from ministry to ministry and office to office). These post-probationary exams corrected for some of the distortions that resulted from the lack of entrance exams. If candidates passed post-probationary exams, they were given tenure and could only be dismissed for grave offences. This tenure system militated against tidal shifts in ministerial staffing after changes in government (Maier 1930; Táborský 1945, 1948). In spite of the discretion that individual ministers enjoyed and the lack of a central civil service office, members of the administrative class enjoyed high social status and could claim some independence from politicians. Tenure, university education, and rigidly enforced educational barriers to membership facilitated a sense of distinction and forced politicians to recognize high-level bureaucrats as experienced and independent constitutional players. Sociological factors also encouraged members of the administrative class to identify with each other as a distinctive class. Most high-level bureaucrats, for example, had graduated from Charles University’s Faculty of Law, and all had spent their probationary years working outside of Prague. 2 While the system of constitutional, statutory, and social checks limited politicization, it did not, in the end, wipe out political patronage. The largest systemic loophole resulted from the fact that constitutional checks limited patronage in recruitment but allowed ministers significant discretion in promotion. Every ministry and zemský office had a five-member board of qualifications, which would issue annual merit-based evaluations for each employee. The qualifications were designed to assure that the most deserving candidates would be promoted to within their respective classes. Boards’ recommendations, however, carried no legal weight; ministers could ignore merit-based evaluations and promote civil servants based on political considerations. In fact, anecdotal accounts of bureaucratic behavior suggest that partybased promotion was rather the norm, especially at the highest levels of the civil service. Peroutka (1991a, 1321), for example, offers the following assessment:

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Some state bureaucrats tried to protect themselves by using the password, “use anyone to protect yourself,” giving up their political neutrality, running from one party to the next, carrying membership cards of numerous parties in their coat pockets, and lobbying for personal benefits first from one party, then from the next. You couldn’t really blame them for this. Bureaucrats who acted this way certainly couldn’t lay claim to an exemplary character. Still, they were simply reacting to what they saw around them. And what they saw around them was that prominent positions in state service were routinely given to those without qualifications, for political reasons. “Wow, political protection is a skeleton key,” many bureaucrats said to themselves, “I’ll have to try that myself.”

Peroutka’s observation suggests that when a new party took control of a ministry, opportunistic bureaucrats would join the minister’s party, hoping that party loyalty, however superficial, would facilitate promotion. Another strike against civil service independence derived from the fact that parties with distinctive electoral constituencies were routinely awarded specific ministries. The Agrarian Party, for example, possessed a solid electoral base in the peasantry. Although their electoral support fluctuated from election to election, the Agrarians participated in every First Republic government. They consistently sought the ministries closest to their constituencies, including Agriculture and Interior. Their coalition partners, convinced that they could never capture significant chunks of Agrarian electoral turf and anxious to control their own ministries, consistently deferred to Agrarian demands in exchange for Agrarian support for their own pet portfolios. This process resulted in the parcelization of the state: parties were recognized as owners of certain sectors and ministries. Party leaders came to view certain ministries as the sacred terrain of particular parties. Again, while specific data from the First Republic are unavailable, a consensus of anecdotal reports suggests that the process culminated in the degradation of the aforementioned constitutional checks, as governments and presidents came to allow a disproportionate number of partisan bureaucrats in parties’ “own” ministries. To summarize, the administration of the Czechoslovak state depended crucially on imperial legacies and the exigencies of multiparty competition. The First Republic’s crowded, ethnically diverse, and ideologically varied political field cut against durable state-building efforts, encouraging compromise, deal-making, and muddling through. The distinctive system of party give-and-take determined the shape and

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pace of territorial administrative reforms and produced a hybrid between professional and politicized civil service. Building the Institutions of Party Domination

Before discussing the socialist state-building strategy in detail, it is helpful to sketch the events that separated the First Republic (which died in October 1938) from the period of Communist consolidation (which began in February 1948). At Munich in October 1938, British, French, and Italian representatives acquiesced to Germany’s planned annexation of the Sudetenland. Most—though certainly not all—of Czechoslovakia’s ethnic Germans lived in this horseshoe-shaped territory along the country’s western border. Fearing that strains in the Czech-Slovak relationship would abet divide-and-conquer tactics by the Nazis, Czech politicians, led by President Edvard Beneš, agreed to reorient the Czech-Slovak relationship. The consequent Žilina Accord abolished the First Republic and initiated an ill-fated Second Republic. A number of hastily drafted laws would have changed Czechoslovakia’s territorial administrative structure. The laws were never implemented, though, as Slovakia seceded from the state in March 1939 (Procházka 1981; Feierabend 1960, 1968). From that point until the end of World War II, Czechoslovakia was split into two legally separate entities—the Reichsprotektorat of Bohemia and Moravia (administered directly by the Germans) and Jozef Tiso’s quasi-autonomous Slovak Republic, a de facto puppet of Nazi Germany. Following World War II, Czechoslovakia was reassembled. President Beneš returned to Prague from exile and oversaw a government in which all major “noncollaborationist” parties, including the Czechoslovak Communists (KSČ) and the Slovak Communists (Komunistická strana Slovenska, or KSS), participated. In February 1948, the Communists forced principled non-communist politicians out of the government, and the era of Communist hegemony began. Unlike communist parties in most neighboring states, the KSČ had operated legally during the interwar period. The party was founded in 1921 and regularly participated in First Republic elections. It made limited inroads into the National Assembly, and it never participated in government. During the war, leaders of most anti-Nazi parties, including the Communists, Social Democrats, National Socialists, and Populists, went into exile in London and Moscow; the Communists had delegations in both cities. During these years, KSČ leader Klement Gottwald pursued a broadly constitutional strategy and followed the principle of power-sharing. Still, Gottwald had learned lessons from the

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First Republic. He realized that his crystallizing vision of the state—a vision that owed much to Soviet advisors—would not survive intense rounds of inter-party bargaining to which it would be subjected in the post-war context. The KSČ took advantage, therefore, of unique institutional opportunities to pursue this vision. Beneš, who carried no party card, confirmed himself as President of Czechoslovakia while in exile. He attacked the legal validity of his resignation (which he had tendered in 1938) by arguing that it had been coerced by a foreign power. After securing British recognition for his self-declaration as president in 1940, Beneš issued constitutional decrees that granted the presidency extraordinary powers for the duration of the exile. He thereby acquired the right to issue laws, in the form of decrees, in consultation with the exile government. The latter check on power, however, was mitigated by the fact that Beneš also entrusted himself with the power to appoint the government. In short, Beneš anointed himself as the major player in exile politics, and contemporaries recognized him as such. The institutional strength of the presidency and the relative weakness of political parties distinguished this London system from the party-dominated First Republic (Peška 1945; Skilling 1961). Gottwald began lobbying Beneš for a qualitatively distinctive, Soviet-inspired system of territorial units called national committees (národní výbory) in 1943. On the KSČ’s model, which was based closely on the model of soviets, a committee would be convened at the level of every pre-war municipality, district and země. After 1928’s symmetrizing law, assemblies at district and země levels had been 1/3 appointed, 2/3 elected, and tightly monitored by the Ministry of Interior. The system proposed by the KSČ would, ostensibly, be more decentralized; assemblies at all levels would be chosen entirely by ballot and would select executive councils from among their respective memberships. Before national committees were accepted as legitimate units of the post-war state, KSČ leaders-in-exile supported their informal creation as units of wartime resistance. The Soviet secret police funded the creation of national committees during the war; they were staffed by communist partisans within the Protectorate and Slovakia and played visible roles during Slovak National Uprising in 1944 and the liberation of Czech and Slovak lands in 1945. The Communists recognized the opportunities inherent in the wartime regime-in-exile. In London, Gottwald persistently lobbied Beneš to pass a decree establishing national committees. Writing just before his death, Beneš recalled the vehemence with which Gottwald pursued the question: “Gottwald,” he wrote, “developed his position on

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the post-war Czechoslovak revolution: he emphasized the necessity of creating national committees, which should not only be used as revolutionary cells of resistance, but as the germs of the whole revolutionary political administration” (Beneš 1948, 408). Edvard Táborský (1961, 305-10), a chief advisor to Beneš during the war, also recalls Gottwald’s aggressiveness in lobbying for a decree. Gottwald’s lobbying produced steady dividends. Throughout 1944, Beneš voiced sympathy for the KSČ’s reform proposal, and in December, he issued a decree stating that national committees would be established as provisional units of administration throughout Czechoslovakia as soon as the state regained its sovereignty (Ústavní dekret 1944). Subsequent events institutionalized communist/non-communist cooperation, shifted some of Beneš’s extraordinary wartime authority to the (multi-party) government, and affirmed national committees as permanent components of the reconstructed state. Meeting in Moscow in April 1945, leaders of Czechoslovakia’s major non-collaborationist parties assembled to create the National Front (Národní Fronta, or NF). The NF provided a framework for party cooperation, including cooperation between the two Communist parties (the KSČ and the KSS) and a diverse assortment of non-Communist parties. In many ways, the NF revived the system of institutionalized party cooperation that had characterized the First Republic. The NF was unique, however, in that it included representatives of all parliamentary parties, effectively neutralizing all potential parliamentary opposition. The NF entered to govern at the end of the war (kicking off the so-called Third Republic), continued to exist after general parliamentary elections in 1946, and formally acted as government between April 1945 and February 1948. While in Moscow, the NF agreed on the shape of a provisional government. The government, which contained fifteen non-communist members and eight Communists (reflecting the KSČ’s significant postwar popularity), announced its program the following week in the eastern Slovak city of Košice. The Košice program cemented the national committee system in place by nullifying the previous decree’s designation of committees as temporary units of administration: In place of the previous bureaucratized system of territorial administration, where a distant administrative apparatus operated in municipalities, districts, and země, new organs of state and public administration, operated by people elected to national committees, will, in the areas of their respective competencies, administer all public concerns and function along with central organs in the interest of public well-being. (Košický vládní program 1994)

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Of course, the KSČ interpreted the Košice program as a major success. Speaking in Brno two months after the program was announced, for example, Gottwald trumpeted: “By the government program and according to the intentions of all of us, this new political organization of the Republic is to be permanent. The time when the districts and communes were ruled by bureaucrats shall not return” (Táborský 1961, 309). In addition to the program that cemented national committees in place, the KSČ also scored a victory with the composition the first postwar government. From that point through 1948 and beyond, the party controlled the Interior Ministry (Ripka 1950; Kaplan 1987). This post, held by KSČ loyalist Václav Nosek, had two distinct advantages. First, it allowed the KSČ to use the ministry to staff the police and internal security apparatus with its own militants. Second, and equally importantly, it facilitated the KSČ’s attempts to mold territorial administration in its image. Once gaining control of Interior, Nosek and the KSČ employed two strategies—“deliberate speed” in establishing national committees and semi-constitutional methods of assuring KSČ representation in them—to establish control throughout the state. National Front parties had agreed to establish committees at all First Republic administrative levels. Nosek, however, did not rush to constitute committees throughout the state. Immediately following the war, the ministry established committees in areas of strong KSČ support and left lingering administrative commissions and provisional bodies of central state administration in some areas where the party was less popular, including the Sudeten lands, which were being cleansed of ethnic Germans. The result was ironic: during the war, the KSČ had pressed shrewdly and aggressively for the establishment of national committees. Between 1945 and 1948, when the KSČ controlled the Interior Ministry, it took advantage of its tenure by establishing national committees where politically convenient and maintaining other, more transparently centralized bodies where less convenient. Contemporaries who had doubted the sincerity of Gottwald’s principled advocacy of national committees fumed: the KSČ’s performance in government suggested that the more pressing goal, and likely the goal from the beginning, was to establish KSČ power throughout Czechoslovak territory. In the areas where national committees were established, KSČ cells employed clever techniques to influence them. The party used a “combination of pressure, denunciation of political opponents, exploitation of the support generously given by the local commanders of the Red Army and the NKVD agents, and clever management of ‘direct

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democracy’ in mass meetings and show-of-hands elections . . . [to] secure majority and key positions in all the people’s [national] committees on every level” (Táborský 1961, 309). These tactics were particularly effective in the months immediately following the war. At that time, provisional district and zemské national committees were constituted without local elections, on the basis of local meetings; KSČ and KSS militants flooded these meetings and gained representation in higher-level committees disproportionate to their actual popularity. The parliamentary elections of 1946 erased some of these early gains. In that year, direct elections to national committees were not conducted. Instead, in a move that significantly boosted the appointment power of parties’ central leaderships, committee seats were distributed by “reasoning down” from parliamentary tallies. If, for example, the Czechoslovak Populists received 40% of the parliamentary vote within a given district, they would receive 40% of that district’s national committee seats. This arrangement augured well for the KSČ in the Czech lands, where they captured 40.1% of the popular parliamentary vote. In Slovakia, however, the KSS received only 30.3% of the popular vote, and KSS representation in most municipal- and district-level national committees dropped. These relative setbacks notwithstanding, the KSČ continued to command the Interior Ministry, and sub-national communist cells continued to pressure their respective committees. By September 1947, chairmen of all three zemské national committees were KSČ members, as were 80% of district chairs and 57% of municipal chairs. Communists also dominated the rank-and-file, constituting 43.9% of district committees in May 1947. The National Socialists, a party unaffiliated with the Nazis, had the second highest representation rate, but claimed only 22.1% of district committee seats (Korbel 1959, 146). In January 1948, Gottwald boasted that 60,000 KSČ members served in national committees throughout the state. The KSČ’s maneuvers between 1938 and 1948 contradicted previous Czechoslovak approaches to territorial state building. Theoretically, Gottwald and his partners advocated a fundamental reconfiguration of prior models of territorial administration. Tactically, they avoided interparty scrutiny, capitalized upon the president’s temporary decree powers, and were eventually rewarded for their persistence. Operationally, they took advantage of the communistdominated and Soviet-supported wartime committees, pursued and acquired control of the Interior Ministry, used bully tactics to influence the composition of district and provincial committees, and capitalized upon momentary delays in the implementation of national committees at strategic locales. All of these facts attest to the KSČ’s dedication to

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building a distinctive revolutionary politics by manipulating and reinventing institutions at sub-national levels by alternately avoiding and manipulating the institutions that had mediated previous battles over territorial administration. The KSČ’s early approach to civil service differed from its approach to territorial administration. Here, the KSČ initially proposed no reforms, took advantage of other parties’ resistance to reform, and cooperated with other parties to undermine Beneš, who preferred to reinvent the Czechoslovak civil service. World War II did not fundamentally transform the First Republic’s civil service system. Between the demise of the First Republic (1938) and the beginning of the Third Republic (1945), the majority of civil servants continued to work in the state apparatus. Reliable figures on employment in the wartime regimes are scant. It seems clear, though, that the number of state employees in both the Czech Protectorate and the Slovak state rose during that period (Žižka 1979). Among the community of politicians in exile, Beneš was the only vocal critic of the First Republic’s civil service system. Beneš criticized the previous system for encouraging a “petty bureaucratic atmosphere” and inveighed against civil service politicization. He suggested that the previous system encouraged civil servants to pander to parties and parties to pander to civil servants. He also chastised parties for awarding positions to “their people” and for overlooking more qualified, less politically engaged alternates. Beneš did not outline specific rules to govern a new civil service regime but suggested that the system’s foundations needed to be overhauled: [Post-war] democracy needs an enlightened, objective, bureaucracy that will under no conditions fall within parties’ reach. The bureaucracy will be loyal to the state, regard every government as a temporary regime, and offer each government its full loyalty. At the same time, it will be able to adroitly distinguish between the long-term tasks and the interests of the state and the transient caprices and needs of the day’s government. Democracy needs brave bureaucrats, driven by a sense of personal responsibility, character, honesty, success and effectiveness, initiative, and responsibility for the decisions it executes. Democracy needs a new bureaucracy. (Beneš 1948, 338).

Predictably, Beneš found few supporters for his vision of reform amongst party leaders. After the war, National Front parties ignored Beneš’s wishes and continued to operate within the First Republic’s civil service framework. KSČ leaders expressed no misgivings with the inherited system.

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From the Third Republic’s first days, familiar trends resurfaced: parties, including the KSČ, sought and were awarded their “own ministries,” and civil servants, governed by familiar employment regulations, frequently joined the parties whose bosses directed their particular ministries. Table 2.1, which contains data on KSČ representation in ministerial management positions immediately before the KSČ’s February 1948 “coup,” demonstrates this point. Bearing in mind that Communist Party members were barred from civil service jobs throughout the First Republic, the data suggest that many post-war bureaucrats in ministries controlled by the KSČ joined the Party during the Third Republic. Despite the fact that KSČ leaders worked within the established civil service framework from 1945 to 1948, they did hint at certain changes. During the Third Republic, for example, KSČ ministers consistently managed their departments by shifting policymaking authority away from formal ministerial departments and toward the KSČ secretariat. The security apparatus offers a case in point. Although Interior Minister Nosek possessed legal responsibility for establishing internal security and intelligence cells, these cells often took action without the minister’s knowledge. Instead, they answered to the party secretariat and Soviet advisors (Korbel 1959, 133-147). In ministries like Finance and Domestic Trade, where KSČ ministers assumed the reins rather late in short history of the Third Republic, the KSČ experimented with an approach to ministerial management that would become normal after February 1948. Here, the KSČ ministers maintained inherited organizational structures but effectively demoted incumbent managers by concentrating decisionmaking authority in party-controlled personal cabinets. Ministers’ cabinets often contained political advisers who did not possess a legal relationship to the ministry and were paid through the party. Korbel (1959, 149) describes Finance Minister Jaromír Dolanský’s approach: There had only been sixteen Communists, out of some thousand employees in the Ministry before it came under the control of the Communist Minister Dolanský in the summer of 1946. The new head of the Ministry immediately established an enormous cabinet of eighty members, all Communists. “This was not an infiltration,” writes Professor Skala [who at the time was head of a large department at Finance], “this was an occupation. From that time on, the Minister’s cabinet decided almost everything without non-communist employees’ participation. [From] the summer of 1946 until the Communist putsch I saw my own Minister twice.”

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Table 2.1: KSČ Representation in Management Positions, February 1948 Ministry or body of state administration

% of managerial positions held by KSČ members

Ministry of Interior – Sub-central offices* Ministry of Information* Ministry of Interior – Central office* Ministry of Defense Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs – Sub-central offices* State Statistical Office Ministry of Finance – Sub-central offices** Ministry of Education Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs – Central office* Ministry of Transportation Ministry of Technology – Sub-central offices Ministry of Technology – Central office Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Central office Ministry of Justice – Central office Ministry of Health Supreme Accounting Office Ministry of Justice – Sub-central offices Ministry of Finance – Central office** Ministry of Domestic Trade*** Ministry of International Trade Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Embassies

59.1 45.6 44.2 34.3 26.1 23.1 19.4 18.1 17.5 10.2 10.0 9.0 8.8 7.5 7.5 7.1 6.8 6.5 5.8 4.9 1.8

*KSČ minister, April 1945-February 1948 **KSČ minister, July 1946-February 1948 ***KSČ minister, December 1947-February 1948 Data not available for the Ministry of Agriculture, which the KSČ controlled for all three Third Republic governments Sources: Žižka (1979), Kaplan (1987)

Other indications of a germinal KSČ approach to civil service came during Third Republic’s last days and the communist regime’s first days in February 1948. The proximate cause of the communists’ February “coup” involved Nosek’s personnel decisions. Specifically, in the

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middle of February, Nosek replaced eight divisional police commissioners in Prague with eight KSČ party members. Until that point, the cabinet had turned a blind eye to the KSČ’s steady colonization of the ministry, viewing it as consistent with the established civil service regime. In any event, Nosek’s wholesale change tested the limits of the established system, and eventually led to a constitutional crisis and the KSČ’s successful intimidation, cooptation, and elimination of non-communist politicians in the government. Once the KSČ’s foes in the government had been eliminated, party leaders clearly indicated that they sought to dominate the civil service. In late February, the KSČ organized action committees of a “revised” (Communist-controlled) National Front in all ministries and central offices. These units oversaw purges of “reactionary” bureaucrats, dismissing thousands of managers and lower-level personnel regardless of tenure status. The Soviet Union later complained that the purge was not thorough enough, that the KSČ had acquiesced too much to the functional expertise of non-communist experts. Still, even the KSČ’s official statistics indicate the extent of the purge: by September 1948, 5,539 bureaucrats had been ejected from central state organs. By 1949, according to the revised NF’s numbers, dismissals of administrators from ministries and national committees totaled at least 11,000 (Žižka 1979, 673). The NF coerced a minority of those dismissed into retirement. Others emigrated, and the unlucky majority “was directed to other functions.” Despite the intensity of the purge and the instantaneous growth of KSČ representation in the ministries, the KSČ had still not elaborated a coherent vision of civil service. Through February 1948, it was not clear if or how the rules governing the central administrative corps would change. No KSČ leader addressed this question, presented a vision of revolutionary civil service, or outlined goals of any new civil service legislation. Would the party ever overhaul the civil service system as it had overhauled the territorial system, or could KSČ leaders continue to take advantage of the system they had already used with such success? Consolidating the Institutions of Party Domination

After staging its “coup” in February 1948, the KSČ set about consolidating national committees as cornerstones of single-party rule and systematically undermining civil service independence. The first landmark of Czechoslovak socialist legislation, the May 9, 1948 constitution, cemented in place a peculiar, nationally asymmetrical model that had operated since 1945. As a symbolic concession to Slovak

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national aspirations, it recognized a specific Slovak legislature (the National Council) and a specific Slovak executive (the Board of Commissioners). These bodies were constitutionally impotent, though, and had no counterparts on the Czech side of the state. In reality, the Slovak national organs were subordinate to the same party and state oversight as all of Czechoslovakia’s other sub-national organs. This system, where sub-national bodies are simultaneously subordinate to both party and superior state controls, has accurately been dubbed a regime of “dual subordination.” Dual subordination was effectively institutionalized in the territorial state’s new structure. In addition to reaffirming the state’s national asymmetry, the 1948 constitution also tasked national committees with a vast array of administrative tasks: “general internal administration, the administration of education and popular culture, labor administration, the administration of the health and social welfare services . . . financial administration, protection and strengthening of the people’s democratic order, participation in tasks connected with the state defense, care for public safety, support for the maintenance and expansion of national property, participation in the preparation and implementation of the Uniform Economic Plan.” Elsewhere, the constitution mandated that national committees would help to direct economic, social and cultural development, to aid the flow of agricultural and economic production, to provide food to the population, to maintain public health, and to administer the law through their respective judicial arms (Ústavní zákon 150/1948). National committees would be responsible, in short, for implementing almost all of the regime’s broad domestic designs. Of course, these constitutional clauses did not indicate the level of independence that national committees would enjoy, and subsequent clauses were ambiguous on this subject. One section noted that “the entire public administration shall be effectively decentralized.” The following section, however, set up a massive hierarchy that linked each layer’s national committee to the layer immediately above it, and all committees eventually to the Interior Ministry in Prague: It shall be the duty of the national committees to abide by the acts and orders and in the interest of the uniform public administration and the uniform state policy to respect the directives and instructions of superior organs. A national committee of a lower instance shall be subordinate to a national committee of a higher instance; the national committees shall be subordinate to the organs of governmental and executive power, in particular to the Ministry of the Interior. (Ústavní zákon 150/1948)

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This article gave legal sanction to the doctrine of democratic centralism (Illner 1991a, 1991b, 1997, 1999), which, along with dual subordination, was the conceptual linchpin of the socialist state-building strategy. 3 Democratic centralism effectively obliterated the barrier between central state administration and local self-government. Leaders justified the doctrine in ideological terms: since the entire socialist state represented the interests of the working class, there could, by definition, be no contradictions between different layers of the state. In spite of the laundry list of tasks delegated to national committees, the doctrine essentially concentrated decisionmaking authority in the central administration and demoted ostensibly “self-governing” committees to the status of lower administrative arms of the central state. The party’s post-coup actions demonstrated the continuing theoretical and operational centrality of national committees. In December 1948, the National Assembly passed a law setting specific territorial boundaries (Zákon 280/1948). This and subsequent legal acts (e.g., Zákon 143/1949) abolished the two existing Czech země, established a series of twenty smaller, easier-to-control, historically “unnatural” regions (kraje) throughout the state’s expanse, and instituted a system of smaller districts underneath the new regions. The only units whose borders were not redrawn through these steps were the municipalities. The newly invented regions and districts disrupted existing regional alliances and facilitated the communists’ attempts to build a quiescent territorial administration. The latter goal was abetted by a bundle of acts (Zákon 280/1948; Zákon 142/1949; Vládní nařízení 139/1949; Vládní nařízení 14/1950), which, contrary to Gottwald’s rhetoric and the 1948 constitution’s implications, allowed the party (via the reconstituted, communist-dominated National Front, the Interior Ministry, and higher-level, party-dominated national committees) to bypass voters and install loyalists into national committees’ legislative and executive organs. Operational problems arose immediately after the KSČ began implementing its full-blown territorial strategy and continued to plague the system throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The result was a dialectic of party handwringing and organizational tinkering. Speakers at the ninth general meeting of the KSČ in 1949, to take one early example, expressed frustration with the political and professional levels of committee functionaries and bemoaned “their insufficient understanding of new political tasks and the necessary new administrative measures by the national-committee cadres” (Žatkuliak 1986, 522). Speakers at plena of national committee members, KSČ Central Committee plena, National Front gatherings, government meetings, and the National

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Assembly echoed these concerns. Meanwhile, pressure built for local elections, particularly during the brief thaw after Stalin’s death. Parliament passed an election law for the national committees in 1954 (Zákon 14/1954), nine years after the establishment of national committees and five years after their de-facto appointment by the KSČ. From the point of view of democracy, the electoral procedures were farcical. They simply allowed the party to control the committees in a new way, as local cells of the National Front would now choose candidates for each open seat in a committee’s territory. Only candidates that passed muster with the National Front would appear on ballots. Antonín Novotný, who succeeded Gottwald as KSČ leader in 1953 and assumed the presidency in 1957, ushered in the 1960s by commissioning a new constitution (Ústavní zákon 100/1960). The constitution’s premise, following the Soviet example, was that the people’s democratic state had reached its pinnacle, that a new constitution would lay the foundation of communism by “deepening socialist democracy.” One might imagine this shift involving a larger role for decentralized social organizations and perhaps for national committees. In fact, the 1960 constitution shifted the geographical balance of power in the opposite direction. It significantly limited the remaining powers of the Slovak National Council and completely eliminated the Slovak executive, the Board of Commissioners. The constitution confirmed national committees’ integral constitutional role and rubber-stamped an administrative reform passed earlier in 1960 (Zákon 36/1960). That law had attempted to boost committees’ efficiency by reducing the number of regional and district national committees (while maintaining the historical “artificiality” of these units). From July 1960, there were only eleven Czechoslovak regions (seven plus the capital city of Prague in the Czech lands, three in Slovakia) and 108 districts (reduced from 272, with a disproportionate reduction in the number of Slovak regions). Pressures from within the party and broader society began to boil up in the mid-1960s, but party leaders took no steps to undermine the orthodox model of territorial control. At the KSČ’s twelfth plenum in December 1962, for example, Novotný suggested possible reforms in the national committees, “but also criticized [them] for accenting local interests” and violating democratic centralism (Skilling 1976, 137). Central authorities placed committees on an even tighter leash after the 12th plenum by establishing “Commissions of People’s Control” at every level of the state. These bodies monitored local committees’ compliance with central policy. 1964 brought another change in the law governing national committees’ elections. By the mid-1960s, though, the system

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had not been reoriented, and committees continued to function as administrators of central policy. Thus, during the 1950s and 1960s, the party solidified national committees’ legal foundations and worked to increase their effectiveness. Party leaders continuously sought to improve committees’ performance, but there were few indications that national committees could threaten the stability of the state. Committees were frustrating from an administrative perspective—they were inefficient, opaque to the public, and often staffed by corrupt and opportunistic careerists—but, at this point, they did not appear to be politically troublesome. In the realm of the civil service, a coherent state-building vision did not become apparent until after the coup, once the KSČ had consolidated its position. Recall that the inherited system had offered limited opportunities between 1945 and 1948. After 1948, though, party leaders came to appreciate that the inherited system was indelibly connected to the context of First Republic party politics and was incompatible with the KSČ’s vision of monopoly politics. Gottwald and Novotný overhauled the inherited civil service system, eradicating all vestiges of civil service independence. Informally, Gottwald used the presidency and the party to undermine the civil service’s professionalism and stature, relegating civil servants to the status of administrators of policy made elsewhere. Formally, he oversaw the dismemberment of inherited civil service legislation. Novotný extended the logic of Gottwald’s formal reforms, ultimately transforming state employment to the point where it became impossible even to speak of a Czechoslovak “civil service.” After February 1948, but before any high organ had presented a concept of civil service reform, Gottwald used the presidency attack the decisionmaking independence of other central executive actors, including the government, individual ministers, and the high civil service. These tactics signaled a retreat from past practice and offered strong glimpses of the new regime’s nature. Gottwald attacked the executive in at least four ways. First, after the 1948 purge of the ministries, he oversaw the consolidation of party influence. Each ministry and central office possessed a core group of KSČ members. These cells monitored the transmission of party priorities in the ministries. Able to report any suspicious activities, they limited the discretion of ministers and bureaucrats alike. Similarly, Gottwald assured that ministries’ personnel departments—charged with recruitment, promotion, and discipline—were staffed by loyal party members. Links between personnel departments and the KSČ Central Committee secretariat’s section for cadre policy were intense, and the

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ground was cleared for the growth of the nomenklatura system (which sought to ensure that specifically delineated leadership posts inside and outside of state administration were staffed by politically acceptable incumbents). Undercover police posing as ministerial personnel completed the party’s penetration of ministries. Second, Gottwald appointed ministers who were neither parliamentarians nor leading KSČ personalities, but who had distinguished records as administrators (Bradley 1981, 132-3). In doing this, he signaled that all ministerial work, minister’s and civil servant’s alike, was essentially administrative. Work in the central executive required, above all, faithful implementation of decisions made by the party. Third, drawing from the Soviet example, Gottwald created new ministries. During his tenure, the number of ministries grew from 18 to 38. The proliferation of central state positions facilitated the distribution of patronage and reflected the ambitious policy goals of the “people’s democratic state.” At the same time, it rendered interministerial coordination difficult, among both ministers and civil servants. The ministerial “explosion” thus reinforced the emerging tendency of ministries to focus on implementation and vertical (central/sub-central) coordination. Again, the message was clear: ministerial work required enforcement of ready-made decisions, not initiative in designing or coordinating policy. 4 Fourth, Gottwald issued orders directly to ministerial personnel, over ministers’ heads. He appealed to state employees by wearing both party and state hats. On one hand, the KSČ Central Committee’s secretariat supervised policy implementation, and ministries could often act only with the secretariat’s blessing. On the other hand, Gottwald issued orders to ministries informally, via the President’s office. Thus, Gottwald’s actions threatened the politicized but legally protected First Republic institution. They challenged the policymaking capacities, constitutional responsibilities, and social prestige that the institution had possessed only months earlier. In a bundle of laws and directives passed in 1950 (Zákon 66/1950; Vládní nářízení 68/1950; Vládní nářízení 120/1950), the government and National Assembly gave legal imprimatur to the emerging modus operandi. These measures transformed the legal infrastructure within which civil servants worked. They governed recruitment, responsibilities, termination, dismissal, retirement, and almost every other sphere of administrators’ professional lives. The regulations reflected the misfit between the exigencies of one-party rule and the inherited civil service system. Even though the party had shrewdly

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infiltrated ministries and central offices, the remaining legal barriers to politicization—especially educational requirements and postprobationary tenure—still inclined to civil service independence. Party leaders undoubtedly recognized as much and, while maintaining the constitutional “checks,” undermined those statutes of the Dienstpragmatik that mitigated against party penetration. According to the new regulations, three of the five conditions to state employment would henceforth be political: in addition to being a physically able Czechoslovak citizen, recruits had to be “reliable and morally acceptable to the state.” They must have spent “an adequate amount of time” in productive work and possess the requisite “political and professional ability” to carry out duties. The new laws abolished the First Republic’s education-based classification system and did not replace it with any merit-based substitute (e.g., standardized tests). Nor did the new regulations foresee special constitutional responsibilities for civil servants. Each employee was required “to work with all his strength toward the attainment and development of the people’s democratic state,” and to “meet willingly and develop accommodative relations” with “political parties,” as if there were many. In the spring of 1950, the government revised the pay schema for all state employees besides teachers and healthcare professionals. The table abolished the previous four-pronged education-based scale and replaced it with a nine-point pay scale. No pay class required any specific educational achievement, and the government would decide, annually, which positions to assign to each grade. Regardless of how many “spots” at particular positions were open at any one time, ministers could appoint bureaucrats to higher or lower positions on the working scale at will. The regulations also allowed ministers to boost favored employees’ basic salaries by crediting them with having performed ministerial work for the most varied reasons. The May directive, for example, allowed personnel departments to count many ambiguous factors when calculating the number of years an employee had worked. In addition to “time spent doing any kind of work whatsoever,” personnel departments could credit employees for years spent in “undue unemployment,” and years when “employment was impossible due to political, national, or racial persecution” (Vládní nařízení 68/1955). Nor did the new regulations want for negative sanctions. Most significantly, they gave ministers the right to transfer employees, either to other units within public administration or to jobs outside the state apparatus (Zákon 66/1950; Vládní nařízení 120/1950). In practice, transfers out of the state were more common than intra-state transfers. Bureaucrats could also be demoted to lower working grades, either

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because they had acted “irresponsibly” in the course of their work, or because “changes in the organization of work or the government’s manpower plan” rendered demotion necessary. These negative sanctions, combined with the fact that any employee could be dismissed with or without written notice, turned the civil service into the plaything of the party and the personnel departments it controlled. The regulations also classed permanent employees of national committees together with ministerial personnel. In this particular, the KSČ’s dual projects of building up territorial administration and decommissioning the civil service converged. All three legal regulations left de jure discretion in the hands of ministers, and de facto control with party-controlled personnel departments. The result was to erase the stability and institutional independence of civil service. At the most basic level, the new civil service regime increased the payoffs of party loyalty and wiped out the protections that the previous system of tenure had provided. The new system fit the dictates of one-party rule well. When Gottwald died in March 1953, his two most important posts—as leader of the party and President of the Republic—were “decoupled.” Novotný became First Secretary (a formally new position that was functionally equivalent to the “General Secretary” title used by Gottwald), and Antonín Zapotocký became president. This division of labor persisted until Zapotocký died in 1957 and Novotný added the Presidency to his list of titles. Because Novotný did not hold state office between 1953 and 1957, he concentrated on expanding the scope and profile of the party secretariat, further undermining the independence of ministerial staff. And while the government faced up to the reality that bureaucrats’ professional qualifications were weak—directives in 1955 (Vládní nařízení 48/1955) and 1956 (Vládní nařízení 19/1956), for example, required ministerial personnel to attain certain educational qualifications—their “solutions” stopped well short of reestablishing the pre-1948 system. The 1955 reform, for example, allowed “educationally deficient” personnel to enroll in courses and attain accreditation from the KSČ Central Committee’s Higher Party School, reinforcing the preeminence of party over state. Party leaders wrestled with the “redexpert” dilemma. But even while they leaned toward experts, they never sought to institutionalize expertise in the state to the point where bureaucrats would be viewed as independent, legally tenured, professional actors with clearly delineated constitutional rights and responsibilities. Once Novotný had added the presidency to his party post in 1957, his actions vis-à-vis the state administration took on a certain ambiguity. On one hand, he argued that ministries could not continue functioning

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without more professionalization and increased policy discretion. Following his lead, the KSČ’s party congress in 1962 suggested that the party secretariat should only give ministers long-term, general instructions in order to help promote “individual responsibility, a streamlining of structures, and a cut [in] personnel” (quoted in Bradley 1981, 149). On the other hand, Novotný’s rhetorical overtures were repeatedly undercut by his practical personnel policy. During 1958 and 1959, for example, Novotný feared that ministerial personnel were shunning him and following orders of Prime Minister Viliam Široký and spearheaded a thorough purge of executive organs to warn off defectors. The clearest signal that Novotný planned to complete the evisceration of the civil service, though, was the Labor Code of 1965 (Zákoník prace 65/1965). Gottwald’s 1950 regulations had erased the legal line between ministerial personnel and national committee workers. The Labor Code went one step further, nullifying all but a few sections of the 1950 regulations and removing the legal distinction between state and non-state employees. The code lumped ministries, national committees, and all bodies of public administration together with other employers under the umbrella term, “socialist organization.” Section 73 of the Code presented the basic responsibilities of workers in a socialist organization: “[1] To work conscientiously and according to one’s strength, knowledge and ability; [2] To use the work day and all productive means towards the end which one has been contracted to use them; [3] To obey regulations and work according to general safety, health, and fire standards during work; [4] To work faithfully with the tools which have been entrusted one by his/her organization, protecting socialist ownership against misuse, loss, damage, and abuse.” State employees possessed rights and responsibilities identical to industrial workers. At the time, the official press and labor union praised the code, precisely because it eradicated status distinctions among state and nonstate workers: The Code further simplifies the system of working relations between socialist organizations and their workers and definitively wipes out the existing, unjustified distinctions between skilled workers [dělnici], technical workers [technici], and administrative workers in production, commerce, transportation, and state administration. This must be so. Both the objective process of the withering away of basic distinctions between manual and mental labor, and the leading role of the working class in our society make this simplification necessary. (Rudé Pravo, June 16, 1965, 2)

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. . . The replacement of labels like “employee” [zaměstnanec] with “worker” [pracovník] and “employer” with “socialist organization” is not merely a change in vocabulary. The change represents the fundamentally new standing of workers in our socialist society and in the socialistic organization of societal work . . . The insertion of the single label “worker” for all of the formerly distinguishable categories of employee like manual worker, bureaucrat, technical-administrative employee, state employee, worker of the state apparatus and of social organizations, etc. adds emphasis to the unification of the legal administration of their working conditions under socialism. (Rudé Pravo, June 16, 1965, 2) To this point, lingering legal norms have worked to reinforce distinctions between the status of worker, technico-commercial worker, worker for state organs, telecommunications worker, commercial worker, etc. Now, social development, whose characteristic is the ever-growing significance of the working class and the gradual withering away of differences between manual and mental labor, shows even more clearly that these differences are not justified, even when there continues to be a societal division of labor. (Rudé Pravo, June 16, 1965, 2)

After February 1948, the KSČ faced the limits of the First Republic system and followed a strategy that was more consistent with its hegemonic plans. Educational qualifications, tenure, inter-party bargaining and concessions—these hallmarks of the existing regime conflicted with the party’s desire to initiate a radically new politics and effect a party-state relationship dominated by the party. The 1950 regulations therefore undermined all three of these principles. Novotný’s periodic gestures toward reform did not produce any actual movement toward civil service independence. In fact, Novotný carried the 1950 regulations to their logical limit, using the Labor Code to eradicate the very concept of civil service. The Labor Code cemented in law the impression that KSČ leaders had given since the early 1950s—that there was nothing particularly special about civil service, that state bureaucrats were merely “workers like the rest of us.” By the late 1960s, the erstwhile civil service’s subordination to the party had never been so complete. These conditions did not bode well for anyone expecting a reassertion of independent civil service during the Prague Spring.

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Institutional Foundations of Mobilization: National Committees and “Civil Servants” During the Prague Spring

In January 1968, Alexander Dubček, who until then had been First Secretary of the Slovak Communist Party (KSS), replaced Novotný as First Secretary of the KSČ. During the following eight months, which would come to be known as the Prague Spring, Dubček oversaw an attempt to build “socialism with a human face.” Warsaw Pact tanks crushed the Prague Spring in August 1968, and loyal KSČ cadres stepped in to “normalize” social and political life. During 1968, however, actors who had previously existed to rubber-stamp or implement party policies asserted independence. Formerly quiescent institutions like the National Assembly, the Slovak National Council, trade unions, and student groups tested the established balance of power. The reform leadership’s initiation of debate about national committees’ constitutional roles and political reform more generally encouraged enterprising leaders of national committees, for the first time in the regime’s history, to announce their grievances publicly and advocate systemic reform. In 1968, as the regime relaxed its controls, the political opportunity structure shifted. The institutions which, until 1968, had existed as transmitters of centrally made policy now threatened to reverse the system of transmission from the bottom-up. Might the opportunity structure have shifted even before Dubček’s ascent? Novotný, in his final years at the helms, had gestured toward reforming the national committee system. In 1965, for example, the government encouraged reform and suggested a greater role of municipalities in the management of local industries. The next year, the KSČ’s Central Committee advocated increased financial autonomy for municipal and district committees and encouraged the Interior Ministry to draft a new law on the committees. The ministry drafted these laws, and the National Assembly passed them in 1967, but the reforms were piecemeal. They championed increased local independence and expanded opportunities for public participation. They also envisioned minor electoral reforms and foresaw larger roles for the National Assembly and Slovak National Council (as opposed to the Interior Ministry) in managing committees’ activities (Žatkuliak 1990, 32). The reforms had little practical effect, however, and the following year’s events exposed their superficiality. The ouster of Interior Minister Josef Kudrná in March 1968 testified to as much. Kudrná had been responsible for the 1967 laws, and the reformist leadership viewed him as a representative of Novotný’s old guard.

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The party did not initiate fundamental systemic reform until April 1968, when the Central Committee published its Action Program. The document signaled a decisive break with Novotný-era trends but stopped short of calling for regime change. It retained a paternalistic tone and reflected give-and-take between Central Committee conservatives and reformers. A major theme of the Program was the fight against “bureaucratic centralism.” In this vein, the Central Committee lamented “harmful characteristics of centralized directive decisionmaking and management” that plagued the existing system and decried the overly centralized means of control: . . . relations among [various] bodies in our political system have been built up for years to serve as the instrument for carrying out the orders of the center, and hardly ever made it at all possible for the decision itself to be the outcome of a democratic procedure . . . The often wellmeant words of ‘an increase in the people’s participation in management’ [have been] of no avail, because in time ‘participation of the people’ came to mean chiefly help in carrying out orders, not in making the decisions. (Akční program KSČ 1968)

Two paragraphs on national committees supplemented the general paean against bureaucratic centralism. They affirmed national committees as “the backbone of the whole network of representative bodies in our country, the democratic organs of state power” but also stated that “the Party regards the national committees as bodies that have to carry on the progressive traditions of local government and people’s self-administration. They must not be taken for local bureaucratic offices supervising local enterprises” (Akční program KSČ 1968, emphasis original). In the Action Program, the party vaguely reconceptualized national committees and expressed an indistinct willingness to expand self-government at sub-national levels. The Action Program also suggested close conceptual connections between Czech-Slovak relations, on one hand, and the future system of sub-national territorial administration. After vowing to reinvigorate the Slovak National Council and reconstitute a Slovak executive branch, the Central Committee announced its intention to “entrust the management of national committees in Slovakia to Slovak national bodies and, in connection with an efficient arrangement between the state center and the Slovak national bodies, [to] set up a full-scale Slovak ministerial office for internal affairs and public security [read: a Slovak Interior Ministry]” (Akční program KSČ 1968). Previous history implied the potential dubiousness of this concession. The 1948 constitution, after all, recognized a Slovak

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Commissioner for Internal Affairs, and a 1953 constitutional law shifted management of Slovak national committees to the Board of Commissioners. In both of these cases, however, Slovak authority was curtailed by shifting territorial-administrative decisionmaking from the national state organs to the asymmetrical KSČ/KSS. Actual progress toward autonomous Slovak management of national committees would thus require some simultaneous reform in the party structure. From February 1948 onward, after all, KSČ organization had mirrored state organization. The Slovak KSS was to the KSČ as the Slovak National Council was to the National Assembly; in neither case did Czech institutions parallel their Slovak national counterparts. In 1968, there was some movement toward party federalization. The KSS Action Program, published shortly after the KSČ Program, foresaw the full federalization of the KSČ, to the point where all party organs would be transformed from “mere mechanical implementers of the directives of central and higher [party] organs [to] institutions capable of working politically in an independent and creative fashion” (quoted in Skilling 1976, 461). The KSČ Action Program was significantly less explicit on the question of party federalization. It noted, in the context of state federalization, that “the same [federal] principles shall be applied to the pattern of the Party and social organizations” (Akční program KSČ 1968). Similarly, while Dubček never defended party federalization, by the time of the invasion, a separate Czech party congress had been planned (it was to balance a KSS congress; both national congresses would be held before the next all-KSČ congress), and the KSČ had distributed a questionnaire asking members for opinions on the form of party reorganization. A special committee within the KSČ presidium, comprised of regional party representatives, had been established “to elaborate a party structure appropriate for a federal order” (Skilling 1976, 475). The reality of the invasion rendered speculative all questions about what might have happened to territorial administration after party and state federalization. Simultaneous federalization would have presented an intriguing theoretical possibility. The two national units could have developed idiosyncratic, non-congruent systems of territorial administration—a scenario which would have inverted the situation created in 1948. All speculation aside, one must conclude that the party’s statements about national committees, while unprecedented and sincere, remained vague and underdeveloped. This fact did not, however, discourage previously passive national committees from seizing the moment and threatening the established policy process; in fact, uncertainty seems to have encouraged reformist committee leaders.

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It would be an exaggeration to contend that self-government (samospráva) was reborn in 1968. Existing national committees had, after all, been elected before the still-restrictive 1967 electoral reform entered force, and many committees—particularly those at the regional (krajský) and district (okresní) levels—remained passive through August (Rok šedesáty osmý 1969, 194). Still, other committees—particularly, but not exclusively those at the municipal level—took advantage of the liberalized environment. They debated future central/sub-central relationships and positioned themselves as initiators, instead of mere executors, of policy. As noted above, the regions (kraje) and districts (okresy) created in 1948 and 1960 were largely “artificial” units that tended not to coincide with existing regional boundaries and identities. This artificiality was very much intended; the KSČ saw synthetic sub-national units as a means of deflating regionally based opposition and amplifying the territorial authority of the central state. In 1968, though, these units of “domination” actually became arenas for debates about restoring more “natural” features to Czechoslovakia’s territorial structure. The executive council of the south Moravian regional committee, for example, suggested in April that the state be reconfigured—not into two federal units (the Czech lands and Slovakia), as many Slovaks were suggesting, but into three sub-federal units: Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia, and Slovakia. This proposal would have effectively reinstituted the zemský system established in 1927. As in a previous proposal for bipartite federation designed at Comenius University in Bratislava, each federal unit would be responsible for managing territorial administration within its respective domain. In May, a follow-up conference in Brno (the capital of the south-Moravian region and the historical capital of Moravia and the Moravian-Silesian země) established the Society for Moravia and Silesia (Společnost pro Moravu a Slezsko, or SMS), where “normal citizens” rallied behind the council’s proposal. In early June, the regional committee’s full plenum endorsed the proposal and forwarded it to the South Moravian party organization, the National Assembly, the government, and the KSČ’s federalization commission. The episode of south Moravian assertiveness was remarkable, not because of the success it achieved—in fact, the local party took an agnostic stance, and each of the central institutions strongly rejected tripartism—but because it redirected the established flow of the post1948 policy process and originated at a territorial level—the kraj— which had been invented by the Communists, associated with the period of party-state consolidation, and generally associated with central-state hegemony. Here, a national committee proposed policy, solicited

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support independent of the party, and eventually forwarded the proposal to higher institutions. This was a glimpse of bottom-up policymaking; democratic centralism it was not. The episode instigated a ripple of debate in other national committee sessions. Regional, district, and municipal committees acquired the south-Moravian proposal and added remarks and reservations. Some committees, particularly municipal and district bodies in southern Moravia, supported it unambiguously. Others, including the northern Moravian regional committee and various municipal committees in northern Moravia, rejected it. One district committee in northern Moravia (Opava) laid out a counter-proposal for a quadripartite federation. Thus, just as the southern Moravian proposal intimated a reorientation in vertical policy flows, it also suggested a reconfiguration of horizontal relationships. Instead of existing in a rigid hierarchy that subordinated national committees to their immediate superiors and the central authorities, this episode implied that policy links could be forged (a) among “counterpart” committees on similar levels (e.g., between northern Moravian and southern Moravian regional committees), and (b) among committees that, in the formal pyramidal design, had little to do with each other (e.g., the southern Moravian committee and the Opava district committee). In a similar but unrelated series of events, leaders of certain Bohemian municipal national committees began to meet and to discuss the future of their institutions and the necessity of devolving decisionmaking authority from higher levels of the state to municipalities. Most municipalities were more historically “natural” than the regions (kraje) and districts (okresy); their borders had not been changed since 1948, and a number of local leaders who were active before 1948 remained active throughout the first decades of socialist rule. In 1968, sixty interested municipal leaders formed the Union of Towns and Communities (Svaz měst a obcí, or SMO). They gained the support of reformist prime minister Oldřích Černík, who became SMO’s chairman. Although the nascent Union’s most fervent cries involved imprecise requests for increased self-government (samospráva), plenary sessions did discuss more specific and wide-reaching territorial administrative reforms, including the complete abolition of the regions (kraje), which SMO members tended to perceive as instruments of Prague’s heavy-handedness. Thus, in an environment where official pronouncements remained undeveloped if basically accommodative and citizens supported the KSČ leadership, enterprising, reformist leaders of national committees took the initiative and challenged the existing unidirectional policy

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regime. The wider population, which at the time supported reform party leadership in record numbers (78% favorable, 7% unfavorable, 15% no response in a poll conducted by the party daily in mid-July), worked alongside the committees toward reform (Skilling 1976, 540). Of course, neither committees nor non-attached citizens advocated wholesale abandonment of the system. Such a step would have pushed the limits of the liberalized opportunity structure too far and would have been inconsistent with the general popular support of Party leadership in 1968. Nor did any party organ officially applaud national committees’ new-found assertiveness. Nonetheless, territorial dynamics certainly shifted in 1968. Units created to implement policy now designed policy, initiated links with citizens, and cooperated amongst themselves. Were the tendencies toward independent self-government and bottom-up policy flows to have continued and intensified, the national committee system might have been preserved in name only. Thus, while the regime crisis of 1968 encouraged the airing of Czech-Slovak disagreements, it also led to more general questions about territorial administration, self-government, and central-national-sub-national relations. The party’s decades-old effort to build a cohesive network of committees, without backfiring entirely, now operated in a way that Gottwald or Novotný would never have accepted, much less endorsed. Did ministerial personnel launch any rebellion of their own? Was there any pressure during 1968 for a legally protected, more professional, independent administrative corps? Would the institution that had been decimated in 1950 and “disappeared” in 1965 somehow rise from the ashes? In the swirl of debate between January and August 1968, a few voices called for something resembling civil service reform. Reformist party leaders condemned injustices against individual bureaucrats but never presented a comprehensive blueprint for reinvigorated, independent civil service. By this point in time, ministerial personnel were closely associated in the public mind with conservative elements in the regime and lacked the resources and legitimacy that would have facilitated effective political mobilization. Soon after consolidating their positions, Dubček and the reform leadership issued statements supporting the “rehabilitation” of unjustly treated individuals. The most publicized instances of rehabilitation sought to iron out the distortions of party purges. In March, the KSČ presidium issued a statement offering “moral, political, and social satisfaction and material indemnification” to purged members, and the party established a commission to consider past injustices (Skilling 1976, 395). Less publicized were plans to compensate—morally,

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professionally, monetarily—employees who had been dismissed from state positions. In July, the government accepted a statute that would have governed compensation of dismissed bureaucrats, but the bill was never introduced to the National Assembly. In the meantime, individual ministries and some national committees set up commissions to consider the complaints of dismissed employees. It was never clear, though, how extensive the state rehabilitation would be, nor which dismissed employees the law would cover. The accepted statute was “not intended to question ‘revolutionary actions’ or the activities of action committees in 1948, but to deal with actions illegally perpetrated by state organs themselves while implementing policy” (Skilling 1976, 395). Nor was it clear how the new procedures would apply to the bureaucrats dismissed by Novotný in the late 1950s. Reformists’ gestures toward “rehabilitation” were clearly not concepts for civil service reform. The party was not admitting to any problems with the civil service system (such as it was) as it had developed since 1948; at most, it was admitting to injustices perpetrated against individuals. Even if all purged bureaucrats had been welcomed back into the ministries, they would work under conditions that had changed dramatically since 1948. The party’s Action Program of April 1968 contained a number of vague overtures toward reform of state ministries. It suggested the necessity of strong managers in party and state organs: “at all levels of management, in state and economic bodies and in social organizations, we must ascertain which body, which official, or which worker is really responsible, where to look for guarantees of improvement, where to change institutions, where to introduce new working methods, and where to replace individuals” (Akční program KSČ 1968). In deciding which individuals to replace and determining their successors, the Program proposed that organizations should not hesitate to look beyond party rolls, to find “capable, educated socialist cadre experts,” whether party members or not. The leadership realized that the latter fact would “call for a basic change in the existing cadre policy, in which education, qualifications and ability have been underrated for years” (Akční program KSČ 1968). These statements effectively postulated arguments about rehabilitation in more positive terms. In both cases, the party leadership emphasized individuals, not the structures in which they operated. Solutions involved rooting out inept or corrupt workers and replacing them with more qualified successors. In July, the party actually announced the abolition of the so-called “cadre ceiling” and nomenklatura system. The KSČ had used these instruments to restrict

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high-level positions to party members and complicit non-members. This was a major concession; too little time elapsed between it and the invasion, however, to determine its practical impact. By itself, however, the abolition of the nomenklatura system required no necessary changes in the systemic status quo. Even in a post-nomenklatura Czechoslovakia, bureaucrats could have continued to work within the same structures and to occupy the same prostrate policymaking position that they had inhabited since the Gottwald era. 5 There were minor exceptions to the trend of focusing on individuals and neglecting systemic considerations. The Action Program, for example, lamented the fact that the party-state division of labor had tilted so heavily towards the former: “Party bodies took over tasks of state and economic bodies and social organizations. This led to an incorrect merging of the Party and state management, the monopolized power-position of some sections, unqualified interference, the undermining of initiative at all levels, indifference, a cult of mediocrity, and unhealthy anonymity. Irresponsibility and lack of discipline consequently gained ground” (Akční program KSČ 1968). This lonely passage hinted at more thoroughgoing, systematic reform. Still, an obvious distinction separates shrouded implications from explicit reform concepts. During the Prague Spring, the former were occasional, the latter non-existent. On one hand, the absence of pressure for civil service reform during the Prague Spring is surprising. These eight months were a time of massive flux, when previously subordinate institutions, including many national committees, sought to overcome their past inferiority and carve out new constitutional roles and identities. Why didn’t state employees follow this pattern and push for more systemic reform? The historical variables so far examined—the idiosyncratic legacies of the First Republic service, the historical importance of complicity with the party as a condition of employment, a legal framework that discouraged contact among state employees, the focus on vertical coordination to the detriment of horizontal coordination, the Labor Code’s eradication of distinctions between state and non-state employees—all certainly contributed to their quiescence. There was little propitious ground for collective action among ministerial personnel. One may also ask, though, why the reform KSČ leadership, which was so ambitious on other constitutional and policy questions, did not itself support a more thoroughgoing reform. The resistance of regime conservatives that remained within the KSČ central committee secretariat may explain some of the reformists’ reticence. Recall that the secretariat had grown larger since 1948, particularly under Novotný’s

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leadership. Available demographic information suggests that the party aparátníci were, in fact a relatively diverse group, representing different ages, functions, and educational levels (Skilling 1976, 504-9). These differences aside, aparátníci could agree that they would be the losers if a more independent, assertive, and unified civil service were to be created. They were comfortable with the porous borders between party and state, and thus “had a strong vested interest in the status quo, to which they owed their power, prestige, and relative affluence, and feared meaningful changes . . . which might make their positions useless and unnecessary” (Skilling 1976, 504). What is more, party aparátníci claimed disproportionate representation in high party organs: throughout 1968, they comprised over 50% of ÚV KSČ representatives. Dubček and the reform leadership were guaranteed of strong collective resistance to any radical civilservice reform proposal. Their public pronouncements bear this out: In March and April, for example, Dubček defended the aparátníci of the ÚV KSČ secretariat, suggesting that, while some reform of the aparát may be necessary, it still had an essential role to play in governance. Canvassing his statements throughout 1968, one finds that Dubček never advocated principles like independence, accountability, cohesion, and work in the service of elected organs, if he did occasionally mention efficiency and effectiveness in the central state bureaucracy. In fact, Dubček more often supported these properties in the ÚV KSČ secretariat’s aparát. Dubček, in other words, seems to have been closer to advocating a kind of “party civil service”—constructed from a reorganized and restrained ÚV KSČ secretariat—than to advocating a state civil service. Brief though it was, the Prague Spring offered real hope for the reappearance of a more plural political system, a more balanced constitutional order. Before the tanks rolled in, leaders of national committees pushed publicly for systemic reform and asserted themselves in novel ways. At this central moment of state and regime crisis, however, there was little pressure—and no action—toward the construction of a more independent state civil service. The constructive side of the socialist state-building strategy had enabled mobilization, while the destructive side of the same strategy had made successful mobilization and pressure for reform extremely unlikely. Re-establishing Domination, 1968-1989

The period between 1968 and 1989 in Czechoslovakia is often called the “normalization era.” This label is entirely appropriate when applied to

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issues of state building. During these two decades, the conservative regime led by Gustav Husák enacted certain de jure reforms but oversaw a strategy that closely resembled the orthodox state-building strategy effected under Gottwald and Novotný. In the final moths of 1968, the party, hoping to co-opt some of the demands of Prague Spring reformists and following orders from Moscow, drafted major constitutional amendments (Ústavní zákon 143/1968) and federalized the state. Czechoslovakia’s new constitutional arrangement gave more legal authority to the Slovak National Council and mandated the creation of a counterpart Czech National Council. It established a bicameral legislature—the new Federal Assembly would include a Chamber of the People and a Chamber of Nations—and required future constitutional changes to command majority support of both full chambers and majority support of members of each nationality within each chamber (Leff 1989, 243273; Skilling 1976, 858-875). Slovak demands for the decentralization of national committee management were, on paper, successful. Slovak and Czech Interior Ministries would be established . They would oversee national committees in their respective republics. Thus, even after the invasion, the theoretical possibility of distinctive national systems of territorial administration remained alive. The Slovak National Council passed a law in June 1969 that briefly effectuated this possibility (Zákon 71/1969). That law abolished the entire regional level in Slovakia. A simultaneously passed law (Zákon 72/1969) increased the number of district national committees from 33 to 37 and gave the city of Bratislava special administrative status. These were groundbreaking steps, but the most important of them—the decision to eliminate the regional level—was never implemented. KSČ leaders forced the Slovak National Council to reestablish that level in 1970 (Zákon 130/1970; Zákon 131/1970; Zákon 132/1970); the territorial administrative structure represented in Figure 2.1 was the result. Dean (1973, 45) summarizes the rationale for reestablishing the Slovak regions: The step [restoration of the regions] was taken, according to Slovak Premier Peter Colotka, so that effective transmission of the decisions of regional party organs to state agencies could be assured. Insofar as regional party committees are responsive to central [KSČ] direction, this institutional realignment frustrated any hopes Slovak party or state agencies might have had for the independent exercise of power. Moreover, restoration meant usurpation of the powers of Slovak government organs as well.

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Figure 2.1: Czechoslovak Territorial Administration in Practice, 1971-1990 Czech National Ministry of Interior, Prague

Slovak National Ministry of Interior, Bratislava

Czech Regional National Committees (7+Prague)

Slovak Regional National Committees (3+Bratislava)

Czech District National Committees (75)

Slovak District National Committees (37)

Czech Municipal National Committees

Slovak Municipal National Committees

Despite some promising signs immediately after the invasion, then, the post-Prague Spring period is best characterized as one of reequilibration. There was no sub-national territorial administrative reform in the Czech republic, the leadership quickly reversed Slovak reforms, and the party did not federalize. The result was similar to the status quo pre-1968. The KSČ maintained its predominant policymaking role, the party continued to be organized asymmetrically, and regional and district national committees (Bratislava’s new status and the four new districts excepting) maintained the boundaries that had been established under Novotný in 1960. The federal state structure changed the picture marginally, as formal management of national committees now rested with the respective national Interior Ministries. In no sense, however, did fundamental power relationships shift: Within the state, executive councils of the committees continued to be subordinated to committees at the immediately higher position, reaching a pinnacle at the (now national) Interior Ministry. In their relationship to the party, National Front organizations continued to determine committee candidates, central

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party organs continued to dominate policymaking, and local party organs continued to influence the day-to-day activities of their respective committees. Husák did not tinker obsessively with the system, as Gottwald and Novotný had. The district and regional structures reestablished in 1970 survived through 1989. The party led a series of municipal-level reforms in the early 1980s. The “minor amendment” (Zákon 49/1982; Zákon 52/1982), which entered effect in 1982, amalgamated certain rural municipalities into larger “central communes,” abolished their respective municipal national committees, and replaced them with larger communal committees with slightly greater administrative responsibilities. The counterpart “great amendment” (Zákon 137/1982; Zákon 139/1982) affected larger cities and towns by classifying towns on a five-point scale according to their size and level of development and pegging their national committees’ policy competencies to their location on the scale (Vidláková and Zářecký 1989). Judged against the precedent of previous policy, there was nothing particularly “great” about either amendment. Apart from encouraging the resentment of local officials and populations, neither measure changed the system that had survived since 1945. The Czech and Slovak National Councils passed identical versions of the two amendments, and changes in municipal party organization mirrored changes in municipal committee boundaries. The same power structures survived. The normalization leadership did not have to do much to reestablish the civil service that had existed before January 1968. The ersatz institution had never pressed for increased independence, and the reform leadership had never seriously considered overhauling the civil service system. For all intents and purposes, the tasks of “normalization” had been accomplished before the arrival of Soviet tanks. This is not to say that ministries stopped developing after 1968. In December of that year, the Federal Assembly passed a law establishing new federal ministries, and the Czech and Slovak National Councils passed laws establishing national ministries (Ústavní zákon 171/1968; Zákon 207/1968; Zákon 2/1969). The party’s refusal to federalize and the continuing applicability of the 1965 Labor Code minimized these changes’ effects. The increase in the number of ministries and central offices (which reached 44) did not imply any new legal standing for the workers who staffed them. New, national-level ministries were “socialist organizations” like all others. Party organs continued to play the dominant role in personnel decisions, as high management positions in the new national ministries were added to nomenklatura lists. As in the 1950s, the party continued to work closely with ministries’ personnel

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departments. Between 1972 and 1986, operational budgets mandated the number of positions that each department of each ministry was expected to fill. Despite party and budgetary controls, the legal power to hire and promote employees remained with individual ministries and bodies of state administration. This “discretionary” power, of course, was power in name only, as party recommendations constrained ministries’ autonomy. Attention should be drawn to the issue, though, because it is but one indication of a condition that characterized socialist administration from its inception and developed further after 1968. This condition, often translated as “ministerialism” or “fragmentation,” is best captured by the Czech term, resortismus. Resortismus involves the tendency of ministries and other bodies of central administration (“resorts”) to develop into “worlds of their own,” bodies concerned with policy implementation in their narrow sectors and not terribly concerned, nor even aware of, the activities of executive bodies elsewhere in the state. Conditions already considered, including the weakness of the government as a decisionmaking body, the proliferation of ministries with unclear and shifting portfolios, and the absence of any state body in charge of managing human resources across the state, facilitated the development of resortismus in Czechoslovakia. The phenomenon had various manifestations. Ministries, for example, operated their own training and research centers, in addition to their own information and statistics systems, recreational facilities, and apartment complexes. Formal and informal ties prevented resortismus from running amuck, as the KSČ Central Committee secretariat and informal nomenklatura networks kept powerful people “in the know” about developments elsewhere in the state. Still, resortismus posed obvious threats: lack of coordination, duplication, and waste. It also discouraged the assertion of the civil service as a distinctive collective group. Party ties may have encouraged nomenklaturists to identify with each other as representatives of a “new class.” There existed serious systemic obstacles, though, to the emergence of any exclusively state-based civil service identity, any common esprit de corps. Bureaucrats worked for distinctive “socialist organizations.” Their base salaries resembled those of their colleagues in other ministries, but the emphasis on vertical coordination, links to discrete units within the Central Committee secretariat, and the existence of elaborate social service networks based in the “home” organizations discouraged the formation of cross-ministerial links. In short, resortismus reinforced state workers’ separation from each other. By 1989, the “civil service” could claim no specific legal protections, no independent power, and collective identity.

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Conclusions

The Czechoslovak communists’ state-building strategy must, in some sense, be regarded as a success. In sub-national units and in the corps of central-state administrators, the party successfully institutionalized its influence and assured that politically acceptable individuals staffed high posts. In operational terms, though, both systems developed grave pathologies. In the late 1980s, the party continued to trumpet national committees as sites of the people’s democratic administration. In reality, the committees served as facilitators of party-based clientelism, and many citizens saw through their democratic façade. The party did not even bother to propagandize the civil service. The 1965 Labor Code had effectively abolished that institution. State employees enjoyed no special legal rights or privileges, though state managers could often claim the informal spoils available to nomenklaturists. Few ties linked state employees horizontally, and the lines between state and party bureaucrats had become completely indistinct. At no point since 1948 had state employees themselves, or any other authoritative national personality, lobbied for systemic reform in the standing and independence of the civil service. The twin projects of socialist state building were united by a common goal—to consolidate party influence over the state. Nonetheless, the twin projects contrasted in important ways. First, as has already been stressed, they differed in terms of “logic”: the territorial project was constructive, while the civil service project was destructive. Second, the two projects followed different paths to the Communist Party’s list of policy priorities. KSČ leaders initiated the territorial project in the early 1940s. They forsook the First Republic model from an early stage and took advantage of the institutions of exile politics to launch the national committee system. In the case of the civil service, party leaders were slow to elaborate any coherent vision. The First Republic’s civil service system offered limited strategic opportunities, which KSČ leaders seized and manipulated during the Third Republic. Upon consolidating one-party rule, however, party leaders encountered the limitations of the existing system and progressively demolished the remnants of civil service independence. Despite their distinctive origins, the twin projects were ultimately pursued with equal vigor and had similarly significant effects. As the case-specific analyses of the Prague Spring suggest, these effects differed substantially. Enterprising leaders of sub-national administrative units used their positions when the political opportunity structure shifted to challenge the existing system. In so doing, they

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threatened to recalibrate the dynamics of the socialist order. State bureaucrats, however, were internally divided and tended toward conservatism. They lacked the institutional position and common interests necessary to challenge the regime at its only acute moment of pre-1989 crisis. The following chapter examines the effects of the socialist statebuilding project in 1989 and 1990, focusing on the ways that postcommunist counterelites—men and women who were concerned with making history—were nonetheless forced to operate within structures that the communists had bequeathed and actors that previous policies had constituted, sustained, and (dis)empowered. Notes 1 Despite asymmetry at the two uppermost levels of administration during the 1923-1928 period, the uneven implementation of the župní zákon did indeed have limited symmetrical effects: new, smaller Slovak districts mirrored their Czech counterparts. Still, my argument that the uneven implementation actually complicated the existing asymmetry is bolstered when one considers the small, non-Czech, non-Slovak area of sub-Carpathian Ukraine. Czechoslovakia eventually ceded this area, which had been governed as a part of the Hungarian half of the Habsburg empire until 1918, to the Soviet Union (in 1945). The župní zákon, however, was never implemented in Sub-Carpathian Ukraine. Thus, as Janák and Hledíková (1989) have noted, there actually existed three distinctive administrative systems in Czechoslovakia between 1923 and 1928: the inherited Austrian system in the Czech lands, the system of župy and districts in Slovakia, and the inherited Hungarian system in sub-Carpathian Ukraine. 2 Bureaucrats covered by the Dienstpragmatik also occupied positions in the lands (země), župy, and districts (okresy). The most distinguished civil servants generally found themselves in managerial positions in Prague. 3 There are obvious overlaps between democratic centralism as a principle of territorial administration and its more conventional reference as a principle of communist party organization. In practice, both concepts slighted democracy and emphasized centralism, and both set up a false layer of democracy to cover excessive centralization. It should also be noted that Section 131 of the 1948 constitution trumped other clauses, particularly those pertaining to Slovak national organs. The proclamation, for example, that there should be a Slovak Commissioner charged with Slovakia’s “general internal administration” implies that this commissioner could oversee Slovak national committees. Section 131, however, falsifies that interpretation, since it unites all Czech and Slovak committees into a common organizational pyramid capped by the Interior Ministry. Slovak Commissioners’ powers are also severely constrained by Section 117, which states that any central minister “shall . . . also be entitled, with the knowledge [note: not blessing] of the competent [Slovak national] commissioner, to exercise his authority in Slovakia directly.”

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4 Ironically, some of the steps taken to remedy coordination problems reinforced the pathology they were designed to alleviate. In 1953, for example, the government replaced the inherited practices of (a) holding weekly government meetings, and (b) requiring a majority of present ministers to pass an item under consideration. The new system, which directly mimicked the Soviet model, established an inner cabinet of the Prime Minister and his deputies, who met weekly and could issue government resolutions. Other ministers, called to session only once per month, were left to concentrate on their respective administrative tasks. Ministerial staff charged previously with preparing ministers for weekly meetings could likewise withdraw from interministerial affairs and concentrate on more provincial (in both senses of the word) assignments. See Vládní nářízení 5/1953. 5 Another example of the “change the individuals, maintain the system” operational mode during 1968 arose in the context of the federalization debates. In March, academics at Comenius University proposed that a Slovak state secretary (second-in-command) be established in any federal ministry presided over by a Czech, and vice-versa. This demand survived the invasion; the 1968 constitutional law mandated that each federal ministry have either a Czech minister and a Slovak state secretary, or a Slovak minister and a Czech state secretary. This convention was, however, abandoned as the normalization regime became entrenched. For details on the (unconstitutional) abolition of the institution of state secretaries, see Dean (1973, 44).

3 Transitional Moments: Institutional Legacies and Choices In November 1989, Czechoslovakia’s state-socialist regime collapsed. The country’s “velvet revolution”—so called because of its peaceful dynamics—sparked an overhaul of the country’s political and administrative landscape. By early 1990, the state’s new, noncommunist leaders had presented the public with a distinctive administrative reform agenda. Like the communists in 1948, the counterelites in 1990 presented an agenda that was heavy on territorial details and light on information about personnel. The new reform agenda had four major components. First, it stressed the necessity of abolishing national committees at all levels of the state. Second, it aimed to transform the normative foundations of the territorial state, replacing democratic centralism and dual subordination with an order that affirmed the independence of municipalities and clearly separated state administration from self-government. Third, it foresaw an overhaul of Czechoslovakia’s administrative systems— national committees at the regional (krajský) level would be abolished altogether, national committees at the district (okresní) level would be abolished and replaced by deconcentrated offices of state administration, and municipalities would become self-governing, independent, democratically constituted units with borders that coincided with historical borders and/or local identities. Fourth, the new agenda implied that democratic counterelites would muddle through on issues involving ministerial personnel. They would attempt to limit Communist hardliners’ influence in the ministries but would not prioritize the construction of a legally protected, independent civil service. This chapter seeks to explain why this particular agenda emerged at this particular moment. At first glance, the Czechoslovakia of 1990 might appear to be a textbook example of “historical punctuation”—a moment when policymakers, unconstrained by external societal forces, are able to fashion new institutions according to their own preferred designs. The velvet revolution might seem, initially, to bear out Stephen Krasner’s (1984, 240) claim that “a basic analytical distinction must be made between periods of institutional creation and periods of institutional stasis.” After all, old state institutions (national

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committees) were collapsing, new institutions were being constructed to replace them, and these new institutions were legitimated in novel ways. In this chapter, however, I stress that the transitional period, while tumultuous, was still reflective of interest- and resource-constellations that had carried over from the ancien regime. Beneath the surface of institutional flux lay important continuities linking pre-transitional structures to post-transitional realities. The priorities of institutional design were largely determined by actors who mobilized institutional resources created before the political opportunity structure shifted in late 1989. Czechoslovakia’s anti-communist counterelites, like the men Karl Marx (1978, 595) discussed in “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” made their own history, but they did not do so entirely on their own terms; they did so while laboring under inherited political constraints. This argument draws heavily on the concept of “bricolage,” which has deep roots in anthropological theory (Lévi-Strauss 1962; Douglas 1986) and has been adapted more recently by sociologists of economics and students of institutional evolution (Campbell 1997; Stark and Bruszt 1998, 2001). These works define bricolage as an innovative process whereby new institutions differ from but resemble old ones. The concept suggests, in Campbell’s words (25, 22), that “what might appear at first glance to be an obvious example of radical institutional change is actually the result of a far more evolutionary process” and that “the institutions within which actors innovate are enabling to the extent that they provide a repertoire of already existing institutional principles (e.g. models, analogies, conventions, concepts) that actors use to create new solutions in ways that lead to evolutionary change.” This chapter demonstrates that the Czech and Slovak actors who gained control of municipal-level national committees and shaped the reform agenda in 1990 were bricoleurs. They took advantage of the network resources that old institutions (the municipal national committees) provided to shape the transitional reform agenda. Even as they lobbied to abolish the existing system of territorial administration, they utilized that system’s assets to overcome collective action problems, gain access to key decisionmaking bodies, and influence central-level counterelites. This argument extends the logic discussed in chapter two, where I highlighted the ways that leaders of national committees used their positions to push for increased independence during the Prague Spring. The argument also overlaps with accounts of the path dependent nature of post-socialist change in Central and Eastern Europe (Campbell and Pedersen 1996; Campbell 1997; Stark and Bruszt 1998; Stark and Bruszt 2001). It differs from the latter arguments, however, in at least

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two ways. First, it examines state institutions. While the cited works show how inherited economic institutions evolve and adapt in the course of regime change, this chapter shows that political institutions can be enabling in the same way. Second, the chapter broadens its analytic lens to consider actors beyond those who actually managed to shape critical decisions. This point requires some development. Recall that after 1989, counterelites could, theoretically, pursue a wide range of potential institutional reforms. They could focus, for example, on devolving state powers to self-governing municipalities, and/or establishing intermediate self-governing regions, and/or reforming the central state apparatus by drafting civil service laws and systematically retraining bureaucrats. In fact, they pursued only the first set of reforms and eschewed the others. The bulk of this chapter explains why they behaved this way—why they pursued municipal reform with such vigor and neglected alternative reforms. This task requires explanation of both successes and failures. Thus, in addition to explaining why actors pushed to place municipal reform on the agenda, it also considers actors who attempted to lobby for the establishment of certain administrative institutions (self-governing regions, a legally protected civil service) but ultimately failed. It shows that unsuccessful actors—advocates of Moravian self-government and, to a smaller extent, central-level bureaucrats—lacked the institutionalized network resources that municipal actors enjoyed, and, in fact, that existing institutions often restricted their room for maneuver. The chapter’s first section analyzes the political context in which decisions about the immediate fate of administrative institutions were made. I focus on the Czechoslovak roundtable negotiations and the fact that these talks did not result in the reconstruction of the inherited Czechoslovak constitution. I then present three historical case studies of actors who might have influenced transitional decisions about administrative institutional reform: (1) leaders of municipal national committees, who came to mobilize under the umbrella of the Union of Towns and Communities (Svaz měst a obcí, or SMO) in the Czech republic and the Association of Towns and Communities of Slovakia (Združenie miest a obcí Slovenska, or ZMOS), (2) advocates of Moravian regional self-government, who eventually formed the Movement for Self-Governing Democracy – Association for Moravia and Silesia (Hnutí za Samosprávnou Demokracii - Sdružení pro Moravu a Slezsko, or HSD-SMS), and (3) state employees, who might have rallied for the re-establishment of an independent state civil service.

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The first case (SMO/ZMOS) shows how enterprising municipal leaders took advantage of networks provided by existing state institutions to lobby decisionmakers and, almost immediately, to transform previously quiescent nodes of socialist governance into independent self-governing municipalities. SMO/ZMOS is a case of policy success, since municipal leaders effectively shaped the decisions of central politicians. The HSD-SMS case, on the other hand, demonstrates significant (if not abject) policy failure. HSD-SMS enjoyed electoral success, gained symbolic concessions, and succeeded in convincing politicians that the issue of regional self-government deserved at least rhetorical support. Unlike SMO/ZMOS, however, HSD-SMS lacked institutional network resources; HSD-SMS was particularly disadvantaged by the fact that the inherited system lacked institutional structures at the zemský level. Because HSD-SMS lacked re-employable resources, their attempts to establish self-governing regions (and, particularly, a self-governing Moravia) ultimately failed. The third case—the ersatz civil service—makes a similar point. Even though many civil servants possessed and utilized informal nomenklatura ties in the transitional environment, the socialist administrative model deprived state employees of formal horizontal linkages. The lack of re-employable linkages, in turn, militated against state employees’ mobilization as a distinctive social group in 1989-1990 and actually encouraged politicians to remove some of the few legal protections that bureaucrats actually enjoyed. The ersatz civil service thus stands as a case of unqualified policy failure. Together, the three cases suggest that institutional incumbents enjoy mobilizational advantages that their institutionally unencumbered counterparts lack, that enterprising incumbents can put old institutions to new uses at moments of political opening, and that institutional choice at transitional moments is strongly constrained by incumbents who manage to put old institutions to new uses. On Constitutions and Reconstitutions: Keeping the Institutions, Changing the Incumbents

Journalists often paint the Czechoslovak transition as especially poignant because it happened so quickly. If the dominant images of the Polish and Hungarian transitions portray sophisticated bargainers conducting hard business, the prevailing image of the Czechoslovak transition involves citizens congregating on Prague squares, jingling keys, and shouting clever slogans.

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There is some truth to this image, but it obscures the fact, emphasized by numerous political scientists (Arato 1993; Calda 1996; Elster 1995b; Kopecký 2000; Stanger 2000; Wolchik 2000; Žák 1995), that the Czechoslovak transition was a very structured affair. The transition had three primary organizational actors: (1) the KSČ, which was led by hardliner Milouš Jakeš, overseen by President Husák (who had formally stepped down from party leadership in 1987), and weighted toward conservative/anti-opposition positions; (2) Civic Forum (Občanské Fórum, or OF), the Czech-based opposition movement led by Václav Havel; and (3) Public Against Violence (Verejnost’ proti násiliu, or VPN), OF’s loosely structured Slovak counterpart. All three organizations agreed to make decisions through rule-governed talks and to negotiate the composition of existing state institutions. The fact that negotiations dealt with control of existing institutions—and not, for example, with the creation of new institutions or the recalibration of constitutional balances among institutions—had important implications for the shape of the arena within which actors pursued administrative reforms in the early 1990s. As Calda (1996) notes, the KSČ’s chief argument in the early transitional period was legality, and party negotiators clung tenaciously to the sanctity of existing structures. Why did ascendant movements concede to this position and voluntarily restrict the scope of talks? Both participants and observers have tried to explain this choice. Two explanations stand out. On one hand, as Gabal (1996, 16) argues, conducting talks within the framework of the existing constitution allowed counterelites to “avoid a Jacobinic phase of the revolution” and to emphasize their commitment to the rule of law. On the other hand, as Jičinský (1993) and Calda (1996) emphasize, OF/VPN misperceived the KSČ’s relative bargaining strength. Even though protests had become daily events and communist parties in neighboring countries were reeling, opposition movements overestimated their opponent’s strengths. Influenced by these and other considerations, OF/VPN negotiators conceded to the regime’s demands that talks focus on the “reconstruction” (rekonstrukce) of existing institutions—on the insertion of new personnel into old structures. As negotiations progressed in December 1989 and January 1990, all sides agreed to bargain over control of the following institutions: •Federal institutions: Presidency, federal government, both chambers of the Federal Assembly (Federální shromáždění, or FS)

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•National institutions: Czech and Slovak national governments, Czech national legislature (Česká národní rada, or ČNR), Slovak national legislature (Slovenská národná rada, or SNR) •Sub-national institutions: plena of national committees at regional, district, and municipal levels Thousands of seats in official bodies were, therefore, at stake. Notice, however, that with the exception of ministerial posts, positions within the executive branch were not subject to roundtable bargaining. At first glance, this point may seem minor, given that existing institutional rules allowed individuals who occupied the positions that were up for grabs (president, ministers, and leadership positions in the national committees) to influence the composition of subordinate executive positions. As the third case study below demonstrates, however, existing rules limited politicians’ influence over executive organs, and lower- and middle-level managers generally maintained their posts beyond the period of reconstruction. Before starting negotiations on how to refashion the institutions listed above, OF and VPN demanded that the regime abolish Article Four of the federal constitution. That article guaranteed the leading role of the Communist Party in political and social life, the dominance of the party within the National Front, and the necessity of education in Marxism-Leninism. The regime, intimidated by a general strike on November 27, relented, and a joint session of the FS unanimously passed a constitutional amendment deleting Article Four on November 29 (Federálňi shromáždění 29. listopadu 1989). The amendment had immediate practical consequences. The three governments admitted their obsolescence. Twenty-three communists and one member of the People’s Party (a closely affiliated KSČ “satellite” intended to give the appearance of diversity) in the Federal Assembly resigned. Seven deputies in the SNR stepped down as well. After agreeing on the scope of the roundtable talks and the abolition of Article Four, roundtable negotiators faced two major questions. First, how could seats vacated in the aftermath of November 29 be refilled? Second, how (procedurally) could existing institutions be reconstituted to better reflect the changing balance of societal power, especially given that KSČ incumbents might have refused to step down? The second question took precedence, and the answer differed from one institution to the next. In the ensuing days and weeks, negotiators followed a “topdown” strategy, reconstituting the highest organs of constitutional power first and then devising ways to reconstruct less powerful institutions. They began with the three (federal, Czech, and Slovak) governments.

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For these institutions, the inherited constitution was clear. The federal government could be reconstituted with the formal agreement of the president, and the national governments with the formal agreement of the presidia of the respective national (Czech and Slovak) legislatures. Thus, after the deletion of Article Four, daily roundtables in Prague and Bratislava concentrated on reconstituting the three governments. The Czech government was appointed on December 5, an acceptable federal “government of national understanding” on December 10, and a Slovak government on December 12. The legislative assemblies were, constitutionally, the next most important institutions. The opposition movements’ most pressing task was to fill vacant seats in the FS and the two national legislatures. Constitutionally, the means of doing so were not crystal clear, although an interesting precedent for reconstitution existed. In 1969, the normalization leadership made it legal to replace (reformist) legislators with more pliable substitutes without holding by-elections. A vacant seat could be filled and a new deputy “co-opted” through a simple majority vote of the remaining members of the chamber which he or she was to join. Opposition leaders made quick use of this precedent, sacrificing concerns for democratic purity for the ability to elevate their representatives into policymaking positions. On December 22—almost two weeks after the initial, government-forming roundtables had concluded—OF, VPN, KSČ and other actors sat about the round table again. This time, the opposition pressured the KSČ to effect legislation that would mimic the expired normalization-era law. The previous day, Socialist (another “satellite” party) and People’s Party legislators in the FS, along with a small group of reformist communists, had submitted a draft constitutional law that would reactivate the questionably democratic, if efficient, norm. The KSČ, attracted by the OF/VPN offer of two seats out of the 24, agreed to the proposal and notified legislators. The constitutional amendment (Ústavní zákon 183/1989) passed on the afternoon of December 28. Later the same day, Alexander Dubček was co-opted into the FS’s Chamber of Nations and elected FS chairman. The following day, a joint session of the FS elected Václav Havel president. Roundtable participants had agreed to all of these steps at the December 22 roundtable. By the beginning of 1990, the three governments had been reconstructed and the Federal Assembly and national legislatures partially remade. Within the legislative chambers, leadership positions had been reallocated, and reformers held most top positions. Communist parties (KSČ and KSS) had initiated major personnel and organizational changes (Obrman 1990a; Pehe 1990b). These developments were

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victories for the opposition. From a systemic perspective, however, the process of reconstruction had just begun. Communists continued to occupy the majority of seats in the Federal Assembly, both national councils, and most of the thousands of national committees. During this period, rumors of rear-guard Communist hijinx circulated, and opposition politicians feared that the KSČ would use unreformed legislative-executive organs as bases of resistance. Procedurally, however, there were few remaining legal mechanisms for ascendant democratic organizations to institutionalize their strength. Opposition leaders had won procedures that allowed them to co-opt deputies into vacant positions, but they lacked a procedural means of expelling incumbents. OF and VPN could fill slots but could not yet create them. The movements’ solution, formally accepted by the communist leadership at a roundtable on January 5, was to pursue co-optation to its logical extreme. Previous roundtables had proposed substitute ministers, deputies, and a President. New roundtables would meet, (a) to complete the reconstruction of the FS, ČNR and SNR, and (b) to begin the reconstruction of national committees. In the new roundtables, relevant organs of “decisive political forces” would bargain both over the expulsion of incumbents and over the people with whom to replace them. At the time of the January 5 roundtable, such massive changes had no legal mandate. The agreement was codified into constitutional law, however, by a joint session of the Federal Assembly on January 23 (Ústavní zákon 14/1990). This legislation had immediate implications for federal and national legislatures. Following its passage, the FS, ČNR, and SNR were reconstructed. The January 23 constitutional law was the legal consummation of the top-down reconstruction process. Roundtables at the center of the state, originally convened to reconstitute the highest state institutions (the governments), had essentially mandated their duplication in the three legislatures and at the level of all national committees. Sub-national roundtables would have approximately nine weeks to reconstitute the national committees. Elster’s (1995b, 110) suggestion that in Czechoslovakia “there was actually not one Round Table, but two [one in Prague, one in Bratislava]” is in fact a simplification: between the end of January and March, there were thousands of roundtables. By the end of spring, the process of reconstitution had nearly run its course, and parties, movements, and citizens were preparing for June elections to the FS, ČNR, and SNR. The first four months of the transition had been hectic. In some sense, however, the more things had changed, the more they had stayed the same. Despite the fact that old

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institutions were now controlled by new leaders, neither the institutions themselves nor the constitutional balances among them had changed. Proposals for changes in the constitutional structure of the country circulated widely, particularly proposals for recalibration of the CzechSlovak relationship. And while many people spoke of reworking the national committee system from a three-tiered model (region-districtmunicipality) to a two-tiered model (district-municipality), it was not clear exactly when this change would occur. Thus, although politicians with remarkably different dispositions and priorities had taken over old institutions, the new politics would be played, at least for the time being, within old boundaries. People seeking to affect policy agendas would somehow have to work within an inherited system. As the following case studies will show, the fact that municipal leaders inherited official positions within that system granted them a major—if not a decisive— advantage over similarly dedicated actors who did not inherit official positions within the established order. Enabling Institutions: Municipal National Committees and State Reconfiguration in 1990

Even as participants in roundtables and legislators in the three highest deliberative bodies were discussing the fate of national committees’ deputies, those same deputies were mobilizing to shape the fate of their institutions. Given the history of sub-national mobilization at moments of regime crisis, this activity is not surprising. If the regime liberalization in 1968 had granted national committees opportunities to advocate for reform, the transition of 1989 offered more profound opportunities. In both cases, incumbents drew from network resources— conceived as symbols, information, connections and procedures that can be mobilized to achieve political aims—that derived from existing structures to challenge standing rules and refashion the institutions they staffed. The clearest examples of this process involved mobilization by leaders of municipal national committees in the Czech republic, under the banner of the Union of Towns and Communities (Svaz měst a obcí, or SMO), and in Slovakia, under the banner of the Association of Towns and Communities of Slovakia (Združenie miest a obcí Slovenska, or ZMOS). SMO was a reinvention of the eponymous organization that emerged, as discussed in chapter two, during the Prague Spring. Before Warsaw Pact tanks rolled into Prague, representatives of sixty Bohemian municipal committees, led by federal Prime Minister Oldřích Černík, gathered to discuss potential territorial administrative reforms, including

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an increase in the financial independence of large cities and the abolition of the regions (kraje). In November 1969, however, the normalization regime denounced the organization, and SMO disintegrated (Ondračková 1990). In 1989, SMO emerged from the ashes. The organization’s original leaders, including Černík, played leading roles in the resurrection process. On December 13, they convened a meeting with district-level NF and OF leaders in Pardubice. The meeting’s final document proclaimed that it was “incorrect that national committees, over the course of the current revolutionary events, have stood on the margins of both public consciousness and political proclamations” (“Občané” 1990). They laid out draft statutes for an organization that would coordinate municipalities’ interests, provide services to towns and villages, and seek to place municipalities at the center of a future system of territorial administration. Signatories sent the proclamation to Národní výbory, the weekly magazine that the Czech government distributed to all Czech national committees (including regional and district bodies). Nearly one month later, Národní výbory printed SMO’s draft statutes, along with the address and telephone number of SMO’s incipient coordination committee. SMO convened its first latter-day conference on January 16, 1990. Representatives of municipal national committees reacted positively to the Pardubice Proclamation and came to Prague to discuss the goals of the organization. The conference settled certain organizational issues. Participants agreed, for example, that while the functioning of the current and future conferences would aggregate individuals who represented particular municipalities, the members of the organization would, strictly speaking, be municipalities themselves. Conference participants also elected a council to direct the organization’s activities in between meetings of the plenum. The council was dominated by veterans of the original SMO and the nascent coordination committee. Representatives also agreed on a general plan of action. The organization would push for clear lines of demarcation between state administration and municipal self-government, for a constitutional amendment that recognized independent municipalities as the foundation of the state, for the replacement of the three-tiered system of national committees with a two-tiered system, for the establishment of independent municipal police forces, and for municipalities’ ability to construct their own budgets and to raise their own resources. By January 25, 250 municipalities had joined the Union, and SMO’s leaders had proven themselves deft manipulators of the resources that they and their members commanded. On one hand, leaders of the

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coordination committee picked up where they left off in 1969. Municipal leaders had a history of mobilizing for reform in periods of political opening; SMO’s leaders frequently referred to this history and used it to encourage municipal leaders to join the organization. In this sense, leaders were mobilizing symbolic resources that linked them (personally) and their organization (SMO) to the past. One of the major goals of the reborn organization was to coordinate the activities and opinions of state organs—the municipal national committees—that had been more closely linked to higher vertical organs (district national committees, regional national committees, ministries) than to each other under the old regime. While this task required effort, it was facilitated by the fact that the relevant territorial units (the municipalities) already existed and that SMO might use the tools that the previous regime used to achieve vertical coordination—for example Národní výbory—to link municipalities to the organization and to each other. SMO’s leaders also stressed that their organization aggregated the interests of institutions whose leaders were legitimated in the same way (via co-optation) as the leaders of the highest constitutional bodies. They used this and similar arguments to suggest that SMO, as the representative of public bodies, should be guaranteed access to other public bodies. The first conference’s programmatic declaration stated that “the construction of a democratically administered state requires the unmediated connection of representative collections of towns and communities with the national councils and the Federal Assembly. The Union will defend the constitutionally protected rights of municipalities and present their concerns and demands to the highest legislative organs” (“Prográmové prohlášení” 1990). SMO leaders realized that they were working within an old system and sought simultaneously to use and transform the network capacity of that system to press their demands. They were aware of the resources they could command and the uses to which the resources could be put. As events developed, however, it became clear that SMO’s ability to use these network resources was not a given. In fact, serious “external” and “internal” questions surrounded the organization, and successful employment of institutional resources required the organization to solve, or at least to finesse, these questions. Externally, it was unclear whether politicians in Prague and Bratislava could rely on SMO’s commitment to the emerging democratic game. Did SMO advocate real reform, or was the organization a redoubt of communists seeking to use unreconstructed state institutions to maintain the party’s strength? While the leadership’s connections to OF and the tone of the conference’s final statement both suggested the sincerity of SMO’s aims, one must recall

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the context in which the conference was called. On January 16, the FS was still a week away from passing the law that authorized the reconstruction of national committees. Thus, even if SMO’s council was legitimate, its growing membership rolls may have had more to do with the desperation of local communists than with local democrats’ support for political reform (Kára, Louda, and Matula 1990). The reconstruction of the national committees went some way toward solving the external question. After the local roundtables, observers could be convinced that more democratically legitimate leaders now staffed the municipal committees and represented municipalities’ interests in the organization. Internal divisions also threatened SMO’s ability to employ network resources to their fullest extent. First and foremost, the conference did not settle the question of which municipalities the Union claimed to represent. Participants agreed that the new SMO would conjoin more municipalities than the original (Bohemian-based) union, but it remained unclear how wide the new umbrella would be and how Slovak municipalities would fit in to SMO. Ten Slovak representatives attended SMO’s founding conference. Delegates there decided that, after a counterpart meeting of interested representatives of Slovak municipalities at which national leaders would be chosen, Slovak representatives would be guaranteed seven of 29 seats on an expanded SMO council. Upon returning to Slovakia, however, the Slovak attendees became convinced that “the differences in the demographic profiles and the attendant problems in social and economic sectors between the Czech and Slovak Socialist Republics” (“Na princípoch” 1990) were great enough to justify the creation of an exclusively Slovak organization. They established an independent coordination center and called for an all-Slovak meeting of municipal leaders. The call, published in both the communist daily Pravda and the Slovak Interior Ministry’s biweekly magazine, cast the relationship between Czech and Slovak municipal organizations into question. Recall that territorial administration was a national competence. Serious Czech-Slovak disagreements could have posed major threats to the organizations’ ability to mobilize network resources, particularly by making it unclear which of the many possible higher state institutions (the Czech and Slovak National Councils, the respective national Interior Ministries, the three governments, line ministries, the Federal Assembly, possible international allies) the organizations should try to engage. The second internal threat to the Union’s effectiveness was disagreement among Czech members themselves. Differences of opinion divided many municipal representatives. These differences derived from divergent political preferences and from the nature of the

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system incumbents had inherited. In Prague, for example, existing administrative divisions required close cooperation between the city committee—which effectively took on the status of a region (kraj)—and the numerous sub-municipal national committees. A different dynamic characterized municipal-district relations elsewhere; in most municipalities, committees’ primary vertical contact was with the offices of relatively distant district-level committees. Disagreements about the shape and pace of reform separated representatives of Prague from other municipal representatives throughout 1990 and beyond, and Prague’s municipal leadership threatened numerous times to break away from SMO (Obrman 1990c). Nor was the Prague/non-Prague distinction the only serious intra-SMO cleavage. Factions from Silesia, the Krkonoše mountains, spa towns, and southern Moravia lobbied for positions that differed from those advocated by the majority of SMO’s municipalities. As in the ambiguous case of the Czech-Slovak relationship, centrifugal pressures threatened to bury the young organization in internal acrimony and jeopardize its ability to parlay network resources into policy influence. In the following weeks, the organizations managed to contain, if not to eradicate, centrifugal pressures and to use network resources to pursue transformation of the system of territorial administration. Czech and Slovak representatives reached a compromise. The Slovak preparatory committee acknowledged their origins at the SMO conference. Conversations between the SMO council and the Slovak committee produced a de facto compromise: the two organizations would be organizationally independent and possess their own resources and executive councils. They would adjust their activities to the formal institutional structure of the state: SMO would lobby the Czech government, Czech ministries, and ČNR, while ZMOS would liaise with the counterpart Slovak national organs. SMO and ZMOS would coordinate their activities at the federal level and cooperate jointly with international organizations (“Celoslovenská konferencia” 1990). Flareups between the organizations simmered down following the informal compromises. A representative of the SMO council, for example, participated in ZMOS’s founding conference in March, and the two councils were in regular contact throughout the winter. They reached an agreement, which established the Association of Towns and Communities (Asociace měst a obcí, or AMO), at a May meeting in the Slovak town of Trenčin. The Trenčin Memorandum set up a 14-member coordination center (comprised of seven members apiece from SMO and ZMOS) and enumerated the principles that connected the two organizations, including a commitment to a federal constitutional

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amendment affirming municipalities as the foundational unit of the state and to the European Charter of Local Self-Government (“Dohodli se” 1990). The two organizations also successfully managed internal centrifugal pressures. Whenever a group of municipalities with a special interest asserted itself, SMO and ZMOS councils would create a subsection at which representatives of those interests could meet and present their recommendations to the plenum of the conference. At SMO’s second conference in April, for example, the initial meeting of a new section of statutory and spa towns was attacked by its participants as being too broad. The following day, it was subdivided into separate committees for large cities, the countryside, “other cities,” and spa and recreational cities. The latter committees met on the second day of the conference and presented their findings to the conference itself. This method of improvisation did not contain all dissension—the Prague Council of Towns and Committees, for example, continued to press for more gradual reforms and to critique SMO, despite its continued membership in the organization. It was sufficient, however, to prevent the Union’s disintegration. Similarly, leaderships of both organizations called conferences whenever centrifugal pressures threatened their organizations’ viability. SMO, for example, called an extraordinary conference on August 1 in response to large cities’ criticism of the SMO council’s proposed amendments to draft legislation on the establishment of self-governing municipalities. Delegates to the conference achieved a compromise and contained outflanking pressures (Kolářová 1990). As they mitigated the threat of internal disputes, SMO and ZMOS were able to transform inherited networks into influence with national and federal politicians. They aggressively portrayed themselves as the legitimate voice of municipalities. They deliberately manipulated the boundary between state and society to push for their full incorporation into national and federal decisionmaking structures. On one hand, SMO and ZMOS were interest groups, concerned to synthesize and promote the wellbeing of discrete actors. On the other hand, they were “plausibly public” organizations, bringing together representatives of public bodies who could reasonably claim to embody the public will. 1 SMO, ZMOS, and (especially) AMO often wrapped their demands in the cloak of international legitimacy, arguing that such provisions were commonplace in the advanced liberal democracies of Western Europe. This rhetoric and practice helped attract international legitimacy and assistance—they initiated contacts, for example, with the International Union of Local Administration (IULA)—but also built cleverly on

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federal politicians’ contemporary avowal that Czechoslovakia was keen to rejoin Europe and accede to the European Community. Organizational leaders were particularly adept at using their plausibly public identity as a tool to pursue institutionalized policymaking influence. A joint AMO statement, for example, suggested that SMO and ZMOS should be recognized in law as representatives of Czech and Slovak municipalities. Laws should require that SMO and ZMOS be consulted on any piece of legislation that affected towns and communities. For similar reasons, the constitution should be amended to give SMO and ZMOS a constitutional right to introduce legislation in federal and national legislatures (“Stanovisko” 1990). These demands did not succeed, but the organizations’ insistence on their special status facilitated access to national and federal politicians. Throughout 1990, they both pressured politicians to reconsider the future administrative organization of the state and were welcomed into such talks. Overlaps between the two Unions and the state began modestly. Dubček and federal prime minister Marián Čalfa, for example, sent letters of encouragement to their respective founding conferences (“Podle skutečné vůle” 1990; “Reprezentant” 1990). When ZMOS and SMO councils were unhappy with the quality of contacts with national and federal decisionmakers, they framed the snubs as a violation of their authority. At an April meeting, for example, the ZMOS council issued a statement demanding that the Slovak Interior Ministry report to ZMOS on the status and time-horizon of legislation on territorial administrative reform, and again insisted that “a definite pattern of cooperation between ZMOS and Slovak central organs in the areas of legislation and amendment” and “concrete intervals for meetings between the government and ZMOS” be established (“Prvoradá úloha” 1990, 6-7). As the year progressed, “crosspollination” between the organizations and higher state organs developed. In Slovakia, for example, ZMOS council chairman Miroslav Hetteš became a member of the Collegium of the Slovak Interior Ministry’s division of civil administration, a consultative body convened by Interior Minister Vladimír Mečiar that met weekly to discuss draft reform concepts. Earlier, Ondrej Srebal, an employee of the division of civil administration, had been elected secretary of the ZMOS council. The most visible manifestation of the Unions’ institutionalization, however, involved a complex set of constitutional changes and legislative drafts that were considered in June and July. Immediately after signing the Trenčin Memorandum, Černík and Hetteš gained an audience with President Havel and urged him to do everything he could to accelerate the passage of a federal amendment that would enshrine

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municipalities as the basic unit of the state and pave the way for republic-level legislation that regulated the relationship between selfgoverning municipalities and state administration. By this point, SMO and ZMOS had pressured both national governments to transform the national committee system. The Czech government had committed earlier in the year (on March 7) to abolishing the regional committees, and elections to municipal and district committees throughout Czechoslovakia had been set for November 23 and 24, 1990. The Slovak government, while passing no similar resolution, was generally believed to be considering a similar path. SMO and ZMOS, however, after overcoming the sympathy of some members toward a more gradual reform, pressured the governments to abandon this course and to initiate more radical legislation. The new legislation, which could only be passed after the previously mentioned federal constitutional amendment, would abolish the title of “national committee” altogether and transform existing municipal national committees into “self-governing municipalities” (Navarová 1990a, 1990b; 1990c). 2 It would replace district-level national committees with deconcentrated offices of state administration. Municipal legislatures would, via the legislation, be confirmed as the only democratically legitimated sub-national bodies, and, contingent upon the passage of related budgetary legislation, acquire greater influence over their finances and daily activities. Thus, the transfer from “national committees” to “self-governing municipalities” would involve much more than a change in name: it would lay the groundwork, pending the key national legislation on financing and the transfer of particular competencies, for a massive decentralization of the Czechoslovak state. This change would be quicker and more radical than alternative courses previously considered by opposition politicians. 3 By the spring of 1990, SMO and ZMOS were busy lobbying for these more radical reforms. Council representatives had met with Havel and chairmen of the ČNR and SNR presidia, and had been in regular contact with both national Interior Ministers, relevant deputy ministers for civil administration, and line ministries in both republics. These efforts paid dividends. On June 6, the Czech government rescinded its previous resolution and agreed to endorse the federal constitutional amendment and move full speed ahead on draft legislation that would transform municipal national committees into self-governing municipalities and coincide with the course SMO advocated (Usnesení 163/1990). The resolution was the pinnacle of the organizations’ strategy so far, the product of high-quality contacts among SMO/AMO, higher state organs, and national politicians, and a testament to the

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organizations’ ability to mobilize network resources. Asked about the origins of the new resolution at a press conference where he shared the dais with SMO/AMO chairman Černík, Czech Prime Minister Petr Pithart confirmed as much: It was really good fortune that the Czech Interior Ministry had a strong and well-prepared partner in the Union of Towns and Communities. Even though I never expected any particular conflicts between them, I was unusually pleased with the harmonious relationship that formed between the ministry and the newly formed non-governmental organization. (“Přechod” 1990)

After a series of intergovernmental rows and uncertainty due to the elections, the FS passed the constitutional amendment on July 18. The Slovak government, now (after the elections) under the leadership of previous Interior Minister Mečiar, charged the new Interior Minister (Anton Andráš) with drafting legislation on the creation of selfgoverning municipalities in local state administration in Slovakia. SMO and ZMOS had achieved their most basic aim: the system of territorial administration would be quickly reformed, and previously supine municipal national committees would be transformed into the foundational units of the Czechoslovak state. While government leaders had discussed reforms of territorial administration as early as February 7, the summer decisions represented a more ambitious course. SMO, ZMOS, and AMO played key roles in introducing and defending the new course. Successful management of centrifugal pressures allowed them to take advantage of inherited resources, launch regular talks with higher state organs, establish themselves as the respected collective voice of municipalities, and ultimately shape the post-transitional reform agenda. In September, legislation that resulted from the June and July decisions passed the national legislatures. The “final product” overlapped with the organizations’ formal blueprint for the reconfigured system of state administration and self-government. In the Czech republic (Zákon 367/1990; Zákon 418/1990; Zákon 425/1990), selfgoverning municipalities would now perform a bundle of tasks— including policing, garbage collection, road maintenance, and public lighting—free from state supervision. They could also establish their own cultural and health-care facilities. Designated municipalities would also perform transferred competencies of state administration, to be overseen by deconcentrated district (okresní) offices. “Native” and “transferred” competencies were strictly delimited by law; state

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administration, represented by the new district offices, would possess the legal capacity to monitor only those tasks defined by law as “transferred.” A formally similar, but not identical, system would enter force in Slovakia (Zákon 369/1990; Zákon 377/1990; Zákon 401/1990; Zákon 472/1990). There, state administration would be deconcentrated to two basic levels instead of one. In October, the Slovak National Council established 38 district offices and 121 sub-district offices. The competencies of the respective levels were similarly established in law, and a strict line divided state administration from local self-government. In both republics, many of the same local bureaucrats who staffed executive offices of the national committees would continue to work in those offices or be transferred to other and/or newly established offices. The vertical accountability structure that linked them to higher layers of the state, however, would be radically transformed, and in some cases eliminated. In clearly specified areas, local bureaucrats would be accountable to the state; in a wider set of areas they would be accountable to locally elected deputies. Special laws were drafted to regulate relations among state administration, municipal selfgovernment administration, and sub-municipal self-government and administration in Prague, Bratislava, and Košice. To say that these major formal reforms coincided with the SMO/ZMOS vision is not to say that the organizations were entirely satisfied with the national-level legislation produced in the autumn. In fact, while leaders of national committees had successfully pressed for the most basic institutional changes, they were not pleased with major aspects of the national laws that eventually passed. Those laws constructed strong formal barriers between state administration and selfgovernment, but they did not, for example, provide the Unions with legislative initiative or recognize them as necessary partners in legislation concerning municipalities. One of SMO’s strongest substantive demands—the direct election of mayors—did not make it into the Czech law on municipalities, although the Slovak law did provide for direct election. By far the largest complaint of both organizations, however, stemmed from issues of financing. The ZMOS conference of July 24, the SMO conference of September 11-13, and frequent pronouncements by SMO and ZMOS councils all criticized national draft legislation for not providing finances sufficient for municipalities to administer the independent competencies with which the laws entrusted them (“Dva Názory” 1990; “Konkretní kroky” 1990). Despite this, governments and legislators made few concessions in the versions which eventually passed the two national councils.

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There is little doubt that the Unions played critical roles in shaping the early reform agenda and establishing themselves on the administrative reform scene. The federal constitutional amendment, the acceleration of the reform process, and the formal transformation of local national committees into self-governing municipalities were the most immediate outcomes of the organizations’ activities. Equally important, however, were the procedural connections and patterns of access that SMO and ZMOS achieved while pursuing these goals. By the end of 1990, both Unions continued to grow. Despite their failure to decisively influence substantive legislation during the autumn, their frequent contact with the Interior Ministries, governments, national legislatures, and line ministries testified to their importance on the political scenes of both Czechoslovak republics. What is more, certain guarantees of consultative presence inhered in those segments of the national legislation that SMO and ZMOS most criticized: both Czech and Slovak laws recognized the system of financing as provisional, for example, and suggested that SMO and ZMOS could play important roles in the future development of that system and of the development of territorial administration in general. Leaders of municipal national committees used the organizations to manage their disagreements, to lobby for fundamental reform, and, in a remarkably short period of time, to transform the institutions they controlled and the broader political system in which they participated. Institutional Dearth: Demands for Moravian Self-government and the Issue of Self-governing Regions in 1990

As the processes of reconstituting and transforming municipalities unfolded, other actors were mobilizing to establish self-government at higher territorial levels. From the first days of the transition, advocates of Moravian self-government raised their voices. Moravia, recall, was one of the Czech republic’s historical “lands” (země), and a critical component of the KSČ’s early post-1948 strategy had been to divide the inherited země into smaller, more controllable regions (kraje). The Moravist movements that emerged in 1989-90 resembled the municipal organizations discussed above in a number of ways. Moravists and municipal reformers both battled for freedom from central control, or samospráva (self-government). Both could claim some historical organizational precedent: SMO had roots in 1968’s eponymous organization, and Moravist activists had roots in 1968’s Society for Moravia and Silesia (Společnost pro Moravu a Slezsko, SMS). Both municipal activists and Moravists had some leadership continuity;

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individuals who agitated for reform in 1968 often took advantage of this symbolic cachet to press their claims in 1989-90. Unlike the municipal organizations, however, Moravists lacked institutionalized network resources and lacked the ability to claim plausible publicity. They were forced by the fact that they lacked an institutional inheritance to pursue their goals in different ways. They faced unique dilemmas and obstacles that arose from the lack of an existing framework of země and were further disadvantaged by restrictive constitutional rules. The same institutional framework that facilitated collective action and conferred resources to municipalities hindered Moravists’ ability to shape the reform agenda. Municipalities could mobilize existing state resources to transform extant institutions, but Moravists were forced to start from scratch, to squabble amongst themselves about the shape and constitutional status of the unit they desired. They eventually gained electoral support and symbolic concessions and convinced politicians that large portions of the population supported the establishment of self-government at an “intermediate” level of the state (e.g., between municipalities and central authorities). Yet, buried in a rancor traceable to Moravia’s uninstitutionalized pre-1990 status, their demands for self-governing regions flopped. To understand the way that institutions undermined Moravists’ designs, we must consider developments before and after the June 1990 elections. Institutional Disadvantage, January-June 1990

Because no discrete Moravian state entity existed between 1949 and 1989, Moravian organizations faced an enormous range of strategic and substantive choices when the political opportunity structure shifted. SMO and ZMOS inherited ready-made constituencies (the municipal national committees). Moravists, in contrast, could not build off of an existing institutional network. Instead, they had to choose which kinds of new institutions to advocate and seek out new ways of spreading their message of reform. Should they pursue a tripartite federalist strategy, aiming to establish a federation of Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia, and Slovakia? A quadripartite federation of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Slovakia? Or perhaps a more moderate strategy of země-level selfgovernment within the Czech republic? Or another strategy all together? These choices and dilemmas, borne of the fact that Moravians inherited a regional (krajský) system instead of a provincial/land-based (zemský) system, were compounded by the fact that they also inherited numerous historical models. Recall that between 1918 and 1928,

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Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia each had self-governing institutions. There was also precedent for a bipartite zemský system, where the Czech lands were sub-divided between Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia; this system had existed between 1928 and 1948. Although a tripartite or quadripartite federation (where Moravia or Moravia-Silesia would have the same constitutional status as Bohemia and Slovakia) had never existed, both of these alternatives had been discussed during 1968 and 1969. Which model should new Moravist organizations defend? Positions on this question would have important strategic implications. To pursue a reconfigured federation, for example, movements would have to concentrate on the federal arena, since such a fundamental change could only be affirmed by amending the federal constitution. This strategy would require medium-term time horizons, since central roundtables had agreed that a new federal constitution would not be adopted until after the June 1990 elections. A federal solution would also require efforts to convince Slovaks and Bohemians that their interests would not be diluted in a new state framework. Pursuit of a national/provincial (zemský) strategy would imply the opposite strategic adjustments: movement leaders would focus on the national (Czech) level and might hope to achieve major results before the elections. Had some sort of all-Moravian territorial entity existed immediately prior to 1990, Moravists would have been less plagued by such fundamental choices and dilemmas. They would have possessed the institutional preconditions of bricolage, and are likely to have been more successful in pressing for Moravian self-government. As it was, nascent organizations had to choose among arcane institutional alternatives, ascertain their strategic implications, and, most importantly, clarify their relationships to other nascent Moravist organizations that may have chosen different substantive and strategic priorities. These were major, time-consuming tasks. The Moravists’ chaotic, choice-filled position contrasted markedly SMO/ZMOS’s ready-made structures and with cases of regional mobilization in other post-socialist arenas (Bunce 1999; Leff 1999; Ramet 1996). In each of the latter cases, political entrepreneurs could mobilize existing network resources to transform institutions; Moravists had no such luxury. Moravists also had to contend with the fact that the institutions that the communists did bequeath—the regional (krajský) national committees of South Moravia and North Moravia—were generally recognized as instruments of communist centralism and therefore ripe for the chop. With such limited network resources and so many possible substantive and strategic postures, a glut of nominally Moravist

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organizations appeared, each with different substantive and strategic orientations. In January, domestic media reported on the activities of at least sixteen groups that petitioned national and/or federal organs for increases in “Moravian self-government.” Some of these groups were regional (krajský) national committees (e.g., the national committee of Southern Moravia); others were organs of existing parties or movements (e.g., OF of the city of Zlín); others were independent interest organizations or movements (e.g., the Society for Moravia and Silesia); and still others were academic organizations (e.g., Masaryk University in Brno’s Faculty of Law). These organizations lobbied different central (national and federal) actors for different permutations of Moravian self-government. The leaders of the organizations realized that their particular voices were diluted in the cacophony. They met and attempted to reconcile competing visions, but the meetings did not produce meaningful consensus. On January 4, for example, representatives of Moravian OF branches met in Brno to discuss the future organization of the state. Despite early reports (“Moravians Demand” 1990) indicating that the conference was leaning toward a federal tripartite solution, the meeting’s final statement was agnostic, describing the two (federal/tripartite vs. national/zemský) solutions without advocating either. Participants pledged to discuss the issue further and urged the North Moravian regional (krajský) national committee to establish a commission on the state’s future shape (Tomis 1990). On January 22, seven groups signed a “Moravian Charter.” The Charter pushed for the establishment of a Moravian-Silesian assembly, a Moravian-Silesian government, the restoration of Moravia and Silesia’s historical borders, and a law assuring the income generated in Moravia and Silesia be returned to those regions (“Moravian ‘Charter’” 1990). On the critical issues of how (e.g., in the context of which constitutional arrangement) and when these steps should be taken, though, the charter was silent. Unimpressed by these vague statements, Czech Interior Minister Antonín Baudyš stood before a crowd of three thousand Moravians on January 23 and claimed that “the Moravian question, while current and important, really isn’t the most critical question of the day” (Pernes 1996, 232). Eventually, in the run-up to the June elections, the various Moravist organizations crystallized into distinctive, if still internally diverse, coalitional blocs. They either joined larger political parties or established themselves as independent electoral actors. In March, the various Moravian OF branches struck a compromise. They “agreed upon the autonomy and equal rights for Moravia and Silesia [and concluded

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that] this [goal] should not be [accomplished] in the form of a federation, but [rather in] a provincial [země-based] system [within the Czech republic]” (“Moravian-Silesian Initiative” 1990). Other Moravist groups, including the Moravian Civic Movement (Moravské občanské hnutí, or MOH) and the Moravian Country Party (Strana moravské vesnice, or SMV), entered coalitions with larger parties—the Christian Democratic Union (Křestanstanskodemokratická unie, or KDU) and the Union of Farmers and the Countryside (Spojenectví zemědělců a venkova, or SZV), respectively. In April, the Movement for Self-Governing Democracy – Association for Moravia and Silesia (Hnutí za samosprávnou demokracii – Sdružení pro Moravu a Slezsko, or HSD-SMS) established itself as a distinct electoral subject whose primary goal was to achieve fiscal federalism within a tripartite Bohemian + Moravian-Silesian + Slovak federal state. The movement’s founding statement, though, conceded that “if the Slovak establishment does not agree with the change from a two-membered federation into a three-membered federation, HSD-SMS will seek solution to the ‘Moravian question’ within the framework of the Czech republic,” specifically by seeking to establish four země—Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Prague (quoted in Mareš and Strmiska 2003). In addition to offering this novel strategy, HSD-SMS differed from the other parties in terms of organizational structure. It avoided the rigidity of a political party and relied on a loose, umbrella-like arrangement. This was a risky decision: on one hand, it allowed HSD-SMS to claim a broad base of support by subsuming the memberships of remaining unaffiliated Moravist organizations. On the other hand, it risked reifying the differences that had divided those same organizations throughout the first months of 1990. Another distinctive characteristic involved the symbolic power of HSD-SMS’s leadership. Boleslav Bárta, to that point the chief of the largest constituent organization of the HSD-SMS (the Společnost pro Moravu a Slezsko, or SMS, which had re-formed in January) and the most visible champion of the tripartite federal solution in 1968, became the new movement’s leader. Bárta possessed charisma and historical credentials unmatched by any leader of the alternative Moravist formations. The diverse field of Moravist organizations had crystallized into two more coherent blocs with different substantive and strategic goals. Bereft of institutional inheritances and thus forced to make difficult choices, Moravist organizations had wasted the first months of 1990. During the same period, SMO and ZMOS had capitalized on previous resources and established regular contacts with national and federal authorities. In the spring, the new blocs failed to engage the state in deep

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talks and received only symbolic concessions from competing parties and state bodies. On May 9, for example, the FS issued a resolution—a symbolic statement unbuttressed by legal weight—that echoed some of the Moravists’ most common complaints (Usnesení 190/1990). The resolution’s omissions were more telling than its text. Deputies did not address substantive questions of Moravian self-government, leaving that task to future “freely elected legislators.” They did not specify whether the question of Moravian self-government would be decided within national or federal bodies. They charged the federal government, not with initiating a new territorial-administrative system, but with reforming the tax system so that it would benefit primarily municipalities and, secondarily, unspecified other “independent territorial administrative units.” The resolution was tantamount to recognition that Moravist demands existed. It did not stake out a position on how or when those demands should be addressed. While occasioned by Moravists’ demands and electoral potential, it did not privilege any particular (federal/tripartite vs. national/zemský) Moravist stance or envision any concrete steps toward solving the “Moravia question.” In the weeks that followed, other constitutional bodies endorsed the FS’s vague resolution. The ČNR passed a similar resolution on May 18, and the Czech government signed on at its June 6 meeting. At the conclusion of the meeting in which it had endorsed the SMO-supported course of transforming municipalities, the government condemned the injustice of abolishing the země in 1949 in language identical to that of the federal and national resolutions. June Elections and the Curse of Electoral Success

In the critical months of early 1990, the non-availability of network resources inherited from extant institutions facilitated the discussion of multiple strategies and fomented cleavages between Moravist organizations. These cleavages prohibited advocates of Moravian selfgovernment from establishing the same contacts and influence that the municipalities, via SMO, ZMOS, and AMO, had achieved. The organizations could not use the spring of 1990 to lobby the state. Instead, they were forced to concentrate on inter-organizational battles. By late spring, their compromises had borne limited fruit via the symbolic proclamations of various constitutional bodies. A second victory for Moravists came in the June elections themselves, where the HSD-SMS performed surprisingly well and distinguished itself as

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Czechoslovakia’s strongest Moravist organization. In the months following the elections, however, HSD-SMS failed to capitalize on its electoral success. Existing accounts of this failure fail to appreciate the importance of other institutional factors—especially the rules for constitutional amendment—in explaining the HSD-SMS’s ineffectiveness (Pernes 1996; Strmiska 2001). In fact, a complex spiral of institutional constraints, poor decisions, snubs from Prague-based politicians, and continuing centrifugal pressures within the HSD-SMS explain the continued impotence of Moravists’ attempts to pass legislation establishing a self-governing Moravia. The elections confirmed HSD-SMS as the only viable Moravist voice. The SMV acquired no seats, and the MOH gained one seat in the ČNR. HSD-SMS acquired 22 seats (11% of the total) in the ČNR and 16 in the FS, including seven (9.3%) in the Czech half of the Chamber of Nations and nine (6.0%) in the Chamber of the People. For a regional movement that had formed only months earlier, the results were more than respectable: third place in the ČNR, third place in the Czech half of the FS’s Chamber of Nations, and fifth place in the FS’s Chamber of the People. To understand why Moravist demands continued to fall on deaf ears after the elections, one must appreciate the institutional difficulties that HSD-SMS faced in its mission to achieve federal constitutional reform. The constitution made it very difficult to pass constitutional amendments. The relevant rule required every amendment to be ratified by a 3/5 supermajority of each of the following forums: (a) The FS’s Chamber of the People (200 members), (b) the Czech half of the FS’s Chamber of Nations (75 members), and (c) the Slovak half of the FS’s Chamber of Nations (75 members). This provision granted disproportionate power to each of the two chambers of the federal upper house and particularly to the Slovak half, given that only 1/3 of Czechoslovakia’s population lived in Slovakia. As Stanger (2000, 143) has noted, “what [the rule] meant, in practice, was that a mere thirty-one Slovak deputies in the Chamber of the Nations could block any proposed constitutional amendment, even if the bill had the unanimous support of all the other 269 deputies in both chambers.” Stanger and others have documented the implications of this provision for the events surrounding the “velvet divorce” in 1992-3. They have not remarked on its implications for the HSD-SMS, a movement whose ultimate end was federal constitutional reform. The “direct” implications of the provision were prodigious enough. To establish Moravia-Silesia as a third constituent republic, Bárta and company would have to win over supermajorities in each of the federal

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chambers, including the Slovak upper chamber, where HSD-SMS had no representation. This would be nearly impossible in a context where other mandate-winning parties had referred vaguely, if at all, to Moravian self-government in their electoral manifestoes (Řehák and Řeháková 1991). The law’s “indirect” implications were even more formidable. After the June elections, the most pressing constitutional issue in Czechoslovakia was not the “Moravian question” but the future of the Czech-Slovak relationship. From August forward, representatives of Czech, Slovak, and federal organs met to discuss plans for drafting new federal and national constitutions. The absence of existing Moravian institutions prohibited Moravian voices at the talks and effectively excluded demands for tripartism. Existing institutional rules and the major axis of contemporary constitutional debate, in short, militated powerfully against the HSD-SMS’s post-election success. Constitutional limitations, combined with the fact that the HSDSMS had gained a larger percentage of national seats than federal seats, would seem to have made the movement’s post-election choices easy. HSD-SMS should pursue its “second-best” strategy: abandon hope of a federal amendment (at least momentarily), push for influence within Czech national organs, and gain territorial autonomy for Moravia and Silesia within the Czech republic. In fact, HSD-SMS pursued this strategy. In June, the movement joined OF and the Christian Democratic Union – People’s Party (KDU-ČSL) to form the Czech government and took the reins of one minor ministry (the Ministry of Control). On August 21, a group of HSD-SMS deputies in the ČNR submitted a draft law that would create a quadripartite zemský system, with the hope that this law would pass quickly and go into effect on January 1, 1991. In September, the Czech government established a commission to examine the republic’s future regional set-up, and in November, without taking any stand on the issue, the commission issued four possible solutions, including the HSD-SMS’s favored quadripartite zemský variant. Despite these small steps, HSD-SMS was under serious strains from June forward. HSD-SMS and KDU-ČSL were the only political subjects in Czechoslovakia to enter government at the national level and opposition at the federal level. This “double identity” was particularly awkward for HSD-SMS, since the movement’s leadership, including Bárta, was now concentrated in the Federal Assembly. What would this fact imply for the relationship between movement leadership and more junior movement members in the Czech government and the ČNR? This question would be alarming enough for a political party; it was particularly acute for a movement comprised of such disparate elements,

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some of whom were already upset with the leadership’s pragmatic shift toward the national strategy. Competing parties took advantage of divisions within the movement. HSD-SMS deputies had a difficult time defending their proposals and airing their concerns. When HSD-SMS deputies rose to speak in parliament, OF deputies attacked them and defeated their counterproposals. HSD-SMS deputies proposed more statutory amendments per deputy between June and December 1990 than any other party or movement besides KDU-ČSL. Only 3% of HSD-SMS’s amendments eventually passed, however, compared with almost a quarter of KDU-ČSL amendments (Syllová 1992). In terms of the success of proposed legislative amendments, HSD-SMS failed more frequently than any other party. In Syllová’s words (1992, 246), these data show that “even though HSD-SMS was, de jure, a government party, they were a de facto opposition” after the elections. Anecdotes from FS and ČNR debates prove a similar point. During the FS’s debate on the July amendment to abolish the national committees, for example, Bárta took the floor. He argued that the current law, in addition to laying the foundations for self-governing municipalities, should also set the stage for a Moravian-Silesian legislature that would, in agreement with a counterpart Bohemian legislature, delegate responsibilities to a Bohemian-Moravian National Council. While other HSD-SMS members rose to support Bárta, he was nearly booed out of the building by (predominantly OF) colleagues. They charged him with nationalism, with Communist collaboration, with raising issues that were irrelevant to the legislation under consideration, with flouting parliamentary procedure, and with usurping the legal rights of the ČNR (Federální shromáždění 18. července 1990). In the ČNR, consideration of the HSD-SMS draft bill establishing the zemský system was delayed by the OF deputies who controlled the chamber’s agenda, and HSD-SMS deputies received treatment similar to Bárta’s when they rose, in the context of debate on the laws on municipalities and district offices, to push for the establishment of Moravian self-government (Česká národní rada 4. září 1990, 9. října 1990). 4 Alienated factions within HSD-SMS used this legislative failure as a means to attack the formal leadership, and, throughout the autumn, the movement became buried in internal bickering. On October 17, an OF deputy accused Bárta of collaboration with the secret police. In the following days, three HSD-SMS deputies and Minister of Control Bohumil Tichý publicly attacked him for poor management. Initially, it seemed as if a grassroots rally of the movement would vindicate Bárta,

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as a joint statement from district-level leaders on October 10 deprived Bárta’s critics of the right to speak publicly in the name of the movement. By that point, however, the divisions ran deep, both within and outside of the HSD-SMS. Alternative Moravist formations—including the more radical Moravian National Party (Moravská národní strana, or MNS), which had formed in August—challenged the HSD-SMS’s status as the legitimate voice of Moravist demands. Despite successes in certain municipalities (especially Brno), HSD-SMS gained only 4.16% of the popular vote and 2.56% of the seats in the November 1990 municipal elections in the Czech republic. On February 19, 1991, the club of HSD-SMS deputies in the ČNR, dismayed that the government had not met Moravist demands, called on Minister Tichý to submit his resignation. HSD-SMS became, now formally, an opposition movement. One month later, an HSD-SMS faction called a meeting of all Moravian, Silesian and Slovak parties in Bratislava to consider re-initiating the federal strategy. The same month, internal squabbles led the HSD-SMS club in the FS to split, and in May, Bárta died of a heart attack. The new movement leader, Jan Kryčer, quickly reoriented the movement into a conventional centrist party that would not limit its focus to Moravia and Silesia and would seek cooperation with other parties. By the beginning of 1991, when elected municipal councils were settling into new roles and SMO/ZMOS were initiating a new round of talks with respective national organs, HSD-SMS and alternative Moravist organizations were in organizational shambles. While the issues of Moravian self-government and administrative decentralization to higher territorial sub-national institutions had been widely discussed from the spring of 1990 forward, Moravists had no success in establishing such regions. The movement was consumed by internal wrangling—about the shape of higher self-governing units, the means of attaining those units, and the financial foundations of the units. This state resulted from the absence of viable sub-national units before 1989. Arguments rooted in the absence of transformable units were compounded by the constitutional rules within which HSD-SMS was forced to operate. Unable to draw on existing network resources, excluded from vertical networks through which to lobby politicians and ministries, unable to straddle the fence between societal interest group and state organization, and disadvantaged by inherited constitutional rules, Moravists could do little more than introduce an unspecific notion that, somehow, “Moravia mattered.”

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Institutional Dearth: The Irrelevance of Civil Service Reform

The first two cases involved groups of actors (SMO, ZMOS, HSD-SMS) using and confronting legacies to push for desired institutional outcomes. In the case of “the civil service,” however, no collective group existed to pursue new institutional solutions. Individual state employees inherited certain informal connections but did not have access to symbolic resources derived from past mobilization or network resources generated by official state institutions. In this section, I show how the lack of inherited resources and the stain of association with the KSČ worked against the rise of civil service protections on the reform agenda of 1989-90. The first section of this chapter showed that bureaucratic positions were not subject to roundtable bargaining. Counterelites, it was assumed, could reshape the bodies they controlled by utilizing existing legal mechanisms. In reality, however, the fact that administrative jobs were off limits reinforced the relative security of low- and middle-level bureaucratic positions. To say that individual bureaucrats were momentarily safe, however, is not the same as suggesting that the civil service, as a collective group, was protected. As I argued in chapter 2, the socialist regime successfully eradicated the concept of “civil service.” Legislation—especially the 1950 law on state employees and the 1965 Labor Code—diluted distinctions between state and non-state workers. As a result, (1) state employment became a low-prestige sector, (2) administration became highly fragmented along sectoral lines and privileged vertical over horizontal coordination, (3) bureaucrats ceased to identify with the civil service as a distinctive social group, (4) turnover rates between state jobs and non-state jobs accelerated, and most bureaucrats spent portions of their professional lives outside of state administration, and (5) bureaucracies became deeply politicized. While communist politicians in neighboring countries began to rebuild independent civil services in the 1980s, Czechoslovakia’s hardline leadership clung to the orthodox project. Thus, even while they grasped onto their old positions, bureaucrats lacked the means, as a group, to pursue civil service protections. No formal ties linked them (or their individual fates) to other state employees. Bureaucrats also could not claim a positive symbolic legacy. During the Prague Spring, when municipal leaders and Moravists mobilized, bureaucrats either actively supported regime conservatives or remained complicit. Administrators suspected of supporting reformers were dismissed early in the normalization period. Discussions about municipal and regional self-government circulated in semi-official

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circles in the late 1980s, but, with the exception of an informal plan to establish an institute for state administration that never reached the high organs of party power, civil service reform had not been discussed since the First Republic. The “civil service,” in short, was a congeries of employees laboring in a group of sector-specific bodies who could claim no symbolic cachet from previous historical crises. The flip side of bureaucrats’ lack of association with each other was their close association with the discredited but widely feared KSČ. On one hand, the party’s decreasing support and party leaders’ new strategic orientations made it difficult for bureaucrats to use the party to assert themselves publicly. The party was in crisis. Communists no longer dominated decisionmaking institutions. Between November and February, approximately 500,000 KSČ members turned in their membership cards (Martin 1990). Between January and April, four federal government ministers, including Prime Minister Marián Čalfa, forfeited their memberships. Even if bureaucrats could attempt to use the party to secure their positions, it was doubtful to what extent they would succeed in convincing the anti-communist majority that they should be protected. In addition to the general party crisis, new party leaders positioned themselves in ways that cut against the party’s usability by bureaucrats. On December 15, 1989, for example, the Central Committee ordered all KSČ workplace cells to disband by the end of the month. Differences developed between KSČ and KSS leaderships, but neither party’s strategy was particularly compatible with a commitment to protecting bureaucrats. Czech leaders decentralized power to conservative regional (krajský) cells outside of Prague, while Slovak leaders concentrated power in its own hands, isolated itself from members’ initiatives, and steered a reformist course (Grzymała-Busse 2002). Communist parties were not merely reeling, they were restructuring, and they were doing so in ways that limited bureaucrats’ influence over the shape of party policy. One might have expected bureaucrats to turn to trade unions for protection and promotion. The November events, though, had precipitated a crisis in the party-controlled Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH), and it was unclear throughout early 1990 who—the ROH, the Association of Strike Committees (an informal oppositional organization that traced its history to the velvet revolution’s early days), a hybrid of these organizations, or an entirely different collective actor—had the right to speak for organized labor. Bureaucrats’ problem was not a shortage of possible civil service models to advocate: the First Republic’s Dienstpragmatik and a surfeit

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of civil service models implemented in western countries in the 1970s and 1980s were available. Nor was it a scarcity of possible international support for civil service reform; unions in neighboring countries and multilateral institutions like the OECD might have provided such assistance. The problem, rather, was with the “civil service” itself—with the absence of a viable domestic constituency to avail itself of these models and assistance. Lacking symbolic and formal network resources and discredited by their association with a simultaneously reeling and restructuring Leninist party, the “civil service” was incapable of advocating reforms. Of course, bureaucrats were not entirely helpless. While publicly advocating civil service reforms was de facto impossible, transitional bureaucrats could avail themselves of informal network resources provided by the nomenklatura system. Instead of pushing for legal protections and responsibilities as state employees, they could pursue personal aggrandizement by taking advantage of established ties, particularly those linking them to managers in state enterprises. Soon after the roundtables, politicians and citizens recognized the threat posed by nomenklatura sabotage. Even if they did not understand its precise mechanisms, they sensed that old elites could somehow act behind closed doors to deceive them. By the first months of 1990, citizens were concerned that reconstruction at lower levels had not occurred and suspected that the continuity of elites empowered a rearguard “mafia.” In January and February public opinion polls, 57% and 40% (respectively) of respondents reported no changes in the management of the organization for which they worked, and only 25% believed that personnel changes in enterprises and state institutions had been sufficient (“Survey Shows” 1990). In April, the OF coordinating committee called for a purge of state organizations in response to public dissatisfaction. Public suspicion of behind-the-scenes mafia control approached the border of paranoia. The atmosphere was fueled by controversy surrounding the federal Interior Minister’s (Richard Sacher’s) handling of the secret police. OF branches, the press, and two of Sacher’s deputy ministers accused Sacher of taking a soft line toward compromised secret police thugs and of combing files for evidence to discredit OF candidates to the June elections (Obrman 1990b; Williams and Deletant 2001). The result of these simultaneous developments—the reconstitution of legislative organs, the non-reconstitution of managerial positions in executive organs and enterprises, press reports of secret police penetration and the continuing activity of KSČ workplace cells despite their “official” extinction—led to growing suspicion of “mafias” in the ministerial ranks.

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The fact that lower-managerial bureaucrats did not possess legal civil service protections was not, at least for many citizens and OF branches, sufficient or reassuring. The situation, they believed, called for a more concerted purge. In the early months, OF and VPN leaders took small steps to counter “mafia sabotage.” They founded movement branches within ministries, for example, which were charged with counteracting the continuing influence of KSČ cells. Also, on March 12, the Slovak government published a statement, the “The Foundations of Personnel Policy,” which conceded that early attempts to change the management of enterprises and state organs “in some ministries and organs did not proceed effectively, [that] in many workplaces, the situation remained ‘same-old, same-old’” (“Zásady personálnej politiky” 1990). The statement went on to recommend that management positions, particularly in the personnel departments of ministries and national committees, become the subject of roundtable agreements including representatives of the organizations, unions, VPN, and personnel departments themselves. In fact, however, two barriers blocked the implementation of this and similar projects. First, the message of kicking incumbents out conflicted with the message that the national governments sent to functionaries of the soon-to-be obsolete regional and district national committees. They assured sub-national bureaucrats that the change in the system of territorial administration might require them to relocate but would not cost them their jobs. Slovak Interior Minister Mečiar, for example, reassured functionaries of regional national committees in early March: It is necessary to finish the changes in the executive personnel of the national committees as soon as possible. We have to proceed from the principle of expertise. To me, it doesn’t matter which party the worker represents. It only matters if he knows how to help the town . . . There are many people that don’t belong in the executive realm. These people must go, not because they’re members of the Communist Party, but because they’re not up to the work. Those who are capable of doing the work you should support, retain, and allow them to work! (“Nepremárnime, využime čas” 1990)

The second barrier was the Labor Code, within which all players agreed changes must occur. The Labor Code distinguished between employees who began their working relationships through contract (smlouvou) and employees who began their relationships through appointment (jmenováním). The most significant distinction between contracted and appointed employees was the ease of dismissing them.

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Contracted workers could only be dismissed for six strictly defined reasons, but appointed workers could be dismissed whenever the superior organization (in this case the government, on recommendation of the appropriate minister) desired. It was much easier, in other words, to dismiss appointed workers than contract workers. In light of the public’s concern about “mafias,” the largest problem was that many of the employees that citizens suspected of sabotage were employed via contract. To be dismissed, their employers would have to demonstrate that one of the six enumerated conditions had been met. If suspected “mafiosos” had been employed via appointment, no such legal justification would be necessary. 5 To summarize: the Labor Code made it difficult to dislodge suspected mafiosos from their positions, since many ministerial personnel were employed on the basis of contract. In stipulating that changes in administrative personnel would take place within the unamended Labor Code, the government tied its own hands. 6 There is some irony in the fact that discredited bureaucrats took succor in the same Labor Code that the regime used to eradicate the notion of civil service. Despite OF and VPN’s vehemence, the governments’ rhetoric, and the few concrete steps taken, many bureaucrats managed to retain their positions through the June elections. After the elections, a new round of despondence about the resilience of lower-level managers in enterprises and state bodies began. Once again, OF branches took the lead, with a document produced by the Hodonín (southern Moravia) organization in July occasioning a swell of support from other district and municipal OF branches. Each branch suggested that mafias existed and called on the governments to take steps to diffuse their influence. Both Czech Prime Minister Pithart and President Havel responded to the complaints. Pithart conceded that certain state officials were behaving like “an impenetrable mafia,” but also suggested that “decent experts” should be protected against witch hunts. Havel also confirmed the existence of “a network of strange mafias” and encouraged citizens and politicians to use existing laws to dismiss them. This was a dubious strategy, given the already-learned lessons of the Labor Code (Pehe 1990a). The final act of the 1990 “mafia” drama took place in August and September. Then, OF federal deputies pursued an amendment to the Labor Code which would use a 1988 Labor Code amendment and subsequent government directive in much the same way that the OF used the 1968 precedent to reconstitute legislative organs. At the end of August, six OF deputies submitted a draft bill to the FS presidium. The bill drew both substantively and procedurally from Communist precedent. Substantively, it used language that closely resembled the

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wording of the 1988 government directive to extend the range of appointed managers to include one more (e.g., one lower) level in the bureaucracy and enterprises. Procedurally, it was submitted in a way (to the presidium) that the 1968 constitution allowed but that, in practice, was unconventional. This method was speedier and less transparent than the normal legislative process. The presidium would was required to direct the bill to the relevant committees for consideration, but, once passed by the Presidium, it could only be voted up or down by the plenum of the joint Assembly. No debate, and thus no Communist obstruction, would be tolerated outside of the private meetings of the committee of constitutional and legal affairs and the presidium. On September 3, after adopting amendments proposed by the committee working in cooperation with the confederation of trade unions (a decentralized organization that had crystallized in the months between January and September), the presidium accepted the bill. It reasoned that measures extending appointment by one layer of management and not “grandfathering in” the clause were necessary to “realize economic reform.” Two weeks later, federal Prime Minister Čalfa urged deputies to ratify the presidium’s conclusion, and on September 20, a joint meeting of the Federal Assembly did just that (Usnesení federálního shromáždění 1990). During the call to vote on the ratification of the presidium’s findings, Communist deputies managed to initiate a brief attack against ratification, criticizing the unorthodox parliamentary procedure, arguing that the measure justified a witch hunt against party members, and suggesting that the measure conflicted with International Labor Organization standards (Federální shromáždění 20. září 1990). Eventually, however, the Assembly ratified the presidium’s decision, and the amendment went into force. Managers at one lower level became legal appointees capable of being dismissed by a government vote on ministers’ proposals. By the end of the year, “civil servants” were more vulnerable—and politicians more powerful—than they had been at the beginning of the year. Legacies of the state-socialist era thus impacted the fate of “civil service reform” in multiple ways. First, and most directly, bureaucrats inherited no formal network resources. This institutional absence prohibited collective action and destroyed formal bargaining potential. Nor could bureaucrats use institutions that might protect their interests, such as reeling and redirecting Communist parties or the chaotic and increasingly anti-communist trade union movement. Bureaucrats did, however, have access to informal nomenklatura networks and formal Labor Code protections. Some bureaucrats used these tools to pad their pockets and obstruct democratic reform. By the end of the year,

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however, OF politicians reacted to complaints about this obstruction and dismembered the legal underpinning of subversion. The latter changes were tantamount to an inversion of civil service reform, as politicians increased their appointment power. Although deputies justified this action on the grounds that it would encourage the disintegration of mafia networks, the law’s flip-side was equally important: it increased the politicization of the bureaucracy and reinforced the irrelevance of civil service reform. Conclusions

Despite the flurry of activity in the months following the velvet revolution, the new Czechoslovak politics was played within old institutional structures. These structures shaped the resources to which various groups were privy, and, eventually, the paths that Czechoslovak counterelites were able to follow. Decisions about which reforms to pursue and which to avoid, in other words, were shaped by conditions inherited from the former regime. The key to understanding the choices that counterelites made about the institutions of territorial administration and personnel management is an appreciation of the power of old institutions and the consequences of roundtable decisions to keep those institutions. All the same, old institutions are not entirely deterministic. As this chapter’s three case studies have demonstrated, symbolic inheritances and strategic action also help explain transitional outcomes. For SMO and ZMOS, network resources came ready made, but organizational leaders had to realize their potential, overcome external and internal threats to their promise, and work to utilize them in order to achieve goals. Moravists gained public support despite their negative institutional inheritance, but their lack of access to inherited networks fueled internal rancor and prohibited “professional,” non-political contacts with high-level decisionmakers. Still, the fact that SMO/ZMOS and HSD-SMS were able to mobilize in the first place owed much to their respective abilities to frame their mobilization as a continuation of activities begun during the Prague Spring. Their successful mobilization (bracketing for the moment the question of their ultimate success in earning desired institutional outcomes) contrasts, not only with the “civil service,” but also with the case of leaders of district and regional national committees. All of the latter actors lacked a symbolic connection to 1968 and were closely associated with the socialist statebuilding project. Thus, while network resources derived from existing institutions affect the likelihood that mobilization will succeed, symbolic

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resources may open the doorway to political mobilization in the first place. A direct comparison of SMO/ZMOS and the “civil service” points to the importance of distinguishing between formal network resources and informal network resources. Under state socialism, formal legal ties linked municipal committees to high state bodies, especially the national governments, ministries, and assemblies. After 1989, organizational leaders utilized these ties to build membership and gain access to higherlevel politicians. With the “civil service,” state employees lacked legal ties to each other but were linked, in many cases through nomenklatura networks, to other influential actors, particularly managers of state enterprises. In the post-transitional period, they took advantage of these informal, extra-legal networks. In the municipalities’ case, use of existing networks ultimately resulted in institutional changes that coincided, albeit imperfectly, with municipal leaders’ interests. In the case of the “civil service,” use of existing networks fomented public concern about mafias and ultimately produced legislation that undercut existing legal protections. Municipalities had achieved the baseline for increased independence, while the “civil service” had become more dependent on central politicians’ caprices. In their own ways, municipal leaders and “civil servants” were both bricoleurs. Both groups (one actual, the other “virtual”) took advantage of existing resources to operate within new conditions, and both produced (one intentionally, the other unintentionally) outcomes that changed the rules of the political game and the nature of the institutions they inhabited. In the case of municipalities, the outcome— constitutional recognition of independent, self-governing municipalities as the backbone of the state—resulted from collective action toward this goal. In the case of the “civil servants,” the outcome—an amendment of the Labor Code that made it easier to expel contracted employees— resulted from disparate individuals taking advantage of informal ties and politicians’ actions to control the perceived effects of this process. Moravists, on the other hand, lacked the institutional preconditions of bricolage. The HSD-SMS’s deep frustration supports the argument that the absence of institutionalized resources handicaps actors concerned to achieve institutional reforms at moments of regime change. Notes 1 This ambiguity occasionally led to confusion. In the opening speech of the second SMO conference in April, for example, SMO chairman Černík

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criticized the division of the Czech Interior Ministry—the division of civil administration—that was charged with coordinating the activity of national committees. Černík repeated a complaint that the SMO council had lodged in the preceding weeks—that “the ever-rising repressive role of the security units of the Interior Ministry politically and morally discredit[ed] the civil administrative division.” The division should therefore be removed from the auspices of the Interior Ministry. Later in the same speech, however, Černík had to assure delegates (some of whom had undoubtedly raised the point to before the speech) that, were the division of civil administration to be relocated, SMO would not assume the division’s vacated functions. He stopped short of claiming that “SMO is not a state body,” for such a claim could effectively have mitigated the opportunity inherent in the state/society ambiguity, but argued that “. . . it is necessary to bear in mind that the Union of Towns and Communities is not a new organ for the management of national committees, and therefore that it doesn’t suit the organization to manage the concrete legislative, economic, and other relevant questions of the development of our territorial units. It is, on the other hand, an institution that exists to protect the interests of towns and communities” (“Boj nového se starým” 1990). 2 SMO’s decision to lobby for the abolition of the “national committee” label, formally reached at the second SMO conference in early April, followed the publication of public opinion data that indicated serious public dissatisfaction with the operation of municipal national committees. Polls indicated that while 88% of Czechoslovak citizens supported President Havel, 83% supported the federal government, and 76% supported the Federal Assembly, as many as 57% expressed negative attitudes toward the national committees. 3 Evidence of the more gradual reforms initially envisioned by the opposition comes from multiple sources. See, for example, chapter ten of OF’s draft constitution prepared for—but never used in—the early roundtables. That document takes it for granted that national committees will continue to exist and takes no stance on how many layers of committees there should be. Also see press coverage of the inter-party discussion of territorial administration from February 7, 1990 and the Czech government’s decision of March 7, 1990. There, counterelites envisioned the abolition of the regional tier and the maintenance of (a) district and municipal tiers, and (b) the moniker, “national committee.” A vaguely similar direction is evidenced in chapter eight of a draft Slovak national constitution produced by the SNR’s constitutional commission in April 1990. That document is extremely vague on national committees, though it does state that there should be two layers and that the details should be worked out via a special law. For the OF’s December 1989 draft constitution, see “První návrh” (1990). On the Czech government decision of March 7, see Zářecký (1996). For the SNR’s April 1990 draft Slovak constitution, see “Návrh ústavy” (1990). 4 Tensions between OF and HSD-SMS also flared around this time at the mass level. On October 28, for example, Czech and Slovak representatives met at a castle in the South Moravian town of Slavkov u Brna to discuss the state’s future constitutional balance. Between 2,000 and 2,500 citizens greeted the delegates as they arrived at the castle. The crowd was split relatively evenly amongst supporters of OF (who waved OF flags) and supporters of HSD-SMS

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and MNS (who waved Moravian-Silesian flags resurrected from the precommunist era). The HSD-SMS supporters jeered OF politicians as their cars arrived at the castle, while the OF partisans cheered. In periods between the arrival of politicians’ cars, the two camps traded verbal barbs (Pernes 1996). 5 Between 1965 and 1988, only the top two positions—minister (appointed by the president) and deputy minister—were legally filled by appointment. A 1988 amendment to the Labor Code and a subsequent federal government directive, however, extended the range of appointed positions to the next-lowest layer of management and automatically “promoted” incumbents of those positions to the ranks of the appointed. This provision allowed the government, if it so desired, to swiftly dismiss the first three layers of management. Given the decentralization of the personnel management regime, however, different ministries and enterprises had different numbers of tiers of administration, and almost all ministries had more than three levels of management. The law amending the Labor Code is Zákon 188/1988. The government directive is Nařízení vlády 223/1988. 6 Given that the Labor Code was drafted for a full-employment economy, organizations that dismissed workers—whether contract or appointed workers— had to clear the dismissal with the relevant labor organization and help the dismissed employee find a new position “that corresponded with his qualifications.”

4 Two States, Two Paths, One Destination As they went about rebuilding the state, Czechoslovakia’s new breed of politicians recognized that reforms beyond those passed in 1990 would be necessary. The process of state transformation, they occasionally suggested, was not complete; at some point in the future, self-governing regions and a legally protected civil service would have to be built. In reality, though, Czech and Slovak politicians continued to put off these reforms for the duration of the 1990s. Why? As the first chapter made clear, strands within the broader literature predict that politicians should have established the institutions, as doing so would have increased the internal and external legitimacy of new elites and assisted in democratic consolidation. Observers of the Czechoslovak case during this period (Malíková 1995; Vidláková 1993, 2000; Zářecký 1996) have offered their own explanations, generally suggesting that, at least for the years between 1990 and 1992, politicians failed to establish the missing institutions because they were preoccupied with negotiations that ultimately led to the dissolution of Czechoslovak federation. This chapter continues to engage the puzzle of why politicians failed to establish regions and a civil service. I argue that the failure to establish new administrative institutions in the terminal federal era (1990-1992) was not a function of a simple “lack of time.” In fact, debates about administrative reform raged during this period, but they became buried in two structural processes—executive-legislative battles and party-system fragmentation—that resulted from Czech-Slovak disagreements. I then pursue an argument that politicians in Czechoslovakia’s two successor states failed to build the new institutions because the existing, “incomplete” states granted them extensive control over their respective executive branches. While selfgoverning regions and independent civil services may have been desirable from a long-term perspective, the system of missing institutions was extremely attractive from short-term partisan points of view. After the velvet divorce, central governments in Prague and Bratislava maintained tight control over state budgets and bureaucratic appointments within and beyond the national capitals. The institutional

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systems granted governing parties significant room for maneuver. The two dominant political figures of the early and mid-1990s—Czech Prime Minister Václav Klaus and Slovak Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar—viewed the states they inherited in different ways and used this agency toward different ends. Klaus resisted pressures from coalition partners and opposition parties, choosing not to establish the two institutions because he viewed the market-state relationship in zero-sum terms and privileged the former of the latter, and because he recognized partisan gains to be made by maintaining the centralized state that he inherited. Mečiar enjoyed the power that the incomplete state granted him but also sought to overhaul that system by creating a new tier of regional state administration (not regional self-government) to further institutionalize his party’s power. Despite the prime ministers’ different philosophies of the state, governing styles, and practical actions, the end result of their actions was identical: in the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the “incomplete states” persisted, and the two missing institutions remained absent. To develop these arguments, I begin by examining debates about regions in the terminal federal period (1990-1992) and paying particular attention to how the uncertainties of the era made progress on creating new institutions difficult. Next, I turn to the early years of the independent Czech Republic, analyzing Klaus’s philosophy of the state, the position of Klaus’s Civic Democratic Party (ODS) within the post1992 Czech government, and the interactions between the prime minister’s philosophy of the state and his political position. The third section takes a similar approach to the independent Slovak Republic, focusing first on the prolonged period of flux between 1992 and 1994, and then on the stable Mečiar government that took office at the end of 1994. I contrast Mečiar’s philosophy of the state with Klaus’s and analyze the steps, culminating in two 1996 laws, that Mečiar took to “partyize” the state apparatus. The chapter concludes with an explicit comparison of the ways that distinctive Czech and Slovak dynamics produced similar institutional outcomes. The Terminal Federal Era (1990-1992): Administrative Reform in an Uncertain Political Environment

The terminal federal era (1990-1992) is generally remembered as an unhappy time for administrative reform, a period in which no new institutions were created and the questions of whether to establish selfgoverning regions and an independent civil service decreased in urgency. Why should this have been? Existing accounts tend to

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emphasize that Czech-Slovak dominated political life in this era and crowded out other issues. Overwhelmed by the tasks of deconstructing the federal state, politicians turned a deaf ear to issues that could be addressed after more fundamental constitutional questions had been solved. In reality, the situation was more complex than the “not-enoughtime” explanation implies. Debates about the regions and civil service were not simply pushed to the back burner by the events leading up to the Czech-Slovak divorce. Instead, these debates became increasingly entangled in two phenomena—executive-legislative battles and partysystem fragmentation—that themselves resulted from Czech-Slovak disagreements. Instead of simply burying administrative reform, policymakers spent hours debating issues like the future status of regional governments, the relationship of state administration to regional self-governments, and the necessity of creating a legally protected civil service at national and/or federal levels. The problem, however, was that making coalitions and passing legislation in the chaotic terminalfederal environment was difficult. This section shows how interinstitutional battles and party-system fragmentation simultaneously added fuel to discussions about the regional reform and prevented politicians from reaching compromises on the Czech side of the state; other scholars (Malíková 1995, 2000; Sopóci 1995) have demonstrated similar dynamics for this period in Slovakia. Inter-Institutional Battles

During the terminal federal period, the Czechoslovak polity was beset by questions about which constitutional bodies could act in various policy areas. Debates about the shape of the Czechoslovak state produced institutional conflicts along three axes. The most visible axis applied between national and federal bodies. In 1991, for example, the Slovak National Council (SNR) threatened to pass a declaration of sovereignty. The declaration would declare Slovak national laws superior to federal laws. Debate about whether to rebuild the state from the “bottom-up”—by drafting national constitutions before a new federal constitution—or from the “top-down”—by drafting a federal constitution first—was simultaneously a debate between national (especially Slovak) and federal legislatures. A second axis involved national actors’ battles over the right to speak for the republics in rounds of Czech-Slovak bargaining. Within the republics, legislative and executive bodies jousted over who should represent their republics in negotiations. The velvet divorce ultimately

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resulted from interactions between Czech Prime Minister Klaus and Slovak Prime Minister Mečiar after the 1992 elections. Before those elections, though, national councils had displaced the governments as the central players in Czech-Slovak discussions (Mathernová 1993). By the time the state was formally dissolved, the balance of power on this axis had shifted toward the executive branch in both republics. The most relevant axis of institutional conflict involved disputes about which actors were responsible for taking the lead within national political arenas. This axis, which Montesquieu (1989) discussed at length and contemporary political scientists (Andeweg and Nijzink 1995; King 1976; Kopecký 2001b) have called the “non-party mode” of legislative-executive relations, involves legislators making common cause with each other, regardless of party or other attachments, against members of the government. One danger, in situations of intense legislative-executive conflict, is that even when all actors agree that an issue deserves attention, debate on that issues can get buried in disagreements about which actor should push the issue forward. This is precisely what happened in Czech and Slovak discussions of regional reform in 1991 and 1992. The national governments formed in 1990 had both committed themselves to establishing self-governing regions, and the national legislatures had approved their respective programs. From 1990 through 1992, though, progress on the regional reform was impeded as governments and legislatures argued about which body should play the lead role in sponsoring legislation on regionalization. The conflict occurred in two phases. During the first phase, which lasted from 1990 through October 1991, the government and the ČNR proceeded on parallel, uncoordinated tracks. In the fall of 1990, the cabinet established a commission to investigate possible territorialadministrative divisions for the Czech republic (Usnesení vlády 234/1990). The commission proposed four alternative concepts (Územní vztahy 1991). Having examined the four concepts, the cabinet proceeded to establish an office for the analysis of public administration and charged the Ministry of Interior with preparing two alternative variants of territorial administration. The first, zemský variant recalled the original First Republic system in certain respects; it foresaw the creation of three self-governing regions (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia) that would exist alongside 30-40 offices of district state administration (the 79 existing district offices would be abolished). The second, regional (regionální) variant also envisioned the abolition of the district offices, but suggested that they be replaced with twenty-two new districts. Each new district

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would host separate (oddělení) institutions of state administration and self-government (Vidláková 2000, 25-6). In August 1991, the cabinet decided to proceed with preparations for the first (zemský) variant and charged ministries with drafting the bills to create such a system (Usnesení vlády 292/1991). The resolution set a timetable for drafting a package of thirteen laws and directives. Strangely, the government did not submit an official account of its ambitious plans on these matters to the ČNR. Meanwhile, in the ČNR, an entirely separate series of events had transpired. Following the introduction and eventual defeat of the Moravist HSD-SMS’s draft bill on regional bodies in August 1990, MPs took few steps until February 1991. On February 14, Prime Minister Pithart read a report on the government’s progress toward meeting its programmatic goals on the floor of the ČNR. ČNR deputies responded by passing a resolution that questioned the extent of the government’s progress on initiating regional reform, affirmed the centrality of the ČNR to that process, and asked the government to “provide all necessary materials” to the legislature so that its organs could initiate a thorough analysis of the implications of any new territorial administrative arrangement (Usnesení 105/1991). The ČNR also funded an independent project to gauge the public’s familiarity with and reactions to various visions of sub-national administration. Thus began the ČNR’s independent course of investigating regional reform. In April 1991, all ČNR committees met to discuss the future shape of the republic. None had the benefit of considering the two draft plans that were being prepared simultaneously by the Interior Ministry, and the study which the ČNR had commissioned in February had not yet been prepared. The committees, consistent with the picture of party fragmentation that will be discussed below, supported numerous, idiosyncratic visions of the goals and requirements of territorial reform and regional self-government. Three committees suggested that the question of self-governing regions should be dealt with by federal organs, two suggested that each of the ČNR’s party clubs should issue an opinion on the question, and five issued no resolution whatsoever (“Společná zpráva” 1991). After the committees had met, the full chamber drafted a second resolution that both reaffirmed the importance of the ČNR in questions relating to the territorial administration of the Czech republic and suggested that the prospect of a federation comprised of more than two republics would be acceptable (Usnesení 150/1991). The latter step implied that federal bodies would play a key role in questions concerning the territorial division of the Czech republic. For the next six months, the ČNR did not discuss territorial

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administration, as Czech-Slovak relations continued to sour, the party system continued to fragment, HSD-SMS entered deeper crisis, and the government failed to inform the chamber of the details of the Interior Ministry’s draft plans and the cabinet’s subsequent decisions. By the autumn of 1991, inter-institutional relations were in poor shape. The government and ČNR had followed separate courses of action. MPs and ministers learned of each others’ actions through press reports rather than the usual channels of party and state coordination. Although the government had committed to the zemský variant in August 1991, it was unclear, given the committees’ fissiparous conclusions and the government’s decision not to share the details of the zemský plan with the legislature, how much support the plan might garner in the ČNR. The chaos intensified in the period of direct inter-institutional confrontation, which lasted from October 1991 through the end of the electoral term in June 1992. The second period began when MP Josef Ježek voiced exasperation about the desperate state of legislativeexecutive relations. “The same information that the government shared with the nation at a press conference,” Ježek complained “has not yet been shared with the ČNR” (Česká národní rada 9. října 1991). He proposed a resolution asking the government to report immediately on the state of its preparations and, in particular, on its timetable for tackling administrative reform. Ježek’s resolution passed, 118 votes to none. The following day, Prime Minister Pithart attempted to diffuse the growing inter-institutional tensions. In an address to the ČNR, he did not explain the government’s reticence to submit detailed plans. He did, however, submit the text of the August resolution, the timetable for the government’s future work, and certain background information, and he closed by deferring to the legislature: [Vis-à-vis] the thirteen points of the timetable that the realization of this concept will require: . . . [The government realizes that] it is necessary for twelve of these points to be enacted via legislation. It is thus absolutely clear to us who has the irrevocable [nezadatelné] right to solve, by a final verdict, this complex issue. The government, through the process of legislative initiative, can only be an aide in this process. (Česká národní rada 10. října 1991)

Pithart’s assurances did not have the intended effects. Immediately after his speech, MPs of government and opposition parties rose to criticize the government again. Jiří Payne, of the governing ODS,

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suggested that the government stop all preparations on territorial reform bills until each legislative committee had considered Pithart’s materials (Česká národní rada 10. října 1991). ODA’s Vladimír Šuman proposed to take Payne’s suggestion one step further: all government work on the regional/territorial reform should be delayed until the ČNR as a whole (not only its diverse committees) had offered a resolution. This episode was, in many ways, representative of the broader constitutional uncertainties then besetting the Czech republic: a debate about the establishment of new institutions (the regions) had aggravated disputes about the balance of power between existing institutions (the executive and the legislature). In the event, cooler heads prevailed: Václav Žák of the OH (Občanské Hnutí, or Civic Movement; Pithart’s party) reminded his colleagues “that according to the principle of separation of powers, the government is not some mere committee of the legislative chamber, as if it were possible for the legislature to tell it that it should or should not stop work on this or that issue or to take some specific action. The government introduces laws to us, and it is up to us to pass them” (Česká národní rada 10. října 1991). Deputies lauded Žák’s equanimity but still passed—by a unanimous 99-0 vote—a resolution referring the material that Pithart had presented to all committees and vowing to pass a unified resolution during the ČNR’s next plenary meeting. Again, deputies had voted as a cohesive, institutional bloc. While a handful of deputies abstained from voting, no one voted against the legislature and for the government. While this institutional unity gave way to party pressures during the ensuing committee process, the ČNR coalesced once again as a cohesive, anti-executive bloc when MPs met, three months later, to discuss the common report on the committees’ work on territorial reform. Again, both government and opposition deputies took the dais to criticize the government—for proceeding too slowly, for submitting incomplete information to the legislature, for eschewing its own programmatic priorities. MPs from various clubs remarked again on the poor state of inter-institutional relations. Two quotations, chosen from many, demonstrate this point. The first comes from Rudolf Dušek, a communist (opposition), and the second from Stanislav Bělehrádek of the (governing) KDU-ČSL: [It is a shame], bearing in mind the importance and weightiness of this whole issue, that the process has already been going on for such a long time. To me, it seems something like a game of ping-pong being played between the government and the ČNR, where neither side is

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able to decide [what it wants to do]. (Česká národní rada 24. ledna 1992) Members of the presidium of the ČNR will certainly remember the meeting of that body about two weeks ago. Then, the chair of the committee for territorial administration and nationalities asked other committee chairs whether their committees had considered the question of the administrative organization of the state. We found, shockingly, that the majority of the committees had not considered this question at all, that they had forgotten all about it, and that they hadn’t even requested the few materials necessary to consider the issue. Once again we’ve come face to face with the problem: when the ČNR should give an opinion, we don’t want to give an opinion. We want to put off this question once more . . . The whole situation reminds me of a hot potato that keeps being passed between the Czech government and the ČNR. We make out like we’re supposed to solve something, that we want to solve something, but then we pass the issue off to somebody else, so that they might decide for us. (Česká národní rada 24. ledna 1992)

By this point, one can safely guess the outcome of this round of debate. Buoyed by a raft of speeches criticizing the government, MPs passed, by an overwhelming majority, a slightly amended version of a resolution drafted by the committee for territorial reform and nationalities (Usnesení 348/1992). The resolution asked the government to accelerate preparation of the bills so that the ČNR could consider them before the end of the term. The government, however, disregarded what it interpreted as the ČNR’s recommendations. It passed six draft laws in February 1992 but did not submit them to the ČNR until March 11. At last, the government had submitted bills that it had prioritized in its programmatic statement less than two years earlier. Throughout the ČNR’s 1990-1992 term, executive-legislative posturing increased tensions. The relationships did not resemble the “inter-party” mode that typifies more mature parliamentary systems. Instead of exploiting close connections between the government and MPs—connections that can facilitate cooperation and produce quality legislation—politicians resorted to finger pointing and institutional pride, thus obstructing policy progress. Still, one must wonder: if legislators voted as a bloc against the government, why would they not simply rally support among their own numbers, introduce relevant draft legislation and pass reform bills of their own making? To answer this question, we must turn to the second characteristic phenomenon of this unstable period.

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Party-System Fragmentation and Undisciplined Parties

Legislators’ undoubtedly sincere complaints about the government camouflaged deep divisions among legislators themselves—divisions that were fomented by the disintegration of 1989’s umbrella movements and complicated by the uncertain future of the Czechoslovak state. There was genuine institutional unity against what legislators perceived as the reticence of the government to fulfill its program, but there were also significant party-political differences among legislators that made passing a regional reform difficult. In Czechoslovakia, the most visible trend in the party system during this period was the increasing quantity of parties and party groups. OF and VPN were umbrella movements whose membership rolls included individuals with divergent programmatic preferences and political styles. Czechoslovakia had also adopted a proportional electoral system. Rational politicians were likely to realize the implications of this system and to contest elections in smaller electoral groupings (Duverger 1954). What is more, debates about the future of the Czechoslovak state raged throughout the course of 1991 and fueled the centrifugal pressures that already riddled the nascent party system. Different parties and factions—especially in Slovakia—published draft constitutions, whose provisions often elicited complaints from former party colleagues and other parties (Malová 2001). With all of these factors pushing towards party-system fragmentation, and with the 1992 elections rapidly approaching, it is not surprising that Czech and Slovak systems became increasingly diverse (Reschová and Syllová 1996). By June of 1992, eighteen separate party clubs existed in the Federal Assembly, and over 100 parties had registered with the Interior Ministry. The scene was especially confusing since fragmentation was occurring on multiple state levels and in multiple institutional arenas: the party groups that existed in the Federal Assembly often lacked counterparts in the Czech and Slovak National Councils, and vice-versa. In the ČNR, for example, there were only eleven party clubs in June 1992. A second outstanding feature of parties and party systems during this period concerns the quality of the political subjects under formation. Roll-call data for the 1990-1992 National Councils era are not available. Close observers, however, note that the original opposition movements and the new parties lacked internal cohesion. Olson’s (1994, 104) discussion of intra-party dynamics in the 1990-1992 Federal Assembly could also be applied to the National Councils:

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The fluidity of party formation in the Assembly was matched by their [MPs] voting patterns. Party discipline changed over time and also varied among parties. As new parties were created, they formed ad hoc coalitions on individual bills. Some members did not vote with their parties. With the exception of the traditional discipline of the Communist Party, no deputies reported a strong sense of party discipline or recrimination from their party clubs.

What did these developments imply for the regional reform and related changes in territorial administration? From the beginning, one is struck by an irony: the institutional cohesion that the ČNR demonstrated versus the government was exercised in an environment of deep fragmentation among and within parliamentary parties. The sword of unity that the chamber wielded against the government wilted when legislators attempted to build issue-based coalitions for alternative bills on self-governing regions. Until the final months of the legislative term, only HSD-SMS had submitted a bill on regional self-government. No such bill could attract anything close to majority support in the chamber. Proof for this assertion comes from analysis of four draft bills on regional selfgovernment that were eventually submitted in March 1992. Three of these bills originated in the ČNR; the other (the government’s draft bill on regional self-government) has already been mentioned. The origins, substance, and eventual fate of these bills—none made it to the floor for debate—all reflect the deep party fragmentation that existed by the end of the 1990-1992 term. The first bill (“Návrh poslanců ČNR” 1992) was submitted by a diverse group of MPs on March 6, 1992. Though the brainchild of HSDSMS (16 HSD-SMS MPs sponsored the bill), four of its sponsors represented the governing OH, four were members of the Communist Party, and one was a non-party legislator. The signatories thus represented government and non-government parties. Despite deliberate vagueness—the bill left open the possibility of establishing either two (Bohemia, Moravia-Silesia) or three (Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia) selfgoverning země—it did not attract significant support. On March 17, the ČNR plenum voted to shorten the bill’s “probationary period” from 60 days to 25 days, thus making it possible to debate the bill before the end of the term. The bill effectively died in committee, however, as only one committee recommended considering it on the floor. The second bill (“Návrh skupiny poslanců” 1992) was submitted by a more coherent bloc of nine Christian Democratic (KDU-ČSL) MPs. In its own way, this bill also reflected the chaos of the party system. The

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previous day, the government had submitted its draft bill on regional self-government. The current bill’s sponsors, unhappy with the concessions that their party had made in the government version, submitted a draft of their own. Still, only nine of nineteen KDU-ČSL MPs signed the bill, suggesting that not all KDU-ČSL MPs were equally dissatisfied with the party’s compromises in government. The bill’s provisions were vague. It proposed creating either three or seven selfgoverning regions and contained no details on how the future regional legislatures would be constituted (i.e., via direct or indirect election) or which tasks they would perform. The KDU-ČSL draft followed a legislative course identical to that of the HSD+ draft. After MPs agreed on the floor to shorten its probationary period, it was torn to shreds in various committees and never reached the floor for debate. The government bill, which was finally submitted on March 11, died at an even earlier point in the legislative process. The fact that it could garner so little support is not surprising, given that significant numbers of “loyal” MPs had already defected and signed on to other draft bills. Increasingly aware that the prospects for compromise and coalition-building were dim, the Presidium of the ČNR—through which all requests to shorten the 60-day probationary period had to pass before being considered on the floor—rejected the government’s request to speed up the legislative process. This rejection meant that the normal probationary period would apply. The last session of the legislative term had been scheduled for May 12; it would be impossible to complete all steps of the legislative process before the term ended. The final bill, submitted March 18 by three MPs of the governing OH, was the most imaginative of the four. Its sponsors attempted to avoid the legislative deadlock by holding a consultative referendum on the question of regional self-government and territorial administration. They sought to issue ballots for the June elections that would include options for the future shape of the Czech state. Future governments and MPs would then take the public’s preferences into account. The ČNR presidium passed the sponsors’ motion for fast-track consideration on March 20, but the ČNR plenum rejected the bill on April 14. Thus, the draft bill on referenda met the same fate as the three other draft bills. The ultimate defeat of each proposal demonstrates the difficulty of pursuing such fundamental, politically charged issues in an environment of party fragmentation and incoherence. With party clubs proliferating, elections approaching, and the future of the state in question, issuebased coalition formation was next to impossible. The section on interinstitutional squabbles showed that most legislators agreed that there should be some kind of action on territorial reform and that the Czech

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National Council should play a central role in this process. This section, however, has suggested that party-system fragmentation and internal party disagreements made it difficult to assemble support for any particular vision of territorial reform. Although none of the concrete proposals met with success, it would be wrong to argue that administrative reform was unimportant during the terminal federal period. Existing accounts of this period lead one to believe that administrative reform was swallowed up or pushed aside by the more daunting process of sundering the federal state. Here, I have suggested that the opposite was true: disagreements about the future of the state (as well as factors like the original, umbrella-like organization of opposition movements) aggravated tensions elsewhere in the polity, including tensions between institutions, tensions among parties, and tensions within parties. Discussions of administrative reform were not crowded out by these tensions; they were part and parcel of the tensions. By the time the 1992 elections took place and the Czechoslovak state eventually disintegrated, territorial reform remained a central, unsettled, issue of concern. While regional reform never made it through the ČNR or SNR, representatives of all major parties—in government meetings, party meetings, parliamentary commissions, parliamentary committees—had spent hours discussing and debating the implications of various arrangements. Territorial reform was alive in both republics, and a glut of questions, including but not limited to those summarized in Table 4.1, continued to confront decisionmakers in both states. Administrative Reform in the Czech Republic, 1992-1996

How did the changes brought about by the 1992 elections—including the ODS’s electoral success, increased party-system stability, and the dissolution of the Czechoslovak state—affect this situation in the Czech Republic? In terms of institutional outputs, they mattered very little. Like the 1990-1992 period, the era of the first Klaus government (19921996) witnessed long discussions and few results. Again, parties debated the particulars of the regional reform. Again, they reached no significant compromises. And again, discussions about the establishment of an independent civil service were marginalized. The explanation for these phenomena in the previous period lay predominantly in the uncertain political environment. In the 1992-1996 period, the explanation lies in the dominant position of Václav Klaus’s ODS within the Czech government and the party’s successful postponement of legislative action to establish the new institutions.

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Table 4.1: Frequently Discussed Questions of Public Administration Reform, 1990-1992 Self-government -How many levels of territorial self-government should exist (1, 2 ,3)? -How many self-governing regions should exist? -Occasionally discussed alternatives in the Czech republic: 2, 3, 7, 15, 22 -Occasionally discussed alternatives in the Slovak republic: 3, 4, 8, 12, 16 -Where should the borders separating the regions be drawn? -Who should have final say in determining the borders of the regions (the federal legislature, the national legislatures, the federal government, the national governments, national Interior Ministries, representatives of municipalities, citizens of municipalities via municipal referenda)? -How should the representatives of the new territorial units be elected— directly, or by pooling votes of individual members of local councils)? -Should the state trasnfer to regional self-governments before or after regional boundaries have been determined? -Which electoral system should be used to elect regional parliamentarians? -Should regional elections be timed to coincide with national elections or municipal elections? Or should they receive their “own” election date? -Could personnel from district offices and/or sub-district offices of the state be transferred to the offices of self-governing regions? State administration -How many levels of territorial state administration should exist (1, 2, 3)? -Should the boundaries of territorial state administration overlap with those of regional self-governments? -Should tasks of state administration be transferred to the offices of selfgovernments, or should separate offices of state administration be established alongside regional and municipal self-governing bodies? -Which cities should be designated as the seats of sub-national units? -Who should decide how the seats should be designated: National parliaments? National governments? National interior ministries? -Which administrative competencies should be transferred to sub-national self-governing units? To various sub-national levels of state administration? -Should civil service legislation be passed before overhauling the system of territorial administration? Should civil service legislation apply to all, some, or none of the bureaucrats working in territorial administration? General questions -Should there be a referendum on any of these issues? If so, should it be binding or consultative? -Who should be responsible for regional planning and the international relations of sub-national units—the central government, decentralized offices of state administration, elected representatives of municipalities, elected representatives of regional self-governments, or some combination of these? If the latter, whose voice should carry the most weight? -From which sources should the budgets of the various units derive? Should sub-national bodies of self-government and state administration be allowed to own property? To levy taxes?

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ODS decisively won the 1992 ČNR elections, running on a platform that stressed continued market liberalization, new rounds of privatization, and carefully managed integration into European structures. Klaus, the party’s self-assured leader, had served as federal Finance Minister and deputy prime minister in the terminal federal era and was the mastermind of Czechoslovakia’s economic reforms. In 1992, Klaus campaigned tirelessly, defending economic “shock therapy,” discussing the ideas of his favorite thinkers and politicians (Friedrich von Hayek, Milton Friedman, Margaret Thatcher), defending his party against other center-right OF spin-offs, and articulating a preference for the continuation of Czechoslovakia and a federal government capable of coordinating economic policy in both republics. The Civic Democrats finished first in each of the republic’s eight electoral districts. They performed less well in Moravia than in Bohemia. ODS became the largest party in the ČNR and the senior government partner. These events had decisive implications for the course of Czech politics over the next four years. The national bodies (National Council and government) were transformed into the lower legislative chamber (Poslanecká sněmovna, PS, or Chamber of Deputies) and the executive branch of the independent Czech Republic. Klaus’s Philosophy of the State: Three Faces of Resistance

From the first days of the party’s existence, ODS leaders had taken a skeptical stance toward self-governing regions and legally protected civil service. During the 1990-1992 ČNR term, ODS deputies had ranked among the strongest critics of regionalization. Other parties lamented the lack of progress on the regional reform at the final session of the 1990-1992 ČNR, but ODS deputies raised no such complaints (Česká národní rada 28. dubna 1992). Other parties listed administrative reform as a priority in their 1992 manifestoes; the ODS manifesto referred to it vaguely and in passing. In campaign events, ODS leaders took alternately agnostic and antagonistic public stances toward the question of self-governing regions. ODS’s lukewarm attitude toward administrative reform reflected Klaus’s distinctive philosophy of the state. On one hand, Klaus viewed the state with extreme skepticism. He consistently attacked attempts to use state machinery towards projects of “social constructivism.” These projects, typical of the socialist era, placated and pandered to citizens, sapping their initiative and insulting their dignity. Sacrifices of selfrespect to “constructivist” projects could be expiated, not by transforming the state (i.e., by reorganizing its organs to facilitate citizen

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participation), but rather by freeing up market mechanisms. Klaus did not speak the language of market-state synergies. He did not identify administrative capacity as a precondition of a functioning market economy. Instead, he suggested a zero-sum logic, where the gains of the state were the losses of the market. Klaus’s suspicions of bureaucracy and “social constructivism’ dovetailed with his suspicion that the 1990 amendments to the Labor Code (which facilitated the removal of managers) were insufficient to disempower hubs of rearguard communist hardliners and secret police informants. In the early 1990s, ODS spearheaded Czechoslovakia’s “lustration” (lustrace) efforts. The much-debated lustration law of 1991 (Zákon 451/1991) sought to remove and disqualify a range of “compromised” individuals—those who had collaborated with the communist secret police, served as secretaries of the KSČ/KSS at the district level or above, been active in the People’s Militia and the State Security service, and/or been students at the police academies—from holding state office and undertaking “direct management activities” in the state apparatus (Bren 1992; Cepl 1992; Cepl and Gills 1996; Ellis 1996; Holmes 1994; Pehe 1991; Šiklová 1999; Stewart and Stewart 1996; Williams and Deletant 2001). Klaus’s ideological predispositions and suspicions were not consistent with a political program that emphasized legal protections for ministerial personnel and decentralized decisionmaking. Yet, to say that “the state did not matter” to Klaus would be an exaggeration. In fact, alongside Klaus’s market-based indifference lay two more positive conceptions of the state. The first “state-friendly” conception suggested that states could aid the process of historical transformation and lay the groundwork for efficient markets. In public, Klaus rejected authoritarian, state-led roads to economic growth: I don’t hold the opinion that it’s possible to radically transform our economy through an undemocratic system. [Such a suggestion] reminds me of cases like South Korea, Chile, and Malaysia. It’s often said that in those cases, reforms were accomplished precisely because a standard democratic system, founded on the idea of pluralist democracy, was not in place. I don’t believe this. I believe, rather, that in Czechoslovakia there is no other way to realize all of these necessary reforms than through a democratic path. (Hvížďala 1992, 47)

In practice, though, he was comfortable with the highly centralized and young democratic state that he inherited. Such “an energetic, centralized state,” as Stephen Holmes (1995, 53) has noted, “ha[d] an

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essential role to play in [Klaus’s notion of] economic reform.” Institutions like regional legislatures and depoliticized civil service could become powerful veto players, obstructing and subverting reforms designed in the Government Office. They could overwhelm tight budgets and protect individuals who might disagree with the government’s goals. Thus the second, less public, face of Václav Klaus—the face of a principled reformer eager to take advantage of an insulated executive branch. Klaus’s third face had less to do with his status as neoliberal economic reformer and more to do with his position as aspiring party builder. Recall that ODS was an early spinoff of the loosely organized and fragmentary Civic Forum. Klaus sought to avoid similar fragmentation in the ODS and to use state resources, insofar as possible, to support party development (Grzymała-Busse 2007). The second and third faces conflicted, in many ways, with the more familiar face of Klaus as a high priest of laissez faire. None of the faces, however, smiled at the prospect of administrative reform. The first, in its commitment to the priority of the market, turned a blind eye toward reforming state institutions. The second defended a strong, centralized state command structure. The third pushed toward an expansion of quasi-public bodies and discretion over managerial positions in the ministries. The inherited system, however “incomplete,” offered insulation and the opportunity to push through potentially controversial and painful reforms. Underlying Klaus’s philosophical antipathy was a set of political considerations that reinforced party leaders’ commitment to the state status quo. Regional variation in party allegiances, although not overpowering, did exist. The creation of democratically accountable regional legislatures would almost certainly bolster the institutionalized strength of competing parties and encourage centrifugal pressures within the ODS. At the same time, many supporters of regionalization supported the idea of establishing majoritarian electoral procedures for regional elections. Should national deputies continue to be elected proportionally, regional leaders would have significantly less incentive to toe the national party line. Existing rules also allowed the government, on the suggestion of the Interior Minister and subject to certain minimal merit criteria adopted in 1990, to appoint heads of district offices. This practice opened the door to appointments that could help Klaus to assure a strong and loyal party apparatus. Should strong regions be established and the relative importance of district offices decline—or should district offices be abolished all together—this

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instrument of party patronage would evaporate, thus minimizing the power of central party leaders. Given Klaus’s triple philosophical resistance and the political risks of effecting structural reforms, it is not surprising that ODS rejected many of the particular reform proposals drafted in the 1992-1996 electoral term. In 1992 and 1993, for example, Klaus repeatedly warned that regional reform would burden public finances. He also insisted that new regional governments must not have the authority to raise their own taxes. ODS representatives defended the existing system of state administration and self-government by claiming that a shift of administrative competencies from district offices to self-governing regions would upset the principle of subsidiarity; power that was currently exercised in 79 districts would be shifted “upward” to a smaller number of regional capitals, and thus would slip further away from most citizens. 1 The establishment of new regions would also, it was said, increase the numbers and strength of bureaucrats who undermined market principles and misunderstood the tasks of transformation. ODS representatives were particularly keen, following the velvet divorce, to defeat proposals that would re-institutionalize divisions between Bohemian and Moravian země. To create a new bipartite state, they claimed, would be unwise, given that a similar division had fueled Czech-Slovak bickering and led to the dissolution of the Czechoslovak federation. ODS’s anti-bipartite argument was generally well received, especially as advocates of Moravian self-government were coming increasingly to identify themselves as representatives of a Moravian nation. Institutionalization of a dual Bohemian-Moravian state structure in this context seemed the height of folly to Klaus, other ODS members, and leaders of more reformist republic-wide parties (Poslanecká sněmovna 20. června 1995). If ODS were pushed to develop any particular plan for a regional reform, it would favor the establishment of many small, weak, dependent regions. Thus, in January of 1994, Klaus sent a proposal for 25-30 small regions to other members of the ODS leadership (Obrman and Mates 1994). This was a far cry, both from the bills introduced in the previous electoral term and from a draft bill envisioning three regions that was simultaneously circulating among a group of opposition deputies.

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Coalition Formation and ODS’s Concessions: Allowing the Debate to Continue

If ODS had so many reasons to resist regions and a civil service, why did debates on the issue continue to rage through 1996? ODS was strong enough to delay the legislative consummation of administrative reform proposals but, because its legislative majority relied on a coalition with smaller parties, dependent enough to allow the issues—which its coalition partners and certain opposition parties had emphasized during the 1992 campaign—onto the government’s agenda. Following the 1992 elections, ODS formed a government with ODA, KDU-ČSL, and the Christian Democratic Party (Křesťanskodemokratická strana, or KDS). Coalition parties claimed 105 of the ČNR’s 200 seats. The coalition was durable, surviving the full duration of its four-year term. In terms of economic policy priorities, three of the four parties (ODS, KDS, and ODA) were very similar. Still, two programmatic positions separated the parties: (1) their respective stances toward administrative reform, and (2) their respective geographic area of electoral strength. ODA, KDU-ČSL, and KDS all included administrative reform as planks in their electoral programs, and regionalization played a particularly strong role in the Christian parties’ (KDU-ČSL and KDS) programs. The Christian parties also performed disproportionately well in Moravia and attracted votes by emphasizing their ability to represent Moravian concerns. The three minor parties used their programmatic differences as bargaining chips, forcing ODS to recognize their priorities during the government’s first months in power. Two excerpts from the government’s programmatic declaration, meticulously worded as a result of coalitional bargaining, begin to show this: In order to fulfill the fundamental imperative of transferring decisionmaking power and responsibility as close as possible to the citizenry, it will be necessary to adjust the territorial administrative structure of the state . . . [The government] will create a detailed legal framework which will allow for the natural foundation of selfgoverning units on the basis of conditions and mechanisms set out in the constitution. The government, through these steps, will satisfy demands for increasing the self-governing standing of individual areas [oblasti] of Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. 2 (Česká národní rada 13. července 1992) It is also necessary to increase the professional level, the technical expertise, and the informational capacity of the state administration and to renew the prestige of this profession within society. Therefore,

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the government will speed up preparations for a draft law on the legal standing of state civil servants. (Česká národní rada 13. července 1992)

ODS’s coalition partners also championed a law, passed early in the government’s term, which provided for the creation of an Office of Legislation and Public Administration (Úřad pro legislativu a veřejnou správu, or ÚLVS), intended as a conceptual headquarters for administrative reform and located in the Government Office (Zákon 474/1992). The dynamics here resembled the pattern of state parcelization that was common in Czechoslovakia’s First Republic: ÚLVS was clearly a bailiwick to ODA, whose chairman, Jan Kalvoda, would direct the unit. The Public Administration section of ÚLVS would be spared routine administrative tasks and would focus exclusively on preparing reform legislation. If the minor coalition parties had won a promise in the government program, they appeared to have won the administrative means of meeting the promise in the ÚLVS, which became operational in November 1992. The coalition partners’ final concession was reached during the drafting of the Czech constitution. The Christian parties had sought constitutionally to settle the status and boundaries of self-governing regions. This goal met strong resistance from ODS and a significant faction within ODA. The parties eventually reached a vague compromise. The constitution’s final substantive chapter would cover territorial self-government but would not contain details on the structure or functions of regional self-governing units. Thus, the Pandora’s Box of questions opened during the 1990-1992 term would remain open. According to the compromise, self-governing regions could only be established or abolished via constitutional law, which required a 3/5 supermajority in both chambers of parliament. Specific competencies— whether self-governing competencies or competencies of transferred state administration—could be delegated to regional assemblies by a simple (majority) law (Ústavní zákon 1/1992). Though acceptable to the four coalition parties, the compromise drew severe criticisms from Moravist opposition deputies (Česká národní rada 17. prosince 1992). In the end, however, the major questions had been smoothed over rather than settled: self-governing regions would be bequeathed as “constitutional debts” (Leff 1997), left to be settled in coming years.

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Delaying Reforms: ODS’s Successful Tactics

In the ensuing years, advocates of reform used the government program and the constitution to pressure the government to pass reform legislation. Their efforts were in vain; they succeeded only in producing a frustrating re-enactment of the debates that had dominated the previous parliament. ODS maintained a strong enough political position to dodge attacks waged by less powerful political actors and deftly delayed legislative progress on administrative reform bills. By the end of the term, the issues included as government priorities and enshrined in the constitution had not been solved but remained hot topics of discussion. ODS regained ground ceded to its coalition partners in at least three ways. First, it used its voting advantage in the cabinet to effect a “party equalization” of the conceptual work being done on the regional reform. A government decision in early 1993, however, counterbalanced the ÚLVS (run by ODA’s Jan Kalvoda) with a “mirror-image” working commission in the Ministry of Interior run by ODS’s Jan Ruml (Obrman and Mates 1994). Second, ODS successfully delayed cabinet consideration of prepared conceptual materials until well after they had been prepared. Despite the fact that ÚLVS’s “Draft of the Reform of Territorial Administration” had been completed in June 1993, the government did not consider it until 1994 (Vidláková 2000). Third, and most importantly, ODS defeated parliamentary challenges to the government’s delay tactics. Dismayed by ODS’s techniques of party equalization and delay, the parliamentary opposition and unhappy coalition partners attempted to force action on the regional reform. The first reaction to the government’s techniques was waged by members of the Bohemian-Moravian Union of the Center (ČMUS), the parliamentary successor to HSD-SMS. In the summer of 1993, eight ČMUS deputies submitted baselines for a draft constitutional law to the Chamber of Deputies (“Návrh zásad ústavního zákona” 1993). This draft envisioned the creation of two self-governing regions (Bohemia and Moravia). At this point, however, few MPs of other opposition parties or minor governing parties noticed; the principles of the bill were referred to parliamentary committees, but little action ensued. A more robust challenge occurred one month later. Aware that fundamental differences continued to divide Christian and Civic parties in the government, and alarmed by a recent pronouncement by the ODS Executive Council suggesting that the regional reform would only be completed in 1996 (to that point, 1994 had been the target date), the chair of the Communist parliamentary club proposed a resolution

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petitioning the government to submit a timetable of its approach to administrative reform and its baselines for a draft constitutional law on self-governing regions (Pehe 1994). On November 11, the resolution passed in amended form; it asked the government to submit the materials by the end of the year (Usnesení 256 Poslanecké sněmovny 1993). Roll call data for the vote on the resolution are not available. It is clear, however, that certain coalition MPs, including at least a handful from ODS itself, supported the motion. The government responded vaguely to the parliamentary request (Pehe 1994, 20-1). Its timetable contained plans to introduce two bills— one creating self-governing regions, the other delimiting their competencies. The first bill would be submitted by June, the second by August. This timetable was both less comprehensive and less “urgent” than most non-ODS parliamentarians had hoped. It did not mention plans for submitting other laws—including a civil service law and a revised draft law on district offices—and the 6-8 month time period seemed an excessively long time for a government whose twin conceptual headquarters had been preparing concepts for over a year. As for the government’s principles for the constitutional law on selfgoverning regions (“Vladní návrh zásady” 1993), rather than discussing the kinds of regions (i.e., how large, how powerful) the coalition supported, the draft simply mentioned the fact that the constitution selfgoverning regions. ODS had been willing to compromise in the government’s early days. Now, however, when concrete legislative action on the regional reform was at stake, Klaus gave no ground. The minor coalition parties, clearly outnumbered in the cabinet and, according to public opinion polls, losing public support, had little recourse beyond joining the parliamentary opposition and pressuring the government “from outside.” Still, non-ODS politicians attempted to press on. Opposition politicians attacked the government’s materials. Sixty-five MPs, representing seven oppositional parliamentary clubs, resurrected the dormant ČMUS bill. They submitted a full version of the bill (“Návrh poslance F. Kačenky” 1994) to parliament early in the spring of 1994. Unsurprisingly, however, the bill barely survived the committee process (committee seats were distributed on a basis roughly proportional to the division of power among parliamentary parties). It met an ignominious defeat on the floor of the parliament, failing to muster even half of the 120 votes necessary to pass a constitutional law. These episodes showed that serious differences of opinion continued to separate government parties from opposition parties, ODS from the minor government parties, and one opposition parliamentary club from

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the next. Party cohesion, with a few notable exceptions, was stronger during this electoral period; hours of debate, however, did not produce the cross-party consensus needed to pass a constitutional law. Government parties reached few compromises in the early months of 1994. They submitted the basic principles for a law on competencies and a fully elaborated draft of the constitutional law creating the regions. The former was criticized by Christian and opposition deputies as vague, however, and the latter (“Vládní návrh ústavního zákona” 1994), submitted on the very last day of June, was an eloquent testimonial (a) to the distance that continued to separate the government parties and (b) to ODS’s relative strength within the cabinet. Whereas the Christian parties had supported the creation of eight regions with significant competencies, the government draft suggested the creation of seventeen unusually shaped regions and did not refer to the competencies for which these regions would be responsible or the system of state administration (transferred competencies versus independent regional offices) that would accompany them. The government draft drew loosely from the ÚLVS version prepared in 1993, with the major exceptions that the government redrew the boundaries of the ÚLVS’s regions, added four more regions, and remained agnostic on the system of state administration. The version clearly reflected ODS’s preference for smaller, weaker regions. Minor coalition and opposition parliamentarians tried again to prod the government into action. At the beginning of July, they drafted and passed another resolution (Usnesení 446/1994), which all present KDUČSL, KDS, and ODA club members supported and no opposition MPs opposed. This resolution repeated the plea for the government to pass a complex plan of attack for accomplishing its administrative reform “priorities” before the end of the electoral term. The government’s response to the resolution (“Záměry vlády” 1994) was significantly more detailed than the skeletal timetable submitted at the end of 1993. It previewed ten pieces of legislation that “should be debated” in the remainder of the electoral term. Still, the document’s omissions overwhelmed it provisions. The government did not list the dates by which it planned to submit the ten legislative drafts and frankly acknowledged continuing internal disagreements about the relationship between state administration and self-government on the level of the regions. Again, the ball was in the parliament’s court. In December 1994, the chamber’s standing commission for public administration reform recommended another resolution that would ask the government to speed up the process of introducing legislation. Specifically, it asked

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that drafts of all ten draft laws be submitted by the end of August 1995. Once again, deputies from the minor government parties and the parliamentary opposition joined forces to pass the resolution (Usnesení 553/1994). This time, however, Klaus explicitly nixed the parliament’s request. He wrote a letter to the chair of the parliamentary commission suggesting that it would be “impossible to draft detailed drafts of these laws until the law on the creation of self-governing regions is passed” (Poslanecká sněmovna 20. června 1995). This was a deft move. Klaus knew that major differences of opinion continued to separate parliamentary parties on key questions of the regional reform, especially on the question of the number and size of units to be created. Should the parliament fail to pass a constitutional law creating the regions, the government could finger the legislature’s inability to pass the 17-region draft as a reason to cease preparations of the regional reform and to transfer this constitutional debt to the post-1996 term. Klaus’s strategy worked. The government’s bill on the regions occasioned chaotic debate in every stage of the parliamentary process. In May, the parliamentary commission published a report that rejected the government’s blueprint for seventeen self-governing regions and proposed two possible alternatives—a 13-region plan resembling the original ÚLVS draft, and an 8-region plan that resembling KDU-ČSL’s most recent vision (“Zpráva stálé komise” 1995). The subsequent committee process complicated the issue further, as different committees recommended still other solutions to the question of how many selfgoverning regions to establish. At the end of the committee process, at least four variants were in play: the government’s 17-region variant, the commission’s 13-region variant, the parliamentary commission’s 8region variant, and a 9-region variant that resembled the 8-region plan but gave Prague the status of a self-governing region (“Společná zpráva” 1995). The matter became even more complicated when the bill reached the floor for debate. During the June 20, 1995 session, members of the Moravist opposition restated their preference for a three-region solution, raising the number of possible variants to five. “The question of the number of regions to establish,” as Kalvoda remarked, had “become an extraordinarily politicized question and the major obstacle to the acceptance of this law” (Poslanecká sněmovna 20. června 1995). When MPs voted on the alternative variants three days later, the 9-region compromise emerged as the most widely acceptable. The final vote, however, fell 22 votes shy of the 120 it needed to pass. 3 Since the chamber had already passed a resolution that made the government’s submission of bills conditional on the acceptance of the constitutional

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law creating the regions (Usnesení 696/1995), the writing on the wall was clear: regional reform would not be accomplished during this electoral term. The constitutional debt would be passed on to the next government and parliament. Klaus need not worry, at least for the remainder of this term, about the existence of new institutional barriers to central decisionmaking. The details of this story are many, but the bottom line is clear: the 1992-1996 period produced no legislative outputs to drive administrative reform forward. The preservation of the status quo clearly coincided with the interests and intentions of the chairman of the largest governing party. At the same time, Klaus’s power was far from absolute. Even if ODS’s concessions did not eventually lead to policy that contradicted its preferences, they did allow minor coalition and opposition parties to keep Pandora’s Box open. Administrative Reform in Slovakia, 1992-1996

The 1992-1996 periodization is not as natural for Slovakia as it is for the Czech Republic. In the Czech case, Klaus presided over a stable government; politics was played within an increasingly predictable party environment, and elections were held, on schedule, in 1996. In Slovakia, however, the kind of fragmentation that characterized the 1990-1992 period continued through 1994. It was not until that year’s early elections that Prime Minister Mečiar consolidated control of his party and managed to construct a steady legislative majority. I concentrate here on the fate of administrative reform during these two periods, and particularly on the more eventful post-1994 era. Between 1992 and March 1994, administrative reform was effectively lost in a miasma of party fragmentation, nationalist posturing, and legislative deadlock. After 1994, the HZDS-dominated government, consistent with Vladimír Mečiar’s distinctive philosophy of the state, fundamentally reconstructed Slovak territorial administration, while stopping well short of establishing self-governing regions. The government passed a controversial reform of territorial state administration that opposition parties vowed to overturn if and when they could muster the votes to do so. In the Czech Republic after 1996, territorial reform topped the agenda because previous governments had successfully put off the reform, bequeathing it as a constitutional debt. In Slovakia, it topped the agenda because opposition politicians sought to overturn what they perceived as Mečiar’s politically influenced manipulation of the state structure.

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Uncertainty Continues: Administrative Reform in Slovakia, 19921994

Mečiar’s HZDS triumphed in the June 1992 elections. Claiming almost half of the SNR’s seats, HZDS formed a de-facto one-party government. Mečiar became prime minister, and HZDS controlled twelve of fourteen ministerial posts (one cabinet seat went to an independent, the other to Ľudovit Černák of the nationalist SNS). In the waning days of the federation, HZDS counted on the SNS and the post-communist Party of the Democratic Left (Strana demokratickej ľavice, or SDĽ) for legislative support. At first, this appeared to be a powerful alliance, as the SNR passed the government’s program, a declaration of sovereignty, a constitution, and laws relating to the break-up of the federation. The government’s program, like its campaign manifesto, was vague. Unlike the 1992 Czech government program, which resulted from intense bargains between coalition partners, the Slovak government’s program drew liberally from the HZDS’s manifesto. It contained one ambiguous pledge relating to territorial administration: The government supports the territorial decentralization of the management of society . . . We support the passage of a law on the territorial and administrative structure of the Slovak republic, which will help to establish a rational system of state administration, to boost efficiency, to the benefit the citizen, and to strengthen the selfgovernment of regions, cities, towns, and civic associations. (“Programové vyhlásenie” 1992)

After passing the program on July 14 and the declaration of sovereignty on July 17, the National Council swiftly passed a constitution on September 1 (Mates 1992). Although its fourth chapter was devoted to territorial self-administration, only one article (Article 64, paragraph 3) mentioned self-governing regions. This article simply stated that “the self-government of higher territorial units and their bodies will be established by law.” Mečiar’s legislative support evaporated after the state dissolved. Mečiar met his first defeat in January, when Roman Kováč, the candidate he backed for President, failed to gain the support of the required three-fifths of National Council’s (Národna rada Slovenskej republiky, or NR SR) MPs; even some HZDS deputies refused to back Kováč. This episode set off a crisis within HZDS and the government as a whole, which culminated in the exit of Foreign Minister Milan Kňažko and seven other MPs from HZDS. Immediately following Kňažko’s departure, the SNS’s Černák left the cabinet, and SNS retracted its

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informal support for the government. Developments during the rest of 1993 were even more dramatic, casting Slovakia further down the road to legislative deadlock and prohibiting any real action on administrative reform. Throughout the summer, Mečiar attempted to assemble a new, more formal coalition, first with the SNS, then with the SDĽ. The HZDS-SNS coalition eventually pieced together in November 1993 was doomed from the start. In December, the SNS split (Černák and other moderates had been excluded from the coalition), precipitating a divide in its parliamentary caucus. The situation bottomed out in February 1994, when Jozef Moravčík (Kňažko’s successor as Foreign Affairs minister) and Roman Kováč led a second exodus from HZDS, taking ten MPs with them. The result was predictable: in March 1994, 78 MPs (two over the required number) supported a vote of no-confidence in Mečiar’s cabinet. A government led by Moravčík stepped in, and new elections were scheduled for September 30 and October 1 of 1994. These were not propitious grounds for passing legislation that would fundamentally reorganize the state. Numerous reform proposals circulated in this period, but they were doomed by the swell of political uncertainty. In the months before the 1992 elections, Ján Čarnogurský’s government, which had supported the idea of building a territorial system resembling First Republic’s župný system, had established three commissions to examine territorial administration. The commissions proposed reconfiguring state administration and self-government in different ways. They submitted their first materials in March 1993, almost nine months into the Mečiar government’s term. The various proposals were alternately welcomed and attacked by interested societal actors, but only one significant deal was made during these hectic months: Mečiar accepted ZMOS’s plea not to establish a new territorial structure before specifying which particular competencies the new units would administer. In general, however, the commissions could not have presented their work at a more inopportune moment. Moravčík’s coalition, which filled the gap between March’s noconfidence vote and October’s elections, was a political hodge-podge. Including representatives of the post-communist SDĽ, the right-ofcenter Christian Democratic Movement (Kresťanskodemokratické hnutie, or KDH), and the nascent parties founded by HZDS and SNS defectors, the coalition also relied on the informal parliamentary support of the two Hungarian parties (MKDH and Együtéllés). This government managed to pass a basic document, the “Strategy of the Reform of Public Administration in Slovakia,” that enumerated the laws that would have to be passed in order to overhaul Slovak administration and selfgovernment. At its core, however, the document was hollow. It did not

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commit the government to any particular territorial configuration, to any number of regional units, or to any particular balance between state administration and regional self-government. It left open the familiar Pandora’s Box. The programmatic gulf that separated government parties, and the short time the government spent in office, mitigated against major reform steps. Once again, territorial reform would be passed on to the crop of leaders determined by the next elections. In those elections, HZDS scored an unexpectedly convincing victory (Abrahám 1995), but the process of government formation was not easy. Mečiar could count from the beginning on the SNS’s support, as HZDS and SNS had strengthened their bonds during their brief interlude as opposition parties. After weeks of post-election negotiations, the far-left Association of Workers of Slovakia (Združenie robotníkov Slovenska, or ZRS) joined the coalition. The three coalition parties were united by little more than their willingness to work with Mečiar and their dissatisfaction with the opposition parties. New interpretations of the 1994-1998 intra-coalitional balance of power have recently been published (Haughton 2002) , but a wide consensus (Kusý 1999; Malová and Rybář 1999; Müller-Rommel and Malová 2001) still exists that Mečiar’s HZDS—and Mečiar himself—were in the driver’s seat, managing on most occasions to overcome resistance from within the coalition. What would HZDS’s electoral success and Mečiar’s preeminence in the cabinet imply for the fate of regions and the civil service? An answer to this question requires an appreciation of Mečiar’s distinctive philosophy of the state. Mečiar’s Philosophy of the State: Hierarchy, Unity, Loyalty

As many times as Václav Klaus has been decribed as arrogant, Vladimír Mečiar has been described as unpredictable. Most observers see Mečiar as a capricious and impulsive populist, a politician whose convictions have been determined, not by a consistent program, but by a sense for what his audience wants to hear. The picture of Mečiar so far presented coincides with this conventional picture: HZDS began as an umbrella movement, its electoral manifestoes were vague, and Mečiar sought coalition partners from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Is it possible, given the difficulty of pinning Mečiar down, to detect a “philosophy of the state” residing within his words and actions? Indeed, certain consistent themes link Mečiar’s understanding of and practical approach to the state. From the beginning of his career, Mečiar desired to build a strong and loyal state apparatus. He expressed a willingness to reconfigure the state toward this goal and voiced an

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enduring suspicion of divisions within the bureaucracy. Mečiar sought to employ every means possible at given political moments, to root out disloyal bureaucrats and “inconvenient” institutional structures and to replace them with more loyal workers and structures that would institutionalize HZDS influence. Whereas Klaus’s philosophy was simultaneously indifferent and conservative—both neglecting the state for the market and seeking to conserve its existing structure—Mečiar’s was active and radical. Klaus was content to assure that the state did not distort technocratic decisions made at the center. Mečiar was a committed state reformer who sought who did not hesitate to interfere with or reconstruct institutions to assure that HZDS power rested on firm state foundations. One can isolate passages which suggest that Mečiar’s reasons for such an active approach lay in his attraction to Slovak nationalism. During the debate on the Slovak constitution, for example, Mečiar defended the nascent Slovak state as the spiritual apotheosis of the Slovak nation. He wielded this conception, which has deep roots fascistic ideologies, to admonish the Hungarian parties who were pressing for independent cultural and educational institutions. To establish such institutions, Mečiar claimed, would be foolish, since “the rising of the organization of the nation to the level of the state is the highest political and legal method of organizing society that the world, to this point, has ever known” (Slovenská Národná Rada 31.augusta a 1. septembra 1992). Still, the evidence does not support a caricature of Mečiar as a neofascist. In fact, Mečiar frequently qualified his defense of the national state in ways that suggested a closer proximity to civic ideals. After uttering the previous quotation, for example, he assured the chamber that “to us, [the achievement of a state] isn’t about a truly national nationalism, but nor is it, or will it ever be, about a nationalism of minorities and ethnic groups. [It is about] the equality of citizens, the equality of rights, the equality of responsibilities” (Slovenská Národná Rada 31.augusta a 1. septembra 1992). Similarly, in an interview after the June 1992 elections, he dismissed “overly national” interpretations of stateness and endorsed a more “European” conception: There is, here [in Slovakia], one group of people whom I call the ‘rahrah-nationalists’ [huránárodniari]. They understand the Slovak interest to be the return to certain obsolete conceptions. The national interest of Slovakia, I must emphasize, is to join up with and respect [contemporary] European standards. Were we to push for something like the historical national principle, that would lead to isolation and

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would work to the detriment of Slovakia’s interests. (Quoted in Leško 1996, 206)

At first sight, these statements seem to cancel each other out, to reinforce the general impression of Mečiar as an unprincipled populist with few consistent ideas. Residing within Mečiar’s apparently divergent theoretical positions, however, is an emphasis on the importance of unity, hierarchy, and cohesion within the state apparatus. Mečiar made a political living in 1992 by stressing that the federal state was not and should not be cohesive in this sense. Czechoslovakia, he claimed, was the sum of its Czech and Slovak parts. The Slovak constitution showed “that the federation does not make the republics, but that the republics create the federation” (Slovenská Národná Rada 31.augusta a 1. septembra 1992). Mečiar’s conception of the Slovak state ran in the opposite direction: the center was the glue that held the state together and the guarantor of unity within the state apparatus. He objected to the Hungarian parties’ proposals for self-governing institutions, not because he feared that minority institutions would empower ethnically inferior (Hungarian) voices, but rather because they would disrupt the hierarchical organization of the Slovak state. Two quotations from his August 31, 1992 speech suggest as much: The drafts that the representatives of Együttélés and the MKDH have proposed do not lead to the fulfillment of coexistence between Slovaks and Hungarians, but rather to a deepening isolation, to a division of state administration according to the national principle, to the division and infirmity of the territorial integrity of the Slovak Republic. (Emphasis added) You [Hungarian parties] want to create a double state administration. One for Hungarian schools, the second for Slovak schools, even when those schools are in the same territory. You know that that can’t be. Why should we separate these people in state institutions instead of bringing them together?

Both before and after HZDS consolidated its power in 1994, Mečiar made clear why the cohesion was so important: in the absence of legal protections, cohesion facilitated direct party control. This was a point, of course, that previous Communist leaders well understood. Soon after the 1992 elections, for example, Mečiar made use of inherited privileges of bureaucratic appointment. His government replaced 53 deputy ministers with HZDS substitutes. Mečiar responded to criticism of this move by stating that “thought-out changes of this kind are an inherent part of the

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art of politics” (quoted in Pehe 1992, 36). The governing parties took similar steps immediately after the 1994 elections. On the “long parliamentary night” of November 3-4 1994, coalition MPs voted as a bloc to insert politically loyal allies into leadership positions at the Supreme Control Office, the Special Control commission (the body that monitored the internal security service), the General Prosecutor’s Office, the National Property Fund (the key locus of privatization), Slovak Radio, and the Slovak Board of Television and Radio Broadcasting. They excluded opposition MPs from the ranks of the parliament’s vicechairmen (breaking with past practice) and gave coalition MPs a disproportionate number of committee seats. In Szomolányi’s (1997, no page) words, the coalition “took complete power by applying a majoritarian principle to a Parliament elected under a proportional electoral system.” The coalition’s pursuit of cohesive state control also reached lower levels of the bureaucracy. As early as January 1995, “action fives” (akčňí päťky)—committees of the (government-appointed) heads of the 38 district offices along with four other representatives from the three governing parties—began operating in all districts. Opposition parties accused the action fives of purging district offices of politically unacceptable bureaucrats and replacing them with HZDS-SNS loyalists of dubious professional quality. There are no reliable data on the extent of personnel turnover caused by the action fives. Early in 1996, Slovakia’s largest state employees’ union suggested that at least 600 personnel at the district level had been dismissed. The government’s subsequent steps, though, suggest that Mečiar was not entirely satisfied with efforts to cleanse existing institutions. From the first days of Mečiar’s post-1992 power through the establishment of the “action fives,” the HZDS strategy involved attempts to control existing state institutions. Until the autumn of 1995, there was no attempt to create new state bodies as reserves of HZDS power. At that point, however, Mečiar initiated an ambitious reform of state administration that sought to do just that. The next subsection analyzes the motives and results of that dubious attempt. Recreating the Territorial State Niccolò Machiavelli, the grandfather of all pragmatic rulers, advises those rulers who want to consolidate their power in enemy territory to reorganize everything, to leave no stone unturned, so that the citizens of that territory will have to be grateful to the government for everything. Gentlemen, you are behaving like rulers of an enemy land

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. . . You actually see in this beautiful society of people a group of enemies. And you act accordingly. -KDH MP Ivan Šimko (Národná rada SR 21. a 22. marca 1996)

After the elections of 1992 in the Czech Republic and 1994 in Slovakia, Klaus and Mečiar operated from different positions within their respective governing coalitions. Klaus’s party had to make concessions to principled coalition partners; Mečiar’s party worked from a stronger position vis-à-vis the SNS and ZRS. HZDS’s strong coalition position facilitated Mečiar’s most explicit quest for unity, loyalty, and hierarchical party control of the Slovak state apparatus. Deputy Šimko’s hurled his accusations at HZDS during the early days of this quest. The accusations were hyperbolic, but not entirely inaccurate. The third Mečiar government (which was in office between December 1994 and October 1998) went beyond its own previous attempts to “partyize” the existing state apparatus (Fish 1999), and sought actively to reconfigure the state to cement its political base. The quest for a new, more loyal state structure began in the autumn of 1995. After asking the Interior Ministry to submit alternative variants for a new territorial division (Skyba 2000b), the government endorsed the so-called “restorative” (restitučný) model (Uznesenie vlády SR 755/1995) which sought to “recarve” of Slovakia into 7-8 regions and 75-90 districts. On March 5, 1996, the government passed a detailed version of this recarving bill, which foresaw the creation of eight regions and 74 districts. In addition to recarving the state, the government also planned, in a counterpart bill, to align sub-national state administration with the new territorial structure. The existing thirty-eight offices of district state administration and 121 offices of sub-district administration would be abolished and replaced by eight offices of regional state administration and 74 offices of district state administration. The government referred vaguely, throughout this period, to the constitutional necessity of building regional self-governing institutions. It refused to draft laws establishing such institutions at the same time as it reorganized state administration, however, on the premise that such a step would require complex changes that would be impossible to pursue simultaneously. According to the government, these changes were necessary because only a thorough reconstruction of sub-national state administration could root out an opacity, ineffectiveness, and irrationality that had plagued Slovak administration since 1990. The

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problem, the government argued, was that since 1990 line ministries had acquired the authority to establish sub-national administrative offices without coordinating their activities with other ministries. Although all district and sub-district offices had similar organizational structures and provided certain general administrative services, ministries nonetheless had the capacity to judge which territorial configuration would be most optimal or efficient for the administration of tasks in their particular sectors, to request budgetary funds to build “specialized webs” of sectoral administration, and, albeit unintentionally, to duplicate functions that were already provided within the framework of district and sub-district offices. In both Slovakia and the Czech Republic, this process resulted in an increasingly intricate, poorly coordinated system of “general” and “specialized” sub-national state administration. Skyba’s (2000a, 27) account of Slovakia’s territorial-administrative framework during the early 1990s gives a sense of the growing complexity: . . . Bodies of “specialized” local state administration were built up on a piecemeal and uncoordinated basis. The following organs were created: district (38) and sub-district (121) offices for environmental protection; regional (6) and sub-regional (33) forestry offices; offices (36) of educational administration; district (38) and sub-district (105) labor offices; and idiosyncratic webs of state firefighting administration, agricultural administration, and cadastre.

By 1996 there existed, including ministries, no fewer than 658 offices of state administration in Slovakia (Skyba 2000a). Even opposition politicians would have had a difficult time refuting the sentiment behind Interior Minister Ľudovít Hudek’s remarks on the necessity of “eradicat[ing] the contemporary fragmentation of offices of state administration by integrating general state administration with specialized state administration” (Národná rada SR 21. a 22. marca 1996). What the government presented as an exercise in tidying up, though, was in fact a project undergirded by three “Machiavellian” logical threads: a nationalist logic, a logic of electoral advantage, and a logic of partyization. During the National Council’s debate on the recarving bill, Hungarian Coalition (MK) deputies argued that the bill discriminated against Slovakia’s ethnic minorities. Manifestations of anti-Hungarian bias in the bills, they claimed, were painfully transparent. For example, while the shift from 38 to 74 districts required making many districts smaller, the recarving bill sought to create many small districts in the

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north (particularly in regions where HZDS enjoyed strong support) and fewer, more expansive districts in the (heavily Hungarian and antiHZDS) south. MP László Nagy argued against this slight: Even a cursory glance at the map included in the government’s bill demonstrates a huge discrepancy between the size of districts in southern Slovakia and elsewhere. The structure of the [existing southern] districts is maintained; the government doesn’t propose to create any new districts. The present district of Nové Zámky [in southern Slovakia] has a population of 155,000, which is five times more than the government’s lower limit of 30,000 as a threshold for creating a district. Thus it will happen that a citizen—regardless of whether he is a Hungarian or a Slovak—will have a much longer way to travel to get to a district seat in southern Slovakia than he will have if he lives in another part of the country. The government, by proposing such a system, is straying from the constitutional principle of the equality of all citizens (Národná rada SR 21. a 22.marca 1996).

Hungarian Coalition MPs also attacked the fact that the government bill mandated the separation of geographically contiguous districts with substantial Hungarian populations into separate regions, suggesting that the goal of this measure was to reduce the percentage of ethnic Hungarians living in any one region. What was more, they charged the government with awarding county seats to cities based on political ties rather than economic or historical significance; large, important towns with significant populations of ethnic Hungarians were excluded as county seats and replaced by smaller, less important towns with smaller populations of ethnic minorities and greater aggregate support for the governing parties. HZDS MP Milan Sečánsky gave incensed Hungarians grist for the mill when he explained to residents of Šurany, one neglected town that would remain in a large district, that “in the event of a separation [of Šurany] from the district of Nové Zámky, two districts—Štúrovo and Nové Zámky—with a majority of citizens of Hungarian nationality would be created” (Sme January 14, 1997; quoted in Krivý 1998, 57). Another indicator of the nationalist strand was the timing of the recarving bill’s consideration in the National Council. Within one week of the bill’s passage, the chamber also passed a new version of the penal code and attached an amendment to Slovakia’s basic treaty with Hungary (Ramet 1997). Those measures also provoked protests from ethnic Hungarians; the recarving bill was but the tip of the iceberg. The second, related “Machiavellian” logic involved the potential use of the new territorial structure as a stepping stone toward electoral

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reform. Opposition politicians frequently accused the government of preparing a “friendly” reform of Slovakia’s electoral system. They were encouraged, to a large part, by HZDS politicians: since 1994, Mečiar had discussed replacing the country’s four-region proportional electoral system (with 5% threshold) with some alternative system—perhaps a pure single member district/plurality system, perhaps a mixed proportional-majoritarian system. The opposition feared that the government would use the recarving law as a foundation or precedent for a such a new system. Marcela Gburová of the Social Democratic Party (SDSS), for example, suggested that “the law on territorialadministrative structure of Slovakia is the first precondition for a change in the electoral regime, toward a mixed type of system” (Národná rada SR 21. a 22. marca 1996). When confronted by a direct question about whether the new administrative districts might also serve as single member districts for National Council elections, Hudek attempted to reassure the chamber: “I suppose that the 74 districts [envisioned in this law] will not correspond with 74 electoral districts . . . I believe that the future electoral regions [kraje] will have to answer to different criteria than the number of [administrative] districts” (Národná rada SR 21. a 22. marca 1996). Hudek’s reassurance was not comforting, as it could not suppress speculation (a) that the eight new regions might be used as electoral districts, (b) that new boundaries for electoral districts would be drawn in the future, or (c) that HZDS would use the same criteria it was using to redraw administrative boundaries (i.e., national considerations, political considerations) to redraw electoral boundaries. Vladimír Krivý’s research has suggested the wisdom of scrutinizing the connection between the territorial-administrative division and a possible reconfiguration of electoral rules. Along with Viera Feglová and Daniel Balko, Krivý (1997) conducted a study of the possible effects of aligning Slovakia’s electoral boundaries with the 1996 administrative boundaries. Their conclusions, though based on a rather crude counterfactual logic, suggest that the governing coalition had much to gain by bringing electoral and administrative boundaries into line. Had the 1994 elections been contested within the eight regions created in 1996, for example, HZDS would have taken first place in all eight (Krivý 1998, 57-8). Had elections been contested within the 79 administrative districts eventually created in 1996, HZDS would have won “51-60 percent of the votes in fifteen newly created districts, and 41-49 in an additional twenty-two districts. In another fourteen districts, HZDS [would have] finished first with 19-29 percent of the votes, while in the remaining thirteen districts in which HZDS did not win, the MK dominated in eleven, the KDH in one, and the DÚ in the final one”

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(Krivý 1998, 57). Krivý’s other tests suggest that HZDS would have received an even greater number of parliamentary seats had a shift to a majoritarian or mixed electoral system accompanied the alignment of electoral and administrative boundaries. Thus, while there is little evidence that the government was contemplating any particular electoral reform in 1996—and evidence does suggest that HZDS’s coalition partners resisted a shift to majoritarian or mixed electoral procedures—there is a wealth of evidence (a) that these questions were being considered at the same time as the state reform and (b) that the redrawing of administrative boundaries might at least have paved the way for a new, HZDS-friendly electoral law. The third, most relevant theme underpinning the 1996 reform was an extension of the already familiar logic of partyization. A HZDS party document leaked to the public in 1996 “stated that HZDS should work to strengthen its position within Slovak society by continuing to reshuffle personnel within the state administration” (Krivý 1998, 59). Opposition politicians thus feared that the construction of new offices of state administration would open the door to a new wave of clientelist appointments. This prospect was particularly unpleasant because HZDS loyalists who had been appointed to high posts in sub-national state administration could themselves distribute political favors to mobilize electoral support for the HZDS. Deputy Javorský vocalized this fear of cascading clientelism: “The construction of district and regional offices of state administration and the selection of people indebted to the coalition as workers within these offices is, according to the calculations of the coalition politicians, one of the preconditions of victory in the coming [1998] elections” (Národná rada SR 21. a 22. marca 1996). Even before the two government bills had passed, HZDS leaders, in the spring of 1996, had held “constituent meetings” in each new region. At these meetings, party representatives stated that “we must fill all key state administration posts” (“HZDS Seeks Leading Role” 1996). As early as April, the government had appointed eight plenipotentiaries to oversee the creation of the regions (“Slovak Press Survey” 1996). Edita Bauerová, an Együtéllés MP, accused HZDS of seeking to “tacitly establish its leading role in society” (“HZDS Seeks Leading Role” 1996); her words, which recalled the notorious Article Four of the old Czechoslovak constitution, were chosen carefully. The opposition parties who fought against the recarving of the territorial state were not alone. Representatives of the ZMOS council, for example, were incensed by Mečiar’s decision to renege on his 1992 promise to specify the particular competencies that new (state and selfgoverning) units would perform before establishing the boundaries of

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those units. ZMOS called an emergency meeting shortly after the government’s October 1995 decision and submitted a position paper to the government and NR in early 1996 (“VI Snem ZMOS” 1996). The relationship between government and the Association was increasingly sour, however, and, like the opposition parties, ZMOS was underwhelmed by the government’s response. ZMOS, the more recently formed Union of Cities and Towns (Únia miest a obcí Slovenskej republiky, or ÚMO SR), and opposition parties criticized the government for not submitting the bills to wider public scrutiny. They proposed that such an important bill should be passed by constitutional law, and thus by a 3/5 majority that the coalition lacked. In the end, however, their protests were in vain. Despite opposition MPs’ symbolic exit from the chamber (“Poslanci opät” 1996), despite President Michal Kováč’s suspensive veto of the recarving bill, and despite an appeal to the Constitutional Court by deputies of the Hungarian Coalition, the two bills passed and went into effect in July 1996 (Zákon 221/1996; Zákon 222/1996). The government filled new and transferred administrative positions with loyal bureaucrats and used the situation of administrative flux to encourage administrative incumbents to become members of the governing parties. Again, no reliable quantitative data are available, but anecdotal evidence abounds. In August, the government was flooded with complaints about the steps it had taken to build the new administrative units. On August 20, the Union of Cities accused the government of “reviv[ing] a neo-communist structure of regional and district offices directed by party secretariats” (Nižňanský 1998). Days later, the SDĽ executive committee in Dubnica nad Váhom accused the government of offering SDĽ members positions in regional and district offices on the condition that they join HZDS (“New Administrative Reform” 1996). Deputy chair of the SNR Augustín Huska defended these processes, and in an interesting way: Huska said the HZDS wanted to avoid mistakes allegedly made by Czech Republic's ruling Civic Democratic Party (ODS), which is criticized for having insufficient rank-and-file. That is why the HZDS sees it [as] “absolutely legitimate and unavoidable” for the coalition parties to recruit new members from state officials’ ranks, he said. (“Administrative Reform” 1996)

Accusations of the partyization of new state structures continued through the end of the Mečiar government’s term. Opposition parties and critical figures frequently complained about the predatory nature of

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state administrative bodies toward municipalities (Nižňanský 1996) and the discretionary, politically based means of transferring state funds through the districts to loyal municipalities. The government, for its part, did not pursue any reforms that would have weakened its grasp on the state. It did not seek to establish strong self-governing regions or to decentralize either decisionmaking or financing. Why would it, when it had just taken such a large step toward partyizing the state? Conclusions

Between 1990 and 1996, questions about self-governing regions and civil service in the Czech Republic and Slovakia were intimately entwined with broader political developments in both states. From 1990 to 1992, debates about administrative reform became entangled in interinstitutional battles and party system dynamics, which themselves resulted from intensifying disagreements between the state’s two halves. Discussions about administrative reform, and particularly about the reconfiguration of sub-national administration, were part and parcel of this uncertainty. Broader systemic uncertainty did not lead to the displacement or resolution of questions that had been raised in 1990. Instead, those questions were discussed within the rather chaotic environment. No significant legislation passed in either national republic, and a Pandora’s Box of questions was opened. The Czechoslovak state eventually dissolved, and the terminalfederal chaos subsided. These developments opened room for Václav Klaus and Vladimír Mečiar to reckon, each in his own way, with the centralized states they had inherited. Neither prime minister could ignore internal party critics, coalition partners, opposition politicians, or strategic social actors. Both premiers, though, ultimately managed to pursue their respective ideals of the state. For Klaus, this pursuit involved an effort to use the existing state and to construct reserves of party power outside of the formal state apparatus (Grzymała-Busse 2007). Klaus was comfortable with the incomplete state he had inherited. Despite the provisions of “his” government program and “his” constitution, Klaus consistently subverted calls to construct selfgoverning regions with more-than-minimal powers, out of fear that the regions would dilute the power of the central state and ODS. While Mečiar shared Klaus’s aversion to strong self-governing regions, he was no defender of the state status quo. On the contrary, Mečiar’s vision included the construction of a new, more partyized territorial state and a

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conscious delay of institutional reforms—including self-governing regions and a civil service—that would limit short-term party power. The Czech and Slovak governments had different theoretical and practical approaches to the state. In the end, however, both approaches led in similar directions—towards the perpetuation of the systems created in 1990 and the continued absence of self-governing regions and a legally protected civil service. Notes 1 This argument falls prey to the fallacy of conflating decentralization and deconcentration. Deconcentrated offices of district state administration were “closer to the citizens” than self-governing regions would have been, since there were many more districts than there would be regions. The critical question, though, involves the mechanisms of controlling the exercise of power in the two institutions. Even if the regional offices would be located further, geographically, from certain citizens, regional leaders would be electorally accountable directly to citizens of the regions. This system would contrast with the case of the district offices, which were accountable to the central government, and thus only indirectly (as mediated through national parliamentary elections) to the citizens. Citizens could have more direct control over the behavior of regional administrators, advocates of regional reform frequently argued, than over district administrators. District offices were deconcentrated offices of state administration; regional bodies would be selfgoverning units exercising political authority. 2 This passage is particularly ambiguous. It is not clear whether the government is merely pledging to create a “legal framework” for the creation of regions or whether it is actually pledging to create the regions. Nor is it clear whether the government is committing to draft legislation that will establish (a) Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia as self-governing regions, (b) Bohemia and Moravia-Silesia as self-governing regions, or (c) particular sub-parts of the historical land of Bohemia, the historical land of Moravia, and the historical land of Silesia as self-governing regions. 3 Ten of eleven KDS deputies, 24 of 24 KDU-ČSL deputies, and 16 of 17 ODA deputies joined the many opposition deputies in supporting the bill. Thirteen of 15 ČMUS deputies voted “non-yes” (“no” or “abstain”), as did 61 of 73 ODS deputies (12 defected from the Klausite line to vote “yes”).

5 The EU and State Reform: A Deepening Relationship Domestic variables were insufficient, through 1996, to compel policymakers to establish self-governing regions and legally protected civil services. As the 1990s progressed, though, the European Union entered Central and Eastern European administrative reform scenes and began to press laggards to establish missing institutions. 1 The EU was but one of the international organizations that Czech and Slovak leaders sought to join after the collapse of state socialism. From the beginning of the transition, however, domestic actors realized that the EU was qualitatively different than other international clubs, given the range of its competencies and, in particular, the acceleration of the process of European integration in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Politicians across CEE, including the very different leaderships in Prague and Bratislava, identified EU membership as their ultimate foreign policy goal. Given candidates’ strong desire for EU membership and EU incumbents’ strong desire to minimize the costs of enlargement, one might have expected the EU to have quickly established administrative reform as a condition of membership. I argue in this chapter, though, that there were two distinct phases in the EU’s approach to CEE administrative reform. The first phase ran from 1989 through 1997. During this phase, EU actors issued vague statements and sponsored ineffective administrative reform projects; they did not pursue a cohesive reform strategy. The EU’s ineffectiveness during this period should not be mistaken for irrelevance. Although EU institutions had little direct impact on institutional outcomes, domestic actors in the early 1990s frequently “played” the EU, exploiting EU-sponsored projects to deflect domestic opposition and employing the rhetoric of Europe to support their predetermined political positions. In 1997, the EU’s administrative reform policy became more concrete. The European Commission, in particular, began to urge lagging candidates to establish the institutions that domestic elites had neglected throughout the 1990s and established self-governing regions and legally protected civil services as de facto conditions of membership. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, EU actors strategically

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employed a range of instruments to encourage administrative reform in CEE. Some of their instruments of pressure were “substantively neutral”—they reminded domestic politicians that EU membership would require certain institutions to be built but did not indicate the form that those institutions should take. Other, less public and more controversial instruments were “substantively engaged”—they made specific proposals for the shape that new state institutions should take. By 2004, the Czech Republic and Slovakia had finally passed laws establishing self-governing regions and protecting the independence of civil services. It is impossible to understand why or how they did so without appreciating the EU’s increasingly assertive role. EU Administrative Reform Policy and Assistance, 1990-1997

Existing literature on EU-CEE relations stresses that the EC was caught off guard by the collapse of state-socialism (Grabbe 1999; Mayhew 1998; Schimmelfennig 1999; Sedelmeier and Wallace 1996; Vachudova 2001). It would be inaccurate, though, to claim that 1989’s developments rendered the EC numb. From the middle of 1989 forward, member states and EC institutions issued statements supporting developments in the region and initiated programs to assist their neighbors-in-transition. At a G7 meeting in July of 1989, for example, EC member states helped to establish the G24, a group of donor countries that sought to provide coordinated assistance to Poland and Hungary. By the end of 1989, the Community had established the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and a program—Poland and Hungary Assistance for the Reconstruction of the Economy (“PHARE,” or “Phare”)—to provide financial assistance to transition countries. Still, West European gestures were not overwhelming. The Community’s first responses aimed to prevent economic collapse, particularly in highly indebted countries like Poland and Hungary. West European states stopped consciously short of endorsing the counterelites’ desires to become Community members. Early discussions about eastward enlargement took place in an environment where European integration was deepening but uncertainty was rampant: the Maastricht Treaty was signed in 1992 and was in the process of being ratified; the legislative steps necessary to complete the single market were being taken; the EC was preparing to open accession negotiations with European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA) candidate countries; GATT negotiations were heating up; and German reunification was proceeding apace. How would these developments, large enough in their own rights but enormous given their simultaneous

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occurrence, affect the timetable and mechanics of eastern enlargement? EU member states, in the early 1990s, preferred to avoid this question all together. They took a cautious approach toward CEE countries between 1990 and 1992, beginning to negotiate bilateral trade agreements (“Europe Agreements”) that nonetheless protected certain industrial and (particularly) agricultural markets in the member states (Papadimitriou 2002). It was not until the Copenhagen European Council in June 1993 that Community heads of state and government finally recognized membership of CEE countries as a goal. The conclusions laid out three basic conditions for membership: Membership requires that the candidate country has achieved stable institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law, human rights and respect for and protection of minorities [political conditions], the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union [economic conditions]. Membership presupposes the candidate’s ability to take on the obligations of membership including adherence to the aims of political, economic and monetary union [“the third condition”]. (European Council 1993)

The three conditions were simple and highly interpretable (Fagin 1999; Grabbe 2002, 2003). In the context of debates about administrative reform, both the first and the third conditions seemed vaguely relevant. The first condition raised one set of questions: Which institutions did the EU count among the “stable institutions guaranteeing democracy,” and what exactly was “stability”? Did the EU count regional governments and/or legally protected civil services as guarantors of democracy? The third condition raised even more questions: When would a candidate and the EU know when the candidate was ready to take on the obligations of membership? Was this readiness a matter of political will? Or was it a matter of the administrative capacity to implement the Community’s ever-expanding legislative corpus (the acquis communautaire)? Thus, the Copenhagen European Council did not present concrete expectations of CEE administrations. It merely suggested, in a highly interpretable way, that public administration somehow mattered. It did not identify the particular pathologies of contemporary CEE states. It did not indicate any particular sectors where administrative capacity was important or propose that membership required any particular administrative changes. It did not suggest ways that CEE countries might reform their administrations to increase their accession chances.

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Nor did it mention the steps that the Community might take to assist CEE countries with administrative reform. In short, despite the European Council’s recognition of enlargement as a Community goal, and despite the reference to “stable institutions” and the ability to assume the “obligations of membership,” the EU’s expectations, in 1993, remained very unclear. The Essen European Council of December 1994 clarified the picture only slightly. Essen’s conclusions stressed the importance of retraining CEE bureaucrats as a means of fulfilling the third Copenhagen criterion. The Commission should support administrative retraining, the final document suggested, by (a) providing bureaucrats with “the necessary political, legal, and related training in European affairs,” and (b) assuring that Phare funding “take[s] into account the restructuring priorities foreseen in this strategy [including administrative retraining]” (European Council 1994). These developments notwithstanding, Essen did not “flesh out” the Copenhagen criteria. By December 1994, Phare administrative reform projects had been initiated across the region; the Essen conclusions did not imply that these projects aimed to achieve some common vision. The specific nature of the EU’s expectations of CEE administrations remained imprecise. It was not until the Madrid European Council of December 1995 that the EU clearly stated that membership would require CEE countries to reform inherited administrative systems. Madrid proposed that the pre-accession strategy would “have to be intensified in order to create the conditions for the gradual, harmonious integration of states, particularly through the development of the market economy, the adjustment of their administrative structures, and the creation of a stable economic and monetary environment” (European Council 1995). The European Council thus noted (a) that accession required administrative reform, and (b) that EU institutions and member states had a role to play in encouraging the reform. The Madrid document still did not mention particular principles of public administration or administrative reform priorities in CEE. It did, however, convey a realization that systems of public administration in CEE, as they stood, were inadequate to the tasks of membership. It suggested that EU institutions would have some role to play in addressing their inadequacies. At Madrid, EU leaders intensified their commitment to administrative reform without yet developing a clear-cut policy targeting specific capacities or institutional structures as conditions. The Madrid European Council also called upon the Commission, in the near future, to evaluate the CEE countries’ applications in light of the Copenhagen criteria: “[The European Council] asks the Commission

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to expedite preparation of its opinions on the applications made so that they can be forwarded to the Council as soon as possible after the conclusion of the [1997] Intergovernmental Conference” (European Council 1995). By requiring the Commission to compose opinions, the Council indicated that CEE countries would be evaluated against the standard of the Copenhagen criteria. The problem, however, was that the Copenhagen criteria remained clouded in ambiguity. Yes, “administration mattered.” But what about administration mattered? The vagueness of the third criterion was reinforced by the fact, frequently noticed by students of European administration, that “there [wa]s no European administrative policy per se which [wa]s explicitly concerned with the structure and practice of domestic administrations” (Knill 2001, 1). The EU’s nation-states had been built upon different administrative foundations. How, given this fact and the consequent lack of an administrative acquis, could the EU press candidate states to implement specific institutional reforms? EU institutions confronted this question early on. It was not until the late 1990s, though, that any attempt was made to reconcile the non-existence of an acquis with pressure to build certain institutions in candidate countries. During the period under consideration, the non-existence of a public administration acquis was more frequently used to justify the continuation of a vague third criterion and a demand-driven approach to administrative reform assistance. Despite these fundamental questions, the EU sponsored a broad range of administrative reform projects in CEE between 1990 and 1997 under the auspices of the Phare program. Throughout this period, CEE countries would propose project within a previously agreed annual (early 1990s) or multi-annual (mid-1990s) indicative program. The Commission and the CEE country would negotiate the project’s objectives and financial details. Officially, under the “demand-driven approach,” the CEE country would take the initiative in designing the project; in practice, the case was occasionally more complicated. Once designed, the Commission would publish the project description in the Official Journal and on the Internet. Consultants from Member States and CEE countries would then submit bids to the Commission, which would award the contract to the highest-quality bidder. If the Commission continued to trust that the investment of Phare money was financially prudent, it would begin releasing committed funds. Contractors would then direct project outputs to the relevant CEE ministry or department. Phare administrative reform projects were, in short, a fairly traditional means of technical assistance. The Commission

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ultimately hoped that contractors would steer detailed final materials to strategically placed individuals in CEE states. The quantity of Phare assistance devoted to administrative reform increased relatively steadily between 1990 and 1997. Administrative reform projects consumed less than 3% of committed Phare funds during the first three programming years. After the Community recognized eastern enlargement as a goal and promulgated the three membership conditions, administrative reform funding increased. This general trend—very modest percentages of Phare funding devoted to administrative reform before 1993, significantly greater sums thereafter—also applied in Czechoslovakia and its successor states. In Czechoslovakia before 1993, no Phare money was committed to administrative reform projects. In the Czech Republic between 1993 and 1997, administrative reform funding consumed 9.9% of total Phare funding, and in Slovakia during the same period, it also consumed a larger chunk of the total Phare pot. 2 While these figures make sense when viewed through the lens of the EU’s developing macro-policy toward CEE, they are still rather puzzling. One set of questions involves the scope of administrative reform projects that the Union sponsored. By that year, the Union had suggested that administration mattered without indicating specific administrative reform priorities. Given the lack of specific guidelines, what kinds of administrative reform projects would the Commission support? The projects that flew under the banner of “public administration reform” were extremely diverse. A small sample of projects in the region during this period demonstrates as much: support for particular municipal offices, support for computer hardware in prime ministers’ offices, support for legislative databases, support for projects that set baselines for civil service legislation, support for public procurement training projects, and support for language training. A second set of questions involves the mismatch between the EU’s increasing interest in high-quality administration, on one hand, and domestic leaders’ aversion to administrative reforms, on the other. Phare was supposed to be a “demand-driven” program. If the Czech and Slovak governments’ demands for administrative reform were so low (see Chapter 4), and if Phare was a “demand-driven” enterprise, then how could spending on administrative reform projects be increasing? What did this mismatch between external supply and domestic demand imply for the fate of administrative reform project outputs and for the role of the EU on domestic administrative reform scenes?

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The Ineffectiveness of EU Administrative Reform Assistance, 1990-1997: A Closer Look

Between 1990 and 1997, the EU was unclear about the specific kinds of administrative reforms it expected in CEE countries. Domestic politicians, for their part, had little reason to change their respective approaches to reform, as the EU imposed few costs for refusing to do so. In this section, I present two case studies to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of Phare administrative reform projects during this era. Far from being exceptions or outliers, these cases engender the failures and frustrations that were typical of Czech and Slovak administrative reform projects undertaken during this period. The cases show how domestic elites alternately employed and ignored Phare contractors, using EU assistance as a pawn in domestic reform games. The Instrumental Use of EU Support: Case One

The first case study involves the first significant Phare administrative reform project pursued in the Czech Republic. Following Copenhagen, EU and Czech sides jointly designed a project to draft a systematic approach to Czech administrative reform. The project’s financial commitment—two million ECU—was as humble as its objectives were grand. Its short-term objectives included the establishment of a state institution to manage the Czech civil service, the creation of “modernization teams” within each ministry, the composition of a strategy for public administration reform (including regionalization and civil service reform), the design and implementation a civil service law, and the construction of a concept of education and training for civil servants. In short, the project aimed to “restructure, decentralise, and modernise” Czech administration in one fell swoop. Chapter four showed that Prime Minister Klaus was no friend of administrative reform. Klaus consistently deflected demands from within and outside of his coalition for regionalization and a civil service law. Why, then, did his government apparently request an EU-sponsored project that aimed to meet these goals? The answer to this puzzle is that the government’s commitment to the project was a political ploy—like the 1992 government program, the constitution, and the establishment of Office of Legislation and Public Administration (ÚLVS)—that was intended to placate increasingly frustrated political opponents. Klaus could point to the government’s initiation of the EU project as proof that despite the slow progress of regional reform and civil service legislation and the government’s deft use of delay tactics, it still somehow cared

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about administrative reform. Klaus could also signal to the EU that his government was cognizant of the Copenhagen criteria and the importance of the administrative capacity to implement the acquis. According to the regulations that governed Phare service contracts in 1994, three years could elapse between the date the EU committed funds to a project and the date the Commission signed a contract with the service consultant. The Klaus government used this temporal cushion to its advantage, essentially letting the money sit, committed but not disbursed, between 1994 and 1997. 3 After demanding an EU commitment in 1994, the government demonstrated, through a series of steps analyzed in the previous chapter, that administrative reform was not a high priority and that it was committed only in writing to establishing self-governing regions and an independent civil service. Though the Commission designated the funds in 1994, Commission personnel knew, given the government’s subsequent behavior, that the impact of any project would be minimal were the funds to be disbursed. The Commission was technically in charge of contracting the project and disbursing the committed funds. Klaus could expect those funds not to be committed, given the Commission’s (correct) interpretation of his government’s approach to regional and civil service reforms. Klaus essentially projected the same delay tactics onto the Commission that he had used against domestic opponents. The government’s maneuvers did not sit well with the Commission Delegation in Prague, especially since, by 1997, the Phare program was being transformed into an explicit instrument of pre-accession assistance and the vague Copenhagen criteria were crystallizing into more specific expectations. Anxious to disburse the committed funds, the head of the Prague Commission Delegation, Joannes ter Haar, approached the National Training Fund (Národní vzdělávací fond, or NVF), a domestic contractor. It has been necessary to enter such detail about the preparatory phase of the first Czech administrative reform project for a number of reasons. First, it demonstrates that domestic political elites, in this case Václav Klaus, were able to manipulate and/or ignore EU assistance if and when it conflicted with their strategic domestic goals. This fact was particularly striking in the Czech case, where the government strategically chose not to reject assistance outright, but to go “half-way” (committing to the project without following through on it), using Phare as a symbolic shield against domestic political opponents. Second, and relatedly, the episode demonstrates that the common perception of pre-1997 Phare assistance as “demand-driven” must be understood with a grain of salt. At a superficial level, the Czech

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government did demand EU assistance. The demand was insincere, though, and the EU was, for the duration of Klaus’s governments, powerless to do much about it. The Commission did not approach the NVF, nor did the Fund begin its analysis and recommendations for the reform of Czech public administration, until after the demise of the second Klaus government. Even after that government fell, the Commission itself—and not any domestic actor—had to approach domestic experts about possible ways to use the assistance. The Commission, in other words, had to generate domestic demand. A subsequent European Court of Auditors report suggested that it would have been financially wiser, and politically more effective, for the Commission to punish the Czech government by surrendering the committed funds. The Commission Delegation, however, had at least three reasons for seeking out the NVF. It hoped: (1) that the NVF could produce a high-quality domestic analysis of Czech public administration and a strategy for overcoming its weaknesses, (2) that, in the course of so doing, they could mobilize a Czech academic community that was more strongly committed to administrative reform and more closely tied to policymakers than the general Czech public, and (3) that the NVF might publish its materials in a post-election environment where political leaders would be more amenable to reform than the previous Czech governments had been. Despite its rocky start, the NVF project was not a complete failure. More than thirty academics and bureaucrats worked on the project, effectively extending an emergent network of elite domestic supporters of systemic administrative reform. In the second half of 1998, the Fund published two long papers and sent copies of both documents to parliamentarians and bureaucrats throughout the administration. Josef Tošovský’s caretaker government, in office from December 1997 through the spring of 1998, welcomed the project, remarked more generally on the necessity of strengthening administrative capacity, and established a small administrative reform department in the Ministry of Interior. Articles about the project’s outputs made the daily newspapers. From the Commission’s point of view, these were welcome results. From a broader perspective, however, the Commission’s work in generating demand seems not to have paid off, as the project had little substantive impact. The NVF, owing largely to the governmental instability at the time, had difficulties establishing contact with politicians and ministries, and it was not clear until midway through the project’s lifetime to which ministry the NVF’s final materials would be delivered. With the exception of the completed preliminary reform strategy, the grand objectives outlined in the original terms of reference

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were not met. The outputs had been distributed throughout the state apparatus, but Czech bureaucrats, EC Delegation personnel, and even some NVF staffers conceded that no more than a handful of policymakers ever read them. A number of members of the Chamber of Deputies’ Committee for Public Administration, Regional Development and the Environment were ignorant of the 1994 project’s outputs, and a neutral evaluation unit contracted to the Commission rated project performance poorly (OMAS Report 2000). The Instrumental Use of EU Support: Case Two

The second case also shows how the EU’s loose commitment to administrative reform allowed reticent governments to use EU support as an instrument of domestic political combat; it, too, involves the Czech Republic. The case involves a contractor named SIGMA (Sigma), a rough acronym for “Support for Governance and Management in Central and East European Countries.” Established in 1992, the Sigma of the 1990s was a sub-unit of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s (OECD’s) Public Management and Governance Service (PUMA). Sigma was established when PUMA bid successfully for a contract from the Commission/Phare in 1992. At a basic level, Sigma resembled smaller contractors like the NVF. The OECD had to go through similar bidding procedures with the Commission, and the organization’s main aim was to transfer expertise to CEE counterparts. Still, Sigma differed from other consultants in at least two ways. First, it was a multi-country contractor. Its offices were located at the OECD’s headquarters in Paris. From Paris, Sigma assisted CEE countries in a broad range of areas—from designing public administration development strategies, to offering assistance on interministerial coordination and regulation, to cooperation on budgeting, public service management, civil service, and financial control and external auditing. Second, although initial Phare-Sigma contracts contained baseline conditions and restrictions, the Commission, in the early and mid-1990s, generally deferred more to Sigma than to smaller, more malleable contractors. The Commission realized that the OECD’s experience with administrative reform surpassed the Commission’s own. The Commission trusted that Sigma’s goals for the relevant sectors gelled with its own, and it granted the organization considerable operational leeway. Thus, despite certain similarities, Sigma was also an alternative to more deliberately designed Phare administrative reform projects. It

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could offer quick assistance to CEE policymakers who requested it. Sigma initiated an array of international conferences and disseminated information on best practices within and beyond CEE, but it also employed legal experts whose major task was to critique relevant draft laws (i.e., civil service laws, public procurement laws). Personnel at the ÚLVS—the Czech Office for Legislation and Public Administration—were enthusiastic about Sigma’s resources and tried to parlay Sigma’s expertise into domestic policy influence. After participating in Sigma-sponsored conferences and receiving background materials from the OECD and the Commission in 1996, ÚLVS personnel prepared a concept which laid out steps for preparing Czech ministerial personnel for EU integration. Unsurprisingly, Prime Minister Klaus did not share the bureaucrats’ enthusiasm and frowned upon the enterprise of Czech-EU-OECD cooperation in the area of administrative reform. When ÚLVS director Jan Kalvoda presented the Sigmasupported reform concept to the government, Klaus swiftly rejected it. The government took the concept under consideration, passed no resolution on it, and effectively killed an initiative rooted in ÚLVSSigma interaction. Given Klaus’s general approach to administrative reform, this result was not surprising. Within the ÚLVS, there was significant reticence about preparing the concept in the first place, as ÚLVS managers had become accustomed to Klaus’s style and could reasonably predict the draft’s eventual fate. This episode hardly seems to support an interpretation of Sigma as either effective or relevant. Leading politicians did not use Sigma in any way; they preferred merely to ignore the organization’s outputs. Events that had transpired before the latter episode, however, show that the government was willing to use Sigma when doing so reinforced its positions. Those events surrounded the preparation of the civil service law. Recall the portion of the Klaus government’s 1992 programmatic statement that dealt with civil service legislation: It is also necessary to increase the professional level, the technical expertise, and the informational capacity of the state administration and to renew the prestige of this profession within society. Therefore, the government will speed up preparations for a draft law on the legal standing of state civil servants. (Česká národní rada 13. července 1992)

In the years after it presented the statement, the government employed tactics similar to those it had used to delay the creation of

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regional self-governing units. In August 1993, it passed the baselines of the civil service law (Usnesení 460/1993). In the fall of 1993, it submitted the draft baselines to parliament. Between November 1993 and April 1994, parliamentary committees discussed the baselines and authorized the government to draft the full version of the law. In the second half of 1994, the Labor Ministry and ÚLVS drafted the latter version, producing an immense and complex document containing 275 specific paragraphs. ODS ministers, Klaus foremost among them, were not anxious to consider the bill, as they had opposed the institution of depoliticized civil service from the party’s first days; the government delayed consideration of the full draft bill throughout the winter of 1994-1995. As pressure from minor coalition and opposition parties grew, however, the government conceded and took a half-step forward, deciding in February that while the draft bill would not be considered by the cabinet as a whole, it would be considered by various advisory sessions of sub-groups of ministers. It was within this context that Ivan Kočarník—Finance Minister, Deputy Prime Minister, and Klaus’s ODS ally—appealed to Sigma in an attempt to retard the civil service bill’s momentum. In the spring of 1995, Kočarník sent the draft bill to Paris to be analyzed, in detail, by Sigma’s legal experts. Conveniently for ODS, Sigma’s experts made significant criticisms of the bill. Kočarník and other ODS leaders pounced upon these criticisms as proof that the bill was poorly prepared, that the full draft version should not be considered by the government as a whole (much less submitted to parliament), and that the time was not ripe to pass such a law. In the spring of 1995, the government decided to suspend preparation of the civil service bill. Though a second advisory session took place and the ÚLVS and Labor Ministry continued to prepare materials related to the civil service law through August 1995, the full government never considered the prepared materials (Voňková 1996). Thus, while Klaus’s curt dismissal of the Sigma-inspired draft on the training of bureaucrats suggests that the EU-sponsored contractor was neither effective nor relevant, the case of the draft civil service law suggests a more subtle interpretation. In 1995, the government used Sigma as a pawn in a domestic political game. The government had used delay tactics to stymie the presentation and passage of a law to which it had committed, against the will of its dominant partner, in 1992. It now appealed to Sigma in hopes that Sigma’s criticisms—coming as they would from a prestigious international actor embedded in an organization (the OECD) that the Czech Republic wished to join and funded by another attractive international club (the EU)—would provide

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new and legitimate ways to parry domestic pressure for civil service reform. This was a cunning strategy, and it paid off. Though voices within the government and opposition continued to call for civil service reform, the prepared draft law, now stained by Sigma’s criticisms, languished and eventually died. The approach to Sigma was not the result of principle, but of political convenience: Sigma could be ignored when there was no political price to be paid for such ignorance and used when its recommendations counteracted domestic advocates of civil service reform. The case studies expose the limits EU administrative reform assistance in the 1990-1997 period. Commission personnel felt that they had to “encourage demand” from domestic politicians who, in many cases, were not interested in effecting reforms. Even when domestic leaders came forward with proposals, there was no guarantee (a) that the proposals would be well prepared, (b) that projects, no matter what their quality, would be carried out, (c) that, if carried out, the outputs would affect the behavior of strategically placed domestic policymakers, or (d) that, even if policymakers received the project outputs, they would use them to inform or reorient their preferences. Phare administrative reform projects had little influence in a context where the Community’s policy was so vague and where domestic actors had little sincere interest in the kind of assistance on offer. Ineffective, But Not Irrelevant: “Europe” as a Rhetorical Tool

The second way that Europe mattered on Czech and Slovak reform scenes between 1990 and 1997 did not involve the EU as a set of institutions. Rather, it involved “Europe” as a rhetorical ideal. Domestic actors on all sides of debates used “Europe” to legitimize their preferences. They could do this because of the vagueness of the EU’s expectations vis-à-vis administrative reform. Politicians routinely sought to convince the public of the soundness of their various visions of the state by associating these visions with the EU and European norms. Similarly, they tried to indicate the folly of alternative visions by demonstrating their incompatibility with European norms. The notion that actors integrate legitimacy-bestowing norms into self-interested arguments has been carefully developed in the international relations literature. The sense in which I understand the process derives from Schimmelfennig’s understanding of “rhetorical action,” which he defines as “the strategic use of arguments [that] proposes both rational actors and an institutional environment: In an intersubjectively structured environment, rational political actors need

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legitimacy and must take into account common values and norms but manipulate them through the use of strategic arguments” (Schimmelfennig 1999, 2). Political actors, on this conception, seek to identify consistencies between their preferences and the legitimacybestowing norms to which both they and their opponents are attached; “the intersubjective structure [of the norms] adds cheap legitimacy to the actor’s egoistic goals” (Schimmelfennig 1999, 20). Schimmelfennig uses the lens of rhetorical action to explain the EU’s decision to expand to the east. I use it here to suggest that rhetorical action played a central role in CEE countries’ domestic political scenes. In the Czech Republic and Slovakia of the 1990s, few parliamentary political parties opposed accession to the European Union or European international organizations like the Council of Europe. Elites in both Czechoslovak successor states were linked by a desire to “rejoin Europe” and raise their countries’ standards to levels enjoyed by their neighbors. The intersubjective thread linking domestic political elites, in other words, was the desire to rejoin Europe. Political actors thus cloaked their arguments for and against regionalization and civil service reform in the language of “Europe.” This tendency was particularly evident in the speeches of the first Klaus government’s intra- and extra-governmental critics. These critics actively but vainly attempted to force the government to establish the two missing institutions. They utilized numerous arguments from “purely domestic” grounds—that the establishment of such institutions was constitutionally necessary, historically justified, unavoidable given the government’s promises, an inseparable component of the transition from state socialism, etc. They also argued, however, (a) that such institutions were necessary given the country’s European aspirations, and (b) that ODS’s refusal to create such institutions contradicted the party’s own (albeit increasingly “Euro-realistic”) commitment to joining European structures. ODA chairman Jan Kalvoda was the most prominent promulgator of such arguments. Consider the words that Kalvoda used to conclude a 1996 speech: The debate between defenders of centralism [Klaus’s ODS] and their opponents, though raging in today’s Czech Republic, is by no means new, even though modern terminology may be employed in the course of the debate. I declare, though, that this battle is neither normal nor legitimate within the framework of the European democratic space at the end of the twentieth century, for European history has demonstrated one considerable connection: whenever a totalitarian regime has been built, the first victim has been self-government. I will conclude, therefore, in an untraditional way, by stating the title of my

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speech: Arrogant centralism is the fundamental obstacle to the transformation of our society and our return to the European cultural and historical context.” (Kalvoda 1996)

Kalvoda attempted to justify the creation of self-governing regions by suggesting that such a step would be consistent with European politics, European history, and European culture. He tried to tarnish the defenders of centralism by suggesting that their preferences were antiEuropean, and therefore inconsistent with their generally pro-accession inclinations. Kalvoda made similar arguments in May 1995, when addressing the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities of Europe (CLRAE) at the Council of Europe (COE). He used the COE rostrum to criticize ODS for not living up to the COE’s standards, which included, among other things, the importance of sub-national self-government for healthy democracy. He also claimed that it was “not economic parameters, as some [read: Klaus] believe, but compatibility of functioning democratic structures [that] will be decisive for Prague’s admission to the European Union” (“Czech European Integration” 1995). One month later, when presenting a draft government bill on the creation of self-governing regions that his party had worked (again vainly) to amend, he made a similar suggestion: “The burdens of democracy are clearly not small. By establishing self-governing regions, we [will] come closer to Europe itself—not only to the Council of Europe. This will be a notinsignificant factor in the attempt to accede as quickly as possible to the European Union” (Poslanecká sněmovna 20. června 1995). Opposition politicians also used “Europe” and the prospect of EU membership to legitimate their criticisms. This strategy was clear in the written justification of an opposition bill on territorial self-government and state administration, submitted by a swath of opposition MPs in the spring of 1994. Like Kalvoda, the opposition MPs sought to associate the creation of self-governing regions with the process of European integration and to represent the two processes as opposite sides of a similar coin: This draft bill observes European experiences and tendencies. In the developed states of Europe, contemporary experience points to the existence of two mutually reinforcing trends. The first is the tendency toward supranational European integration. The second, intimately entwined with the first, is the tendency to develop and, in certain cases, to renew sub-national territorial administrative units inside individual states and to give such units a share in the administration of public affairs.

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The first tendency is characterized by an attempt to surmount narrow national interests; by the need to develop close, supranational economic cooperation and coordination; [and] by the need for common supranational commerce and markets. Its concrete result is the existence of the European Union. The second tendency gives citizens the ability to take care of themselves, to reinvigorate the processes of European integration while being aware of their own identity, their roots, their connections to the community of citizens in the municipalities and regions where they live, and the responsibilities of their local and regional organs for the vitality of their societies. The second tendency is expressed by attempts to increase the self-government of towns and so-called regions. One tendency without the other loses its meaning, and to work one’s way up to recognizing this [by pursuing one tendency while neglecting the other] is a vain waste of time and financial resources. (“Návrh poslance F. Kačenky” 1994)

Even Václav Exner, a representative of the Communist bloc in parliament, sought to shame the government by playing the Europe card: “We are currently, with Slovakia, with whom we have inherited a legacy from 1990, a European rarity: we are the only European states that have representative organs at the municipal level and then nothing [no intermediate self-governing level] until the Chamber of Deputies” (Poslanecká sněmovna 26. dubna 1994). All of these examples show how Czech opposition politicians put the tools of European legitimacy to work in service of their goals. The Slovak opposition, despite the different nature of the government it opposed, also sought to appropriate the language of Europe. While Klaus’s opponents used the Europe card to show that “not doing anything” was inconsistent with European norms, Mečiar’s opponents had a rather different task: to show that “the things the government is doing” were inconsistent with the same norms. They had little trouble doing so. MPs representing Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarians used the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the COE to suggest the inadequacy of the government’s plans. Interstate cooperation in the COE had led, they claimed, to the signing and ratification of the European Charter of Local Self-Government and the European Charter of Regional Self-Government. Slovakia, though a COE member, had signed neither convention, and Mečiar’s Hungarian opponents sought to identify a misfit between the state’s membership in the COE and the government’s determination to pass legislation that clashed with the charters. It was in this sense that László Nagy, a

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Hungarian Coalition MP, argued that the government’s “draft law is inconsistent with the recommendation of the Council of Europe for Slovakia through its [Slovakia’s] acceptance in that organization” (Národná rada SR 21. a 22. marca 1996). Nagy’s colleague, Istvan Pásztor, echoed his colleague by urging reconciliation between the government bill and the European Charter. He also suggested a more explicit link to the European Union, appropriating the EU’s language of subsidiarity: [The government bill] does not derive from a modern, correct conception. Such a philosophy, on which public administrations in the developed countries of the west is based, is diametrically opposed to the understanding of public administration as an instrument of power. In the modern understanding, [public administration] is about service to citizens and the attempt to add to the quality of life and the functioning of a legal state. Public administration, which is service to the citizens, comes out of the principle of subsidiarity . . . The entire complex of laws [that the government is drafting] should be in agreement with the European Charter of Local Self-Government and with the principle of subsidiarity. (Národná rada SR 21. a 22. marca 1996)

The Hungarian opposition was not the only group to attack the misfit between the government’s proposed reforms and the process of European integration. Ľubomír Fogaš of the post-communist SDĽ, for example, suggested that the government’s refusal to disclose which administrative competencies would be transferred to regional and local self-governments would put Slovakia at a comparative disadvantage, since “the process of [European] integration [requires consideration of] which competencies to transfer away from the center . . . This is why many countries have strengthened federalism, strengthened regional or cantonal governments or offices” (Národná rada SR 21. a 22. marca 1996). After the relevant legislation passed, similar criticisms continued. Leaders of the Democratic Union (DÚ), for example, attacked the process of injecting HZDS loyalists into new sub-national offices on the grounds that “the HZDS is playing with fire and could definitively burn our hopes to join the company of prosperous democratic states” (“HZDS Forcing” 1996). In all of these attacks, the opposition associated itself with Europe and the EU and painted the government’s actions as antiEuropean and inconsistent with its stated goal of accession. In the universe of domestic actors, opposition politicians were particularly keen to utilize the rhetorical potential of “Europe,” but they could not monopolize European discourse within the context of

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administrative reform debates. ODS and HZDS might have taken advantage of the vagueness of EU administrative reform policy and the non-existence of an administrative reform acquis to argue that, in fact, the EU had very little to do with administrative reform in member states and applicant states. In fact, Mečiar’s government did just this. While presenting the government’s bill on territorial recarving to the National Council, for example, Interior Minister Hudek attempted to preempt opposition MPs’ appropriation of the Europe card. He used many of the same concepts and ideas as the opposition would use to make an opposite point: that the government bill was indeed congruent with European norms and Slovakia’s accession hopes, and that the opposition was in fact flirting with anti-European ideas: Public administration reform is a legislative task that arises in all states. In Western Europe, this process has been going on for many years, and it has also become relevant in countries working to assure their integration into West European structures . . . [The goal of this bill] is to create a certain kind of administrative system—a kind that will better serve the needs of the citizens, that will be simpler and financially less demanding, and that will bring our system closer to the administrative systems of West European countries . . . The draft is consistent with the criteria that the government promised to follow during its work on the new territorial and administrative set-up. These criteria were also evaluated as very precise and exhaustive by experts from the Council of Europe, who examined the state of our preparations for the draft law on July 20 and 21 of last year . . . Council of Europe experts also suggested that the most responsible division of Slovakia would include somewhere between seven and eleven higher territorial units. They wondered whether the creation of three or four units [a division that certain opposition parties had supported] would adequately respect the principle of subsidiarity and claimed that such a division could be interpreted as a division of the territory designed [in contravention of COE standards] to coincide with the territory of the largest [Hungarian] minority. (Národná rada SR 21. a 22. marca 1996)

The fact that political opponents used similar concepts in opposite ways suggests that limits to the strategic manipulation of the European standard of legitimacy were poorly defined indeed. Anyone, it seemed, could use the EU and other positive symbols to legitimize their position. It is worth noting, though, that Klaus and his party never employed “European” rhetoric to justify their anti-reform positions. This fact is puzzling, given the numerous plausible arguments for this defense—the lack of an acquis for public administration, the EU’s historically hands-

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off attitude toward the internal administration and constitutional balances of member states. Rather than interpreting ODS’s non-use of the legitimating discourse as a political error, however, this “dog that didn’t bark” might itself have been a strategic choice. By refusing rhetorically to equate the process of administrative reform with the process of European integration and EU accession, ODS was attempting to deny the opposition’s insistence that the two process went hand in hand and that the EU was relevant to the domestic debate. This strategy was ironic, since the party’s “silent insistence” that the EU was not relevant contradicted its use of EU resources as tool for deflecting domestic political criticism. EU Administrative Reform Policy and Assistance, 1997-2004

Before 1997, domestic actors faced few external incentives to establish the missing institutions. They were able to integrate EU “assistance” into domestic administrative reform games and wrap their divergent institutional preferences in a legitimizing “European” cloak. These dynamics began to change in the late 1990s. Recall that the Madrid European Council had charged the Commission with presenting opinions on CEE countries’ membership applications as soon as possible after the conclusion of the 1996-1997 Intergovernmental Conference. The resulting Opinions (Avis) became part of the Agenda 2000 project, in which the Commission prepared recommendations for an enlargement strategy and evaluated the potential impact of enlargement on existing EU policies. The Opinions evaluated applicants on the basis of the Copenhagen conditions and what came to be known as the “Madrid condition,” shorthand for administrative capacity. In the Opinions (July 1997) and the Luxembourg Council (December 1997), the EU began to clarify the ambiguity that had characterized its administrative reform conditionality since the early 1990s. Alongside detailed evaluations of administrative capacity in sectoral areas of the acquis communautaire, each Opinion also evaluated applicants’ administrations as such. They criticized the way administrations functioned and often advocated steps that states should take to overcome horizontal administrative pathologies. The Opinions and subsequent annual Regular Reports identified a raft of interconnected horizontal problems: low salaries, high personnel turnover (particularly at managerial level), corruption, politicization and patronage, poor training and professional preparation, poor motivation. According to the Commission, all of these characteristics imperiled states’ “overall effectiveness” (Commission 2000a).

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The pathologies also threatened applicants’ ability to manage the accession process and handle the burdens of membership. High turnover was problematic, for example, because “policymaking, legal, managerial and planning capacities [were] essential to the accession process” (Commission 1997b). An administration lacking “overall effectiveness” would be doomed in an EU whose membership “create[d] new demands of the public administration, in terms of European policymaking, implementing the acquis, and managing funds” (Commission 2001). The Commission feared that the legal environment in certain CEE countries encouraged transience and politicization and discouraged the accumulation of professional knowledge that both accession and membership required. In addition to diagnosing pathologies, the Commission prescribed treatments. The prescription for countries that lacked civil service legislation was to pass such legislation in short order. A well-crafted act, according to the Commission, would “foster political independence and . . . reduce the scope for political interventions in the appointment of officials. It [w]ould also promote effective management and assist in the creation of a unified system of human resources development. The terms and conditions of officials [w]ould also be improved, so helping to attract and retain sufficiently qualified staff” (Commission 2000a). CEE politicians must overcome the contentiousness that civil service legislation had occasioned. They must not allow civil service laws to become bogged down in the legislative process, since “delays [in the preparation and introduction of such legislation] could seriously jeopardise the key role of the public administration in supporting the accession process” (Commission 1999b). This was a novel development in the evolution of EU administrative reform policy: while previous proclamations had vaguely stressed competent administration as a membership condition, the Opinions and later documents identified civil service legislation as an indispensable stone on the path toward a stable state with robust administrative capacity. A civil service law was not one possible step toward building an able state; for countries that lacked such a law, it was the first step. Thus did civil service legislation become a membership condition. The European Commission also came to monitor regional reform processes. It did not push candidates to establish any “magic number” of self-governing regions. Nor did it advocate any particular relationship between territorial self-government and sub-national state administration. Still, the Commission discouraged legislative foot-dragging and urged candidates to complete regional and other territorial reforms as quickly as possible.

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In the 1998 report on the Czech Republic, for example, the Commission lamented the facts (a) that “there has been virtually no progress in public administration reform since July 1997,” and (b) that the government “has recognised public administration reform as a priority but has not yet taken the necessary steps to translate that political commitment into concrete actions” (Commission 1998a). The following year, the Commission mutedly praised the Czech government for appointing a deputy interior minister for administrative reform. Similarly, in the Slovak Regular Report of 1999, the Commission lauded the government for passing a strategy for decentralization and modernization. The following year, it admonished the government for delaying the implementation of the strategy and allowing differences of opinion within the governing coalition to hinder the introduction of regionalization legislation. If the Commission’s concern with “overall effectiveness” undergirded its advocacy of civil service legislation, its concern about territorial foot-dragging reflected a fear that protracted uncertainty about the division of labor between central and sub-national institutions would threaten applicant countries’ abilities (a) to implement Community legislation, but also (b) to qualify for and effectively use EU structural funds. A complex logic underlay the Commission’s criticisms: the nonexistence of regional self-governments did not, in and of itself, disqualify a country from the structural funds. Qualification for and use of funds did, however, require competent regional actors capable of participating in the preparation of regional development plans that satisfied the Commission’s criteria and were seen by domestic actors as legitimate and binding. A period of protracted flux, where the relationship between central and sub-central actors remained uncertain, would damage candidates’ ability to draft regional plans that were both professional and legitimate. Fear of uncertainty thus fueled the Commission’s displeasure with governments’ reluctance to satisfy stated commitments to establish self-governing regions. To summarize: From 1997 forward, the EU elaborated two key expectations of candidates’ administrations. First, to achieve political stability and overall effectiveness, state bureaucrats should be protected by explicit civil service legislation. Second, to assure that states could implement Community legislation and utilize pre-structural and structural funds, governments should follow through with administrative reform strategies and pass laws that would stabilize relationships (a) between national and sub-national authorities, and (b) between territorial state administration and territorial self-government.

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Of course, there was a significant legal problem with these conditions: neither civil service nor regional governance was part of the acquis communautaire. These areas differed from sectors like competition and agriculture, where EU law was well developed and the Union could make clear, legally based demands of candidates. In the latter sectors, EU principals could push candidates to make necessary legal changes during rounds of negotiations on each of the acquis’s 31 chapters. For the Czech Republic and five other countries, these negotiations began in 1998; Slovakia and five other states kicked off negotiations in 2000. Regardless of the legal limitations of administrative reform conditionality, EU actors pursued the beefier policy energetically, employing at least four distinct means of pressure. The Luxembourg European Council of December 1997 opened the gate for the first means. Luxembourg initiated a reinforced pre-accession strategy, which aimed to “mobilise all forms of assistance to the applicant countries . . . within a single framework,” known as the Accession Partnerships (European Council 1997). This institutionalized a dialectic of Commission criticism and candidate response in both acquis and non-acquis areas. Understandably concerned that the existing system of Phare assistance provided candidates with chances to use the funds opportunistically, Luxembourg transformed pre-accession assistance from a “demand-driven instrument” to an “accession-driven instrument.” Practically, this shift required basing assistance on the Opinions’ and Regular Reports’ criticisms. Each Accession Partnership was subdivided into short-term (within nine months) and medium-term (over one year) tasks which derived from the Commission’s annual analyses. The EU attached conditionality to the Accession Partnerships, stressing, for example, that “Community assistance will be conditional on respect by the Czech Republic of its commitments under the Europe Agreement, further steps toward satisfying the Copenhagen criteria, and progress in implementing this Accession Partnership” (Commission 1998a). The first Accession Partnerships were drafted in March 1998. Following their publication, each candidate was expected to adopt a National Program for the Adoption of the Acquis that set out plans and timetables for achieving Accession Partnership priorities. The reinforced strategy also established a means of monitoring candidates’ draft National Programs and steps to implement Accession Partnership priorities. Thus, the annual monitoring reports, which the Commission drafted every autumn between 1998 and 2003, monitored general developments in candidate states and specifically evaluated candidates’ progress in meeting the priorities identified in the Accession Partnerships. The Luxembourg European Council foresaw the necessity

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of re-drafting and updating Accession Partnerships as the enlargement process progressed. Unsurprisingly, given the importance that the Commission attached to civil service legislation and regional reform, the Accession Partnerships listed these points as priorities. The first Czech Accession Partnership (Commission 1998a), for example, listed “continuation of the public administration modernization policy” as a medium-term priority, while the 1999 document (Commission 1999a) upgraded the “adopt[tion] and implement[ation] of a programme for the reform of the state administration (introduction of a civil service law)” to a short-term priority. The first Slovak Accession Partnership (Commission 1998b) designated “the adoption of a civil service law and development of public administration reform strategy” as a short-term priority; and the 1999 document (Commission 1999b) re-listed both tasks as short-term priorities. The Partnerships were “substantively neutral”—they made no demands about how civil services or regional governance structures should be configured. The Commission conceded that there was no acquis for public administration and was primarily concerned, in the monitoring documents and Accession Partnerships, that candidates pass civil service laws and implement territorial reform strategies, regardless of their particular legal provisions. EU dignitaries also used a second mechanism—speeches and visits—as a public means of pressuring domestic politicians. At various points from 1997 forward, Commission President Romano Prodi, Commissioner for Enlargement Günter Verheugen, ambassadors of the Commission delegations in CEE capitals, representatives of the Committee of the Regions, and directors of various country desks at the Enlargement Directorate-General in Brussels made public speeches—at press conferences, in national parliaments, at the European Parliament, and elsewhere—that suggested the necessity of passing civil service legislation or establishing self-governing regions. Speeches were strategically timed to coincide with critical decisionmaking junctures (cabinet meetings, parliamentary sessions) in domestic capitals. These speeches, too, were almost always substantively neutral; they suggested that the passage of legislation as such—and not the particular nature of such legislation—was of paramount importance. The third means of pressuring candidates took place behind closed doors and in private correspondence. It was especially manifest in meetings between Commission representatives and counterparts in CEE governments, parliaments, and ministries. Commission personnel realized that civil service legislation and regionalization were non-

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acquis items. This did not stop them from reminding national counterparts of the importance of civil service legislation and promptly effected regional reforms. Like the public speeches, behind-the-scenes counsel was strategically timed. The day before the first reading of the government’s civil service bill in the Czech Chamber of Deputies, for example, delegation personnel visited the Communist parliamentary club to remind Communist MPs that the passage of such a law was “one of the legal conditions” of accession (Poslanecká sněmovna 2001). As the case studies below suggest, private counsel was occasionally “substantively engaged;” EU actors remarked, from time to time, on the wisdom of particular institutional configurations. A fourth means of pressure in these two non-acquis areas was restructured pre-accession assistance. Domestic actors’ strategic, flippant manipulation of Phare-sponsored technical assistance did not sit well with the Commission. After the Luxembourg Council, and in tandem with the activation of the reinforced pre-accession strategy, the Commission moved away from (without completely abandoning) the traditional Phare model of technical assistance and towards “twinning,” which involved the transfer of civil servants, for a period of at least twelve months, from their home administrations in EU member states to counterpart in candidate countries. The member-state civil servants worked with candidate counterparts on projects with clearly defined goals. Projects were designed through close cooperation between Commission delegations and candidate states and were based on Accession Partnership priorities. Twinning projects, the Commission hoped, would help to transform Phare from a “demand-driven” to an “accession-driven” instrument. They would not simply result in final reports that domestic policymakers could use or ignore at their fancy. They would allow twinners, at least in theory, to affect the daily activities of CEE bureaucrats and achieve clearly enumerated goals. In the current context, twinning might give EU actors a direct role in drafting and implementing laws on regionalization and civil service. Case Studies: Establishing Self-Governing Regions and Legally Protected Civil Services in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

To pursue its weightier administrative reform policy, the EU had to engage actors on domestic political scenes. The Union’s goals in the Czech Republic and Slovakia were similar. As of 1997, both states lacked civil service laws and systematic regionalization concepts, and the EU wanted both countries to adopt these measures. Configurations of power in the two states, however, conditioned the ways that EU

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institutions pursued these goals. Three case studies—of Czech regionalization, Slovak regionalization, and Slovak civil service reform—demonstrate the ways that the EU came to matter on CEE administrative reform scenes after 1997. This section offers only a brief overview of the post-1997 dynamics of Czech civil service, as this case follows a logic resembling the cases of Czech and Slovak regionalization (for more detailed accounts, see Dimitrova 2005; Scherpereel 2005). Establishing Self-Governing Regions in the Czech Republic

In order to understand the context within which EU actors pursued the more coherent administrative reform policy, it is necessary to summarize broader political developments in the Czech Republic in and after 1997. Václav Klaus’s second coalition (1996-1997) was a minority government. This government delayed both regional and civil service reforms for the majority of its eighteen-month term. For the Czech Republic as a whole and the Klaus government in particular, 1997 was a “year of doom” (Stroehlein et al. 1999). The financial sector collapsed, the trade deficit skyrocketed, and the Czech crown’s value reached an all-time low. Within ODS, leadership challenges flared. Cabinet ministers came and went, and a party financing scandal simmered. In the summer, floods devastated Moravia, placing further demands on an already strapped state budget. On November 30, 1997, Klaus tendered his resignation. The Czech Republic was governed for the next eight months (December 1997 – July 1998) by a caretaker cabinet headed by Josef Tošovský, the former governor of the Czech National Bank. Tošovský’s government contained five independents, three members of ODA, three members of KDU-ČSL, and four members of Freedom Union (Unie Svobody, US), a party comprised primarily of ODS defectors. The campaign leading up to the elections of June 1998 had two major party protagonists—Klaus’s ODS and Miloš Zeman’s ascendant Social Democrats (Česká strana socialně demokraticka, or ČSSD). Issues surrounding administrative reform played relatively minor roles in the campaign; ODS continued to deny the necessity of fundamental reform, while ČSSD made rather vague gestures toward the importance of regions and an independent civil service. ČSSD prevailed in the elections, gaining 74 of the Chamber of Deputies’ 200 seats (versus ODS’s 63). Following the elections, the Social Democrats spearheaded coalition talks with the Christian Democrats (KDU-ČSL) and the Freedom Union (US), but US leader Jan Ruml refused to incorporate his

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young party into a left-of-center government. Talks between other possible coalition partners also failed. The result of the stalemate was a novel arrangement, called the opposition agreement (opoziční smlouva), reached between Zeman and Klaus on July 9, 1998. The agreement contained a series of unconventional quids pro quo: ODS agreed to tolerate a minority government composed of ČSSD members (in addition to one independent) and pledged not to initiate or sign onto any vote of no-confidence in the government. In exchange, ODS received the chairs and leadership positions in both houses of the Czech parliament. The two parties agreed to cooperate in preparing constitutional amendments and an amendment of the electoral law. They intended to introduce the legal framework for a two-party system by July 1999. ČSSD also pledged to consult with ODS before introducing certain legislation in parliament. ODS continued to object, in the months and years following the opposition agreement, to robust regionalization and civil service reform. Although the ČSSD leadership discussed their plans to introduce reform legislation with ODS leadership, there was very little in these areas on which the two parties could compromise. The opposition agreement’s critics often attacked it for violating the normal operational rules of minority cabinets, which mandated that governments seek support for legislation on a piece-by-piece basis by courting different parties or MPs in parliament. In the case of administrative reform, however, ODS’s intransigent resistance produced a conventional minority cabinet dynamic: the Social Democratic government had to seek compromises outside the aegis of the opposition agreement by courting alternative parties in the legislature. As a result of the 1998 elections, the opposition agreement, and ODS’s principled opposition to regionalization and civil service reform, parliament (as opposed to the government or the ČSSDODS backroom) became the key locus of decisionmaking on issues of administrative reform. To pass legislation in these areas, ČSSD would have to go beyond the confines of the opposition agreement and find allies among non-ODS deputies in the legislature. The EU would have to pursue its new administrative reform policy in an environment where Klaus’s control over government had waned without diminishing entirely, and where the Social Democratic government would be forced to compromise with the non-Klausite center-right opposition in parliament. The Commission published its Opinions in the middle of the Czech “year of doom.” Two months before the Opinions were published, MPs from ODA—the minor government partner that had pressured for the establishment of regions since the early 1990s—introduced a draft

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constitutional law that envisioned thirteen self-governing regions. The bill was deliberately minimalistic. While it mandated that thirteen regions be established as of January 1, 1998, it omitted other politically volatile issues—how the regions would be financed, how their organs would be elected, how regional bodies would relate to the state administration, etc. ODA deputies hoped that a bare-bones bill would encourage political compromise. The stakes of the law would remain low, as key questions surrounding the regions would be addressed in the future. Even if the bill would only establish paper regions, it would at least get the ball of regional reform rolling. Ten days after the ODA MPs submitted their bill, deputies from Zeman’s Social Democrats, then in opposition, submitted a similarly minimalistic bill, which contained alternatives for nine, eleven, and fourteen regions. It even seemed that ODS was willing to play the minimalist game: on June 15, the ODS-dominated government passed its own draft law, containing provisions for thirteen regions. On July 10, 1997, each of the three alternative bills survived its first reading on the floor of the Chamber of Deputies; all three were sent to parliamentary committees. The Commission published its Opinions against this backdrop. Recall the Czech Opinion’s admonitions: “since 1990, Czech(oslovak) governments have given low priority to the necessary reform and modernisation of the public administration. There are no indications that this position is changing” (Commission 1997a). Czech reform advocates took advantage of the Commission’s criticisms, using them to buttress their claims. MPs who supported regionalization quickly incorporated the Opinion and the European dimension of the regional reform into their public speeches: The government seems not to realize that certain requirements inhere in the agreements it has signed [with the EU]. Among these requirements is a functioning public administration. One of the characteristics which usually belongs in the realm of functioning public administration in the framework of the EU is regional selfgovernment . . . We have been informed of the fact that one of the large inadequacies that besets the Czech Republic in its preparations for membership is what might be called the incomplete organizational structure of public administration, and especially [the incomplete structure] of the public administration at the regional level . . . I mention all of this because [within the next year] we are going to have to tell the EU how we want to cooperate with the Union in the framework of the structural funds and how we’re going to be able to

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guarantee that the financial resources that flow into the republic from the EU will be responsibly spent and able to be monitored. We’re not talking about small sums here. It may be, as long as we have appropriate programs and projects, and as long as we are able to guarantee the transparency of these financial resources, that they will comprise tens of billions of ECU, which, if you ask me, is quite a lot, given the situation in which we find ourselves. (Květoslava Kořínková, ČSSD MP; Poslanecká sněmovna 16. října 1997) The road to Europe, as we all know, as it has been said here many times, remains blocked without self-governing regions. If we, today, do not pass this law, I agree with many of my colleagues that in the next few years . . . there will probably not been any such law and we will not come closer to Europe. Nor will we remain in the same place as we are today. We will distance ourselves from Europe, and we will not be able to use the resources that really exist in Europe and which are there to be used even before we become members of the Community. We are always complaining about the lack of resources, and yet we seem to hold certain resources in contempt. (Václav Jehlička, ODA senator; Senát PČR 3. prosince 1997) [Self-governing regions are] expected from the international point of view. It’s a step that we must take in order to emphasize, at least in some way, the stability of our state. And I must also say that the assistance that will come our way after the establishment of these units from European structures will not be insignificant. Not at all. It is widely known that the Irish economic blossoming happened only after the establishment of these units. Ireland has 26 of them, each one of which has a different number of citizens and a different level of wealth. And Ireland is not some kind of exception; you see similar things in other countries. (Jaroslava Moserová, ODA senator; Senát PČR 3. prosince 1997)

In the end, a compromise version of the minimalistic bill passed by the required supermajority in both chambers (Ústavní zákon 347/1997). The number of regions (kraje), a question which had been hotly debated throughout the 1990s, was set at fourteen; the only historical precedent for a fourteen-region scheme was the one overseen by Gottwald, which had existed between 1949 and 1960. They country’s regions would be formally established on January 1, 2000. 4 As a concession to ODS, the law itself (as opposed to the assembly of the future regions) would establish each region’s capital city. At this early stage, the Opinion added a sense of urgency to the parliamentary debate and provided a rhetorical prop for long-time supporters of regionalization. In terms of substance, however, EU

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pressure had no impact. The Commission maintained its substantive neutrality, using the Opinion as the primary mode of pressure and holding to its position that the number of regions was a matter of exclusively domestic concern. The idea behind the minimalistic bill and the compromises that facilitated the law’s passage had both begun before the publication of the Opinion, and neither was driven by explicit EU pressure. Thus, in 1997, the reorientation of the EU’s administrative reform policy seemed to have changed things very little: domestic compromises were still driving the debate, and domestic actors were still using the “Europe” as a rhetorical tool. While Klaus’s ODS was experiencing unprecedented internal turmoil at the time the constitutional law passed, the party continued to use the EU as a means of deflecting (if not defeating) domestic pressures for progress on “real” regions. The regions envisioned in the constitutional law would merely take on a “paper existence” on January 1, 2000. The law contained no details on how regional legislatures would be constituted, how regions would generate revenue, or how they would interact with bodies of state administration. It may seem odd that Klaus, who had resisted regionalization for the better part of seven years, joined 38 of his party colleagues in the Chamber of Deputies in supporting the compromise law. Given the vagueness of the law’s provisions, however, Klaus’s support is understandable. By passing a law, any law, Klaus could signal to the Commission that the government had at least taken a step toward regional reform. The Commission apparently heard the signal: the March 1998 Accession Partnership included “continuation of public administration modernization policy” as a medium-term priority and not, as in Slovakia, as a short-term priority. During the brief period of the Tošovský government (December 1997-July 1998), the domestic scene was not ripe for bold action. Elections were approaching, and the government was transitory and weak. Still, the Tošovský government signaled to the Commission that it had internalized the Opinions’ criticisms. In its program, for example, it pledged to “devote itself to the idea of reforming public administration,” stating that it was “prepared to do the maximum to assure the reform’s realization. Even though the government’s time in office will be limited, it does not intend to shirk the responsibilities that derive from the needs of the legal norms” (Poslanecká sněmovna 27. ledna 1998). A will to appease the Commission was especially evident in a resolution the Tošovský government passed in March 1998 (Usnesení 202/1998). There, the government (a) canceled the second Klaus government’s (unfulfilled) resolution on administrative reform

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(Usnesení 490/1997), (b) placed the authority for coordinating the government’s approach to administrative reform in the Interior Ministry, (c) paved the way for the preparation of legislation that would solve the relationship between state administration and self-government by proceeding with the “conjoined” (spojený) system of state administration (in which the offices of regional self-governments would simultaneously perform transferred tasks of state administration), and (d) laid out an ambitious timeline for passing the laws necessary to transform the territorial structure of the state. The resolution was framed as an explicit response, not only to the functional inadequacies of the existing system and the constitutional necessity of building regions, but also, and especially, to the EU’s criticisms: It is therefore necessary to quickly pass this document on a comprehensive approach to public administration reform in the Czech Republic—a document that will constitute the government’s answer to the critical reservations, expressed in the Opinion of the European Commission, that related to the non-existence of a strategy of public administration reform in the Czech Republic. (Usnesení 202/1998)

Two weeks after passing this timeline, the Tošovský government approved a framework approach to regional policy (Usnesení 235/1998), which strengthened the profile of the Ministry for Regional Development and charged that Ministry with coordinating both a national strategy of regional development (by June 1999) and individual annual regional development plans (to be completed by June 1998 and June 1999, respectively). In May, the Tošovský government’s signaling game continued, when the cabinet authorized a representative to sign the European Charter of Local Self-Government (ECLSG), which had been drafted under the aegis of the Council of Europe in 1985. The series of symbolic reactions continued in the first months of the Zeman government, which took office in the summer of 1998. The Zeman government made three overtures to the EU’s criticisms—the government program, the establishment of a deputy interior minister for administrative reform, and a motion for quick ratification of the ECLSG. Like all Czech governments before it, the new cabinet included the consummation of the regional reform in its programmatic statement. Unlike previous cabinets, though, it linked regionalization to the country’s accession hopes and the principle of subsidiarity: We believe . . . that we must, on the basis of the principle of subsidiarity that the European Union proclaims, achieve the creation of

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regional self-government in such a way that allows steadily more citizens—rather than bureaucrats in Prague’s ministerial workplaces— to make decisions closer to the place of those decisions’ impact, and on the basis of high-quality information . . . The second of the five problems which the government sets out to solve is public administration reform. This reform will involve the preparation of approximately twenty laws, which will fulfill the heretofore hollowed-out skin of the constitutional law on the creation of self-governing regions—a law which, in reality, has done nothing more than to set out the number and dimensions of these units. Exactly this, that is, regional self-government, will be the concrete fulfillment of the frequently mentioned principle of subsidiarity. (Poslanecká sněmovna 18. srpna 1998)

In its second symbolic move, the government initially appropriated and supplemented the Tošovský government’s reform strategy by establishing a discrete ministerial unit for administrative reform. In addition to demonstrating its commitment to administrative reform in general, this step was also a specific response to criticisms (voiced by the Commission, contractors, and independent Phare evaluators alike) that the lack of a discrete institutional receptor for project outputs threatened the Czech Republic’s capacity to absorb technical assistance. As one of five units within Václav Grulich’s Interior Ministry, the new administrative reform headquarters would be fully staffed and headed by a deputy minister. In the fall of 1998, the cabinet appointed Yvonne Strecková, a professor of regional studies from Brno, as deputy interior minister for public administration reform and head of the new unit. The new government’s third symbolic gesture involved the ratification of the ECLSG, which the Tošovský government had signed but parliament had not yet endorsed. Submission of the Charter to the Chamber of Deputies was one of the government’s first substantive acts and the first document that Grulich presented on the floor of the Chamber. Grulich portrayed it as a sine qua non of the country’s EU aspirations: Signature of this Charter unambiguously confirms the commitment of the Czech Republic to uphold the fundamentals of local democracy; the confirmation of these fundamentals is meaningful in light of the evaluation of the preparedness of the Czech Republic for accession to the European Union. (Interior Minister Václav Grulich; Poslanecká sněmovna 19. srpna 1998)

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The Charter is one of the documents in regards to which we are criticized. In the Czech Republic, we have still not ratified this document, and we have therefore not quite attached ourselves to the majority of states of the EU, who set out on this path long ago. With regard to the fact that the non-existence and the insufficient preparation of public administration reform is again one of the more grumbled about points of the criticisms of the EU toward the Czech Republic, it is, of course, undeniably important for the Chamber of Deputies, at last, to debate this Charter. (Interior Minister Václav Grulich; Poslanecká sněmovna 10. února 1999)

The association of ratification of the ECLSG with EU accession did not go undisputed; numerous ODS deputies suggested that the two issues had nothing in common (Poslanecká sněmovna 19. srpna 1998, 10. února 1999). In the end, however, the Chamber passed the Charter by a unanimous vote. The government was pleased; it saw the vote as a way of addressing EU criticisms. In subsequent months, the EU continued to figure more prominently as a rhetorical object than as an active policy subject. The Commission continued to trumpet the necessity of effecting quick reform, but domestic bargains carried out in the shadow of the EU’s conditions drove the process of establishing regions to its conclusion. Strecková’s section had prepared a draft concept for the continuation of the public administration reform process in January 1999 (Ministerstvo vnitra 1999). The concept took the boundaries of the fourteen regions established by 1997’s constitutional law as given and laid out alternatives for solving the second most volatile political question surrounding the regions—the relationship between selfgoverning regions and state administration. Strecková’s document, in contrast to the previous government’s stated preference, defended a dual (oddělení) system of administration, where regional capitals would contain separate offices of self-government (which would implement laws passed by regional legislatures) and state administration (which would be directly subordinate to ministries and responsible for implementing transferred tasks of state administration in the regions). Before the government considered the concept, however, the Chamber of Deputies’ Committee for Public Administration, Regional Development, and the Environment petitioned it to present the Draft Concept to the legislature, effectively removing the decision about whether to proceed with the conjoined or dual system from the government’s hands (Linek 2002). The government complied with this request. Aware that ODS, US, and KDU-ČSL deputies generally preferred the conjoined system, the government was not anxious to

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submit subsequent legislation that took the dual system as a starting point. In the course of the floor debate on the concept, MPs frequently noted that the consummation of the reform was a precondition of EU accession (Poslanecká sněmovna 19. května 1999). No MP, however, suggested that the choice of one or the other model was more advantageous to the country’s EU ambitions. Realizing that it would be impossible to achieve support for legislation that presupposed a dual model, and that the failure to pass such legislation would occasion further criticism from the EU, the government and its parliamentary allies demurred. ČSSD deputies joined MPs from other parties to pass a resolution urging the government to prepare the substantive reform bills on the basis of the conjoined model (Usnesení 268/1999). The government accepted this recommendation (Usnesení 511/1999). At the same time as the Chamber of Deputies was debating Strecková’s concept, however, a group of ČSSD MPs was introducing an amendment to the 1997 constitutional law that would reduce the number of self-governing regions to eight or nine. The political logic behind this motion was complex. ČSSD deputies had preferred a solution of 8-9 regions in 1997, but had compromised with ODS deputies when it became clear that a compromise version could acquire the requisite supermajority. In 1999, however, even as the Social Democratic government was preparing materials that presupposed the currency of the fourteen regions, ČSSD deputies were introducing legislation that would overturn the 1997 constitutional law and reduce the number of regions to eight or nine. The ČSSD deputies introduced the draft legislation in April 1999, and the ČSSD government, on May 5, 1999, recommended that the Chamber defeat the bill that its own legislators had introduced (Usnesení 420/1999). The apparent disagreement might be interpreted as a sign of deep division within the governing party. In fact, it was nothing of the like; the Social Democrats were attempting to have their cake and eat it, too. If the constitutional legislation introduced by the MPs passed, then the Social Democrats would have won the regions they supported in 1997. Had the government endorsed the parliamentary bill, however, it would certainly have been criticized by the Commission for back-tracking, as a redrawing of regional boundaries would have required the government to begin anew on the legislation that was simultaneously being drafted in Strecková’s unit of the Interior Ministry. 5 Because the passage of the parliamentary bill would, in the government’s words, “delay the preparation of the group of draft bills in a way that cuts across the existing approach of the government,” it had to be defeated. Were the

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bill actually to be defeated, the government could portray itself as above the parliamentary fray, hard at work in preparing reform legislation. Thus, the EU’s temporal pressure directly affected the government’s strategies: the government, aware that support for its own deputies’ bill would irk the Commission and damage the prospect of early accession, publicly opposed its own deputies’ bill, despite the fact that the bill would have brought about a result that most ČSSD leaders would, ceteris paribus, have preferred. In the end, the ČSSD deputies’ bill came to naught. Apart from reopening debate on the sole political question that had, to date, been answered—the number and boundaries of self-governing regions—the ČSSD motion achieved very little. For the final time in the course of the 1990s, deputies discussed the best way to divide the state. Among the specific variants discussed during this iteration were proposals for three, eight, nine, ten, eleven, thirteen, and (an alternative form of) fourteen regions. None of these proposals succeeded; the closest any variant came to the 120 deputies necessary for passage was a paltry seventy-six. Once again, the bill’s sponsors tried to show that the creation of fewer than fourteen regions would facilitate the country’s ability to draw from structural funds. The legal process of establishing the regions came to a close with the passage, in the spring and early summer of 2000, of legislation that the government had introduced to the Chamber of Deputies in November and December 1999. The government introduced an organically related “small package” of laws to bring the regions into being. Included in this package were laws that established the competencies of the regions; the method and timing of regional elections; the budgetary status and revenue sources of the regions; the role of the regions in drafting and implementing regional development plans; and the relationship between the central state, the regions, and other levels (i.e., district offices, municipalities) of state administration and self-government. In all, the government submitted thirteen laws. The timing of the Commission’s Regular Reports affected the government’s decision to submit the draft bills in the fall of 1999 (rather than, say, January 2000). Beyond this consideration, though, the concrete compromises which led to the passage of the legislation depended on deals struck between the Social Democratic government and (non-ODS) center-right parties in parliament. Immediately before the government introduced the bills, ODS issued a statement that it would try to delay the establishment of self-governing regions and the scheduling of regional elections until the autumn of 2002. Attempting to preempt the government’s inevitable accusation that such a delay would

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be unsatisfactory from the EU’s point of view, ODS deputy chair Miroslav Beneš argued that “the EU is not interested in what approach we will take towards the establishment of self-governing units” and that the EU “mainly wants the Czech Republic to have a well-[functioning] state administration and a regional policy plan” (“KDU-ČSL Rejects” 1999; “ODS’s Proposal”1999; “ODS Hampering” 2000; “ODS Fears” 2000). ODS’s opposition to the regions as the government conceived them forced the Social Democrats to search for partners outside the boundaries of the opposition agreement. In the event, the Social Democrats managed to find this support without making major compromises. No ODS deputy voted for any of the key laws dealing with the regions—the law on the establishment of regional organs and competencies (Zákon 129/2000), the law on elections to regional assemblies (Zákon 130/2000), the law on the transfer of property from the state to the regions (Zákon 157/2000), and the law on regional development (Zákon 248/2000). The laws all passed on the strength of a coalition among ČSSD, KDU-ČSL, and US deputies; on certain votes, a number of Communist MPs voted with the ČSSD/KDU-ČSL/US alliance. The same voting coalition survived during the bills’ consideration in the Senate. Elections to the regions occurred on November 12, 2000, and regional organs began to operate from January 1, 2001. Although important questions surrounding the finances and competencies of the regions and the fate of the district offices of state administration continued to circulate after the date of the regions’ establishment, the Czech Republic, after over a decade of vain debate, had finally established representative institutions at the regional level. EU actors remained on the sidelines of the substantive debate through which the relevant legislation passed. It would be a distortion, however, to claim that the EU had no effect at all. As a subject, the EU helped to reorient domestic policymakers’ timelines and decisions. By applying consistent pressure via Regular Reports and Accession Partnerships, EU actors successfully pressured governments into identifying regional reform as a programmatic priority and quickly drafting relevant legislation. They also directly affected the ČSSD government’s strategy toward decreasing the number of Czech regions. Apart from these documents and the resulting evaluation-response dialectic, however, EU actors did not use the other instruments identified above in the course of the Czech regionalization process. Nor did EU pressure play a large role once the relevant concepts had been prepared and the domestic legislative process had commenced. Throughout the process, the EU continued to serve as an object of

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domestic rhetorical manipulation. Partisans put “Europe” to work as a rhetorical device, justifying their particular positions by remarking on their consistency with European norms and, occasionally, imputing motives to EU actors that did not, in fact, exist. Establishing Self-Governing Regions in Slovakia

The Slovak case of regionalization, like its Czech counterpart, can only be understood within the context of the general domestic political environment. In Slovakia, Mečiar’s three-party coalition, assembled in 1994, served the duration of its four-year term. During the Mečiar government, opposition parties became accustomed to standing together against the government; the experience of opposition facilitated the creation of relatively broad coalitions. By early 1998, five parties of the parliamentary and non-parliamentary opposition (KDH, DÚ, DS, SDSS, SZS) assembled an electoral platform called the Slovak Democratic Coalition (Slovenská demokratická koalícia, or SDK). Similarly, three predominantly Hungarian parties (MKDH, Együttélés, and MOS) formed a single Hungarian Coalition (Maďarská koalícia, or MK). Reacting to these developments, parties of Mečiar’s coalition passed an amended electoral law (Zákon 187/1998). The amended law required each party in an electoral alliance to gain 5% of the aggregate national vote in order to gain parliamentary representation. It was particularly unlikely that all five members of the SDK and all three members of the MK would gain representation under this system (Müller-Rommel and Malová 2001) In the four months between the amendment’s passage and the parliamentary elections, however, the parties of the SDK and MK transformed their alliances into distinct political parties (the MK became the SMK, Strana maďarskej koalície, or Party of the Hungarian Coalition). By transforming themselves into parties, SDK and SMK effectively subverted the governing parties’ attempt to dissolve their electoral potency. Their hasty work paid off, as both nascent parties performed well in the September 1998 elections. Before the elections, leaders of SDK, the post-communist SDĽ, SMK, and SOP (the newly formed Party of Civic Understanding, or Strana občianskeho porozumenia) had discussed forming a broad coalition. Election results allowed them to do this; the new coalition possessed a parliamentary majority (93 coalition MPs to 57 opposition MPs) that was sufficient to pass both ordinary and constitutional legislation.

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Though the elections were clearly a victory for anti-Mečiar forces, ideological space continued to separate cabinet subjects. On one hand, both SMK and SDK were new parties, and the relationships among their constituent parts were not yet clear. This was particularly true of the SDK. On the other hand, even if SDK and SMK could be conceived as cohesive blocs, programmatic differences separated them from each other and from the other governing parties. The coalition cobbled together neo-liberals (certain of the SDK parties), post-communists (SDĽ), guardians of the Hungarian minority (SMK) and programmatically ambiguous populists (SOP). Thus, a coalition comprised superficially of four parties in reality contained at least ten political subjects (five parties of the SDK, plus three parties of the SMK, plus SDĽ and SOP). While the coalition parties could command significant legislative support if the cabinet could agree on common positions, the latter “if” was immense. An “incomplete coalition” of multiple (but not all) cabinet parties could conceivably pass ordinary legislation in the legislature. In general, however, the 1998 elections and the subsequent process of government formation reinforced the cabinet—and the council of parties that the cabinet agreement established (the Coalition Council)—as the central locus of decisionmaking power. These developments had important consequences for the ways that EU pressure was transmitted and the ultimate impact of the EU on administrative reform processes in Slovakia. In Slovakia, the process of establishing self-governing regions followed a dynamic that resembled the Czech case, though EU actors in Slovakia used a more diverse repertoire of “pressuring instruments” as the domestic process progressed. As in the Czech Republic, EUdomestic interactions went through three general stages. In the first stage, the incumbent (Mečiar) government proceeded with a predetermined legislative program; the Opinion of July 1997 did not affect the Mečiar government’s (1994-1998) approach to regionalization. In the second stage, the Dzurinda government (1998-2002) attempted to demonstrate that it had internalized the Commission’s criticisms, making symbolic concessions similar to those made by the Tošovský and Zeman governments in Prague. In the final stage, the Dzurinda government’s attempts became bogged down in domestic politics. Cabinet partners staked out irreconcilable positions on the number of self-governing regions to establish. When bills on regionalization eventually made it out of the cabinet phase, the Commission continued to remark on the necessity of establishing self-governing regions but stayed out of the domestic political fray. Again, however, domestic

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actors mobilized “the EU” as a rhetorical object in the course of the parliamentary debate, through which deputies finally agreed to establish eight regions. Throughout the process, EU institutions relied on the recommendation-response dialectic and strategically timed public speeches by major Union personalities. In terms of content, however, the EU’s criticisms remained substantively neutral. As in the Czech case, the Commission published the 1997 Opinion in a context where domestic political actors were tentatively stepping towards regionalization. By the middle of 1997, Mečiar’s government had drafted a minimalistic law that would establish eight self-governing regions whose boundaries overlapped with the borders of the administrative regions established in 1996. Like the alternative Czech bills of 1997, the Mečiar government’s bill did not lay out the competencies that regional governments would perform or the sources of the financial resources that would sustain them. Both government and opposition interpreted the law as a continuation of the “reform” begun in 1996. The same groups that had criticized the 1996 laws attacked the government’s bill. The government introduced the bill to the National Council, where it survived its first reading on February 4, 1998. After increasingly vocal protests against the bill by ZMOS and the Union of Cities and Towns, and other representatives of municipal governments, however, the bill died in committee (Nižňanský, Kling, and Petráš 1999). Again, as in the Czech case, the Commission stood substantively on the sidelines during this process. Unlike the Czech case, however, the EU was also conspicuously absent in 1998 as a rhetorical object, at least for the HZDS members who defended the law. In 1996, government representatives tried to paint regional reform legislation as part and parcel of the country’s EU aspirations. This time around, though, the government did not suggest that the draft bill would address the ills identified by the Commission. Rather, it stressed that the bill (a) would fulfill unmet provisions of the 1992 constitution, (b) would complement the laws passed in 1996, and (c) would be consistent with the government’s 1997 legislative plan of action (Národná rada SR 4. februára 1998). The government’s reluctance to use the EU card in this instance should be read in the light of its broader reaction to the Opinions and the European Council’s snub at its Luxembourg summit. On one hand, the government seemed anxious in the wake of the Union’s critical assessments to attract its good graces. On the other hand, it repeatedly stressed that the Commission’s criticisms were unjustified and excessive (“Slobodnik” 1997; “Foreign Ministry” 1997; “Van den Broek” 1997; “Government Disagrees” 1997). The same

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Mečiar government that had defended the 1996 legislation as consistent with European norms now, in the aftermath of the EU’s rebuke, eschewed the rhetorical association of regionalization and Europeanization. In the Czech case, the Opinion provided rhetorical fuel for reformers; in the Slovak case, the Opinion encouraged the government to downplay the European dimension of regionalization. Before the 1998 elections, the government was the central locus of decisionmaking authority, as Mečiar could generally rely upon MPs of all governing parties to fall into line after cabinet-level decisions had been made. After the formation of the Dzurinda government in November 1998, the government (along with the Coalition Council, a kind of informal cabinet antechamber) remained the key decisionmaking center, now serving as a point of discussion, compromise, and, occasionally, deadlock among internally diverse coalition partners. The diversity of Dzurinda’s cabinet caused extensive delays in the process of passing laws on regionalization. It did not, however, undermine the government’s ability to demonstrate that it had internalized the EU’s criticisms and that it intended to overcome the previous government’s maligned approach to administrative reform. As in the Czech Republic, the Dzurinda government spent its first months signaling its commitment to regionalization. First, the government drafted a programmatic statement that addressed the Commission’s criticisms (“Programové vyhlásenie” 1998). The statement laid out plans to draft a comprehensive administrative reform strategy, to clarify the role of self-governing regions in the formulation of regional policy, and to attend to the priorities listed in the Accession Partnership. Second, the government quickly signed and supported the ratification of the European Charter of Local Self-Government. Interior Minister Ladislav Pittner presented the charter to the government on December 29, 1998. By February 3, 1999, the government had authorized a representative to sign twenty paragraphs, which the representative did on February 23, 1999. The government attempted to gain formal parliamentary support of the ECLSG by the time of the publication of the Regular Report in October 1999. Because of an overbooked parliamentary schedule, it failed to do so, but only barely: the 1999 Regular Reports were published on October 13, 1999, and the National Council passed the Charter as signed on October 26, 1999. The government’s third gesture involved the creation of an institutional headquarters for administrative reform. It established a special unit for administrative reform within the Government Office and encouraged close contact between this unit and EU actors. The new unit

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would be headed by a special plenipotentiary, Viktor Nižňanský, the director of a neo-liberal Bratislava think tank. Ivan Mikloš, Deputy Prime Minister for the Economy, would be responsible for presenting reform materials to the government (Uznesenie 98/1999). The government’s action in laying the institutional foundation for reform stemmed directly from a National Council request to present an administrative reform strategy to the chamber by June 30, 1999 (Uznesenie 69/1998). A desire to placate the EU was clearly evident, however, both in the MPs’ justification for passing the resolution in the first place, and in the government’s decision to request EU support for the process of drafting a regionalization concept. The same government resolution that named Nižňanský as plenipotentiary also charged Mikloš and Deputy PM for European Integration Pavol Hamžík with cooperating in the design and presentation of a proposal for Phare support for the draft strategy. The first documents drafted by Nižňanský and his team stressed the connection between regionalization and Slovakia’s EU aspirations. An excerpt from Nižňanský’s “Strategy” (Office of the Plenipotentiary 1999), for example, demonstrates that Slovak professionals had internalized the logic that Commission personnel had used to associate regional reform and EU accession (I have included a number of slight grammatical corrections to the original English translation): An effective public administration is one of the conditions for membership in the EU. The reform in the candidate states for membership in the EU should respect general principles of building and functioning of public administration in Europe: democracy, subsidiarity, transparency, flexibility and effectiveness. . . In the context of integration processes, changes of the territorial division of countries are realized in order to create a standard territorialgeographic framework for the EU regional policy (so that the territorial units meet the criteria of statistical territorial units NUTS).

The “Strategy” also noted that the creation of self-governing regions in Slovakia was “inevitable” for a number of reasons, including: [a] . . . because it would be impossible to start the application of regional development policy based on endogenous growth factors without the creation of self-government on the level of higher territorial units . . . [b] . . . because according to the prepared European Charter of Regional Self-Government, the existence of regions managed by responsible elected representatives endowed with real responsibilities

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creates the kind of management that is simultaneously effective and close to the citizens. A region becomes a level of power suitable for the realization of the principle of subsidiarity, which is one of the main principles of the organization of modern states, and [c] because after the creation of higher territorial units, Slovakia will have taken another step in the process of adapting its territorial structure to the process of EU integration. It will have started to move along “the European path” of reforms of territorial public administration. At the same time, it will have given itself the opportunity to take advantage of EU structural funds through regional governments. (Office of the Plenipotentiary 1999)

The fifth, closely related signal, involved the government’s active pursuit of Phare funding for the preparation and implementation of the reform. In the spring of 1999, before the formal publication of Nižňanský’s “Strategy,” the government met with representatives of the Commission Delegation in Bratislava. The two sides prepared an ambitious framework for administrative reform cooperation over the course of the coming years. A previous, unsuccessful Phare project was set to wrap up in March 1999. That project would end with one final flourish, a large conference that would bring together Slovak experts on administrative reform. The sides agreed on the outlines of a “bridging project” that would fill the interim between the expiration of the previous project (in March 1999) and the completion of Nižňanský’s “Concept” (early 2000). During this window, it was hoped that contractors from member states would help Nižňanský’s modestly outfitted section to produce a high-quality conceptual document that framed the steps necessary for a successful reform. After the bridging project had run its course and the regionalization law and other basic legislation had passed, a series of ambitious twinning projects for the implementation phase would commence. The Slovak side and the Commission envisioned the participation of at least two twinners during the implementation phase, who were slated to work in Bratislava between April 2000 and April 2002. Among the twinners’ most significant tasks would be involvement in the preparation of regionalization legislation. By making such broad gestures toward the EU and the priorities of the Accession Partnerhsip, the Slovak government was clearly signaling a will to welcome EU-sponsored assistance as a critical component of the reform process. Convincing demonstrations of symbolic solidarity could not stand up to the obstacles of the domestic political process, though. As in the Czech Republic, the period of symbolic signaling came to a close as the

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time to make binding decisions on the size, shape, and competencies of regional governments approached. In the Czech case, these decisions were hammered out, from the beginning, in the legislature. In Slovakia, politicians attempted to make the decisions within the government. Disputes raged among government partners, however, particularly on the question of the number of regional governments to establish. As intra-governmental disputes flared up, EU organs turned up pressure to establish regions, any regions; public speeches by EU dignitaries were particularly frequent during this period. Again, however, EU actors absented themselves from the domestic political fray, leaving Slovak politicians to battle amongst themselves until, in the summer of 2001, the government transferred the ultimate decisions about regionalization to the National Council. The first public indication that the government’s resolve was weaker than it preferred to admit came in the summer of 1999, when the cabinet began to discuss Nižňanský’s “Strategy.” Though Mikloš presented the document in early July, the government, weighed down by disagreements between the SDĽ and other partners, delayed discussion of the material until the middle of August. The cabinet eventually passed the document on August 18 and charged Nižňanský with preparing a more comprehensive concept by the end of January 2000 (Uznesenie 695/1999). The government decided to establish a dual system of regional state administration and self-government. Beyond this agreement, however, critical questions—including the number of administrative and self-governing regions to establish, the method of electing regional assemblies, and the extent of decisionmaking power to devolve to regional bodies—remained untackled. Rifts among government partners on these questions manifested themselves in the interim between the government’s consideration of the “Strategy” (August 1999) and the “Concept” (April 2000). In December 1999, for example, SDĽ leaders suggested that Nižňanský be dismissed and that the institutional responsibility for administrative reform be passed to the public administration section of the Interior Ministry. The following month, SMK leaders warned that they would not support any regional configuration that broke up the “rye island” of southern Slovakia, which is inhabited by large numbers of ethnic Hungarians (“Slovak Hungarian Party” 2000). Cabinet disagreements continued to delay the reform’s effectuation. The government was supposed to meet on the “Concept” by the end of January but repeatedly left it off the agenda. When the Coalition Council finally considered the “Concept”— which proposed establishing twelve self-governing regions and transforming the existing eight regions of state administration into

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twelve administrative regions (the so-called “12+12” model 6 )—on February 28, 2000, these fears were confirmed. Party leaders reached no agreement on the number of regions to establish. While SDK leaders supported Nižňanský’s proposal for twelve, SDĽ leaders criticized the “Concept” in general, suggesting that an “8+8” model would be more cost-effective and appropriate. The government eventually passed the “Concept” at an extraordinary session on April 11 (Uznesenie 695/2000). In reality, though, this “resolution” resolved very little. Government parties did not approve the part of the “Concept” that dealt with the number of self-governing regions. The resolution charged Nižňanský’s unit of the Government Office and the Interior Ministry with cooperating and presenting the government with alternative scenarios for dividing the country into regions. In the summer of 2000, the government appeared to make difficult compromises. In early June, for example, working teams from the Government Office and the Interior Ministry agreed that 12+12 would be the most appropriate division of the country (“Konečne zhoda” 2000). On June 28, the government agreed that Slovakia should have twelve self-governing regions, though it left open the possibility of establishing fewer than twelve regions of state administration. 7 The positive momentum seemed to reach a pinnacle the month immediately preceding the publication of the 2000 Regular Report, when the cabinet passed a legislative baseline for a law establishing twelve self-governing regions (Uznesenie 736/2000). Beneath the veneer of progress, however, representatives of the government parties continued to battle over the fundamental question of how many regions to establish. In July 2000, for example, SMK chief Béla Bugár suggested that the government should establish a thirteenth self-governing region, which would contain a large percentage of ethnic Hungarians (Mesežnikov 2002). In August and September, SMK threatened to block critical constitutional amendments and to pull out of the coalition if its government partners refused to establish such a region (“Ethnic Hungarians” 2000). Coalition partners—especially KDH and SDĽ—reacted strongly to these threats, refusing to be “blackmailed” by the SMK (“Christian Democrats” 2000). Governing parties did vote together to overhaul the constitution in February 2001. Rather than opening the door to cabinet accommodation, however, the constitutional amendment led to more acrimony. In the early months of 2001, both the SDKÚ (Slovenská demokratická a kresťanská únia)—a party that Dzurinda had formed in early 2000 in an effort to overcome the “residual” identities of the SDK’s five original parties—and the KDH clung to the accepted 12+12

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division, while other government parties shifted their positions. Internal divisions weighted down the SOP throughout this period, as individual SOP leaders supported different regional variants. For example, Ivan Budiák, SOP member and head of the Interior Ministry’s Public Administration Section, publicly defended 12+12 at the beginning of January. Weeks later, SOP chairman and deputy PM for integration Pavol Hamžík made a similar defense. In March, however, Hamžík suggested that SOP now preferred 8+8, though not all members of the SOP parliamentary club agreed with him (Mesežnikov 2002). SMK leaders, for their part, continued to advocate amendments and concessions. Throughout early 2001, they pushed for two possible revisions of 12+12: either add a thirteenth self-governing region that would contain a large Hungarian population, or attach two existing districts to the Nitra self-governing region, effectively concentrating a majority of Slovakia’s ethnic Hungarians in one region (“Slovak Commissioner” 2001). SDĽ leaders used the public defections of SOP and SMK to justify their own criticisms of 12+12. They ratcheted up their customary anti-SMK rhetoric, suggested (disingenuously) that “SDĽ had never seriously considered 12+12,” and informed coalition partners that they would support 8+8 (Mesežnikov 2002). By the spring of 2001, the situation inside the coalition was a disaster, and the government was deadlocked. Three parties had publicly defected from the previously agreed plan. Others (SDKÚ, KDH) wallowed in a stew of exasperation, anger, and perceived betrayal. Nižňanský threatened to resign if the 12+12 plan failed, and Mikloš threatened to forfeit his position as overseer of Slovak administrative reform. Where was the European Union during this series of disputes? The EU continued its substantive neutrality, though EU representatives made increasingly frequent public statements about the necessity of speedily effecting reform. The 2000 Regular Report took the government to task for delaying regionalization and related processes. During a visit to Slovakia on the days that the National Council was voting on the constitutional overhaul, Enlargement Commissioner Verheugen repeatedly stressed that regional reform was necessary from the point of view of accession but that the EU had no role to play in the domestic debate: I think that the EU will not interfere in this—this will be an internal decision made by your country. We will not be telling you what your public administration should look like. It is important to ensure, however, that your public administration is effective, impartial,

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modern, and flexible in order to adopt the Union’s legislation, which is sometimes very complicated. (“Commissioner Says” 2001) I cannot pressurize your government into anything; I can, however, point out what implications its decisions might have. The amendment to the constitution will create the right conditions for regions, which is very important for the implementation of the EU’s legislation . . . The further development of Slovakia’s regions must not be neglected, and the constitutional amendment would be very useful in this respect. This is a very important [sic], but entirely your decision. (“EU Commissioner Denies” 2001)

Other EU representatives made similar statements. On May 18, 2001, for example, the Committee of the Regions (COR) hosted a conference in Bratislava that brought together influential individuals on the Slovak reform scene with representatives from the COR’s Applicant State Liaison Group. Lord Hanningfield, chair of the Liaison Group, echoed Verheugen’s words and urged Slovak leaders to get on with the reform: Slovakia has made enormous progress . . . but we must be realistic: there is still a long way to go. The main obstacle to accession is still the state of the administration. The current level of centralisation in Slovakia is unacceptable for the EU. You will not be able to become a member until you have decentralised. It is not for the Committee of the Regions or the EU to tell you how to do this. You must find the means, the political compromises, to achieve this goal (Committee of the Regions 2001).

Walter Rochel, chief of the Commission Delegation in Bratislava, made similar statements throughout 2001. At the COR conference, for example, he stated that Public administration reform [in Slovakia] includes the decision to create self-governing organs on the regional level, whose representatives will be directly elected by citizens. It also includes the competencies of existing self-governing organs at the municipal level. Personally, I believe that these goals are good, since they lead to genuine and authentic policy at the regional and local levels. I want to emphasize, though, that the member states of the EU, like the candidate countries including Slovakia, have every right to decide about their own territorial administrative set-up, which, of course, is different in each individual candidate country. (“Oneskorovanie” 2001)

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One might have expected EU actors to have been demonstrating more influence behind the scenes, as the negotiations between the government and the Commission had intended the cooperation between “twinners” and their Slovak counterparts to commence in April 2000. In reality, however, specific negotiations of the projects agreed to in the first months of 1999 were delayed by the domestic battles surrounding the issue. The Slovak government had assured the Commission that it would pass the basic legislation quickly and that the twinning projects would commence during the implementation phase. The twinners could, in theory, provide significant input. In reality, however, the specific arrangements could not be made until Slovak decisionmakers had decided the fundamental issues. The twinners did not begin working in Slovakia until the summer of 2001, over a year behind schedule. EU institutions were thus clearly concerned with the governmental infighting that delayed Slovak regionalization. Over the course of 2001, their speeches became more frequent and more vehement. EU actors did not attempt actively to defuse domestic tensions, however. They retained their substantive neutrality, taking no stance on the neuralgic issue that separated government parties. Their statements did not change the policy positions of the governing parties. They did, however, remind the government that the EU would not look kindly on further delays and that time was not on the government’s side. The latter fact, by the spring, was already becoming clear. If the law on the regions was not passed soon, then regional bodies would not be established before the end of the government’s term. This “nonaccomplishment” would certainly earn the EU’s ire. Dzurinda, reflecting on the period, recalled this sense of urgency: “Time was pressuring us…It was clear to me: if we did not pass the basic law on the system of self-governing regions by the summer of 2001, regional elections would not take place in this electoral cycle” (Dzurinda 2002). The governing parties, however, simply could not reach a compromise. By the end of March, the most relevant position linking the parties was a sad realization that compromise could not be reached within the government. On April 1, the cabinet threw up its collective hands. The only remaining hope was to pass the bill to the National Council, where compromises might be reached, perhaps (worryingly, from the point of view of many government partners) with the opposition. On April 1, the government, with SDĽ abstaining, passed 12+12 (Uznesenie 293/2001). Three days later, Dzurinda submitted the bill to parliament. Thus, in a situation where fundamental disagreements blocked accommodation within the government, the EU’s time pressure facilitated motion of the bill from government to the legislature. From

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the moment the bill entered the legislature, MPs, as had become ordinary, put the EU to rhetorical use in defense of their particular variants. MPs from almost every parliamentary party—both government and opposition—stressed the importance of establishing self-governing regions from the point of view of the structural funds. Diverse MPs also recognized that the EU had no direct role to play in decisions about the number of regions to establish. This did not stop them from invoking trends and developments in EU countries as justifications for the superiority of their particular preferred variants. HZDS deputies—who preferred an 8+8 configuration—argued that the establishment of eight units would correspond more closely with median NUTS II units in member states. Their opponents, however, suggested that NUTS II considerations were irrelevant in the context of the current debate and that, in fact, twelve regions would be perfectly acceptable from the point of view of structural funding. Even in a context where EU institutions had been absent from the domestic fray, they were symbolically incorporated into debates by interested representatives. After a three-month residence in parliament, the bill passed in a form quite different than the government’s 12+12 version. Unsurprisingly, the voting came down to a decision between 12+12 and 8+8. The most vocal proponents of 8+8 had been HZDS MPs; this configuration structurally mirrored the arrangement envisioned in the Mečiar government’s 1998 draft bill, where the boundaries of the selfgoverning regions corresponded exactly with the boundaries of the regions of state administration established in 1996. In the early rounds of parliamentary voting, SNS (opposition), SDĽ (government), and a number of SOP (government) deputies joined HZDS in supporting 8+8 and defeating 12+12. The remaining MPs did not have the numbers to stop 8+8 from passing. In the final vote on the bill as a whole, SDKÚ deputies joined the coalition supporting 8+8, over SMK and KDH’s petitions for the government to withdraw the bill. This support was surprising, as SDKÚ representatives had been the strongest supporters of 12+12 since the beginning of the debate. Dzurinda, Mikloš, and SDKÚ’s parliamentary leaders suggested that it was better to vote for a suboptimal regional reform than none at all. Mikloš, for example, framed the vote as “a choice between two evils. The lesser evil was to start the reform in order that further steps could be taken, even if the optimal structure was not chosen” (“Kto hlasoval proti” 2001). SDKÚ leaders were particularly adamant in their insistence that it was necessary to pass the law from “the point of view of Slovakia’s ambition to become a member of the EU and to be able to attract significant resources from the Union” (“Dzurinda označil” 2001).

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The passage of the law on regional self-government (Zákon 302/2001) had major short-term political consequences. Nižňanský stepped down as government plenipotentiary, and Mikloš resigned as coordinator of the reform. SMK suspended its membership in the government coalition, as the new law effectively reinforced the Mečiarera boundaries against which parties of the Hungarian Coalition had campaigned in 1996. On August 25, however, the SMK central council voted unanimously to remain in the government on two conditions: (a) that the bills on competencies of self-governing bodies and new budgetary rules be drafted in accordance with Nižňanský’s “Concept,” and (b) that both of those bills, as well as bills on municipal and regional property, be passed by September 30, 2001. These conditions were essentially met, and the relevant bills passed through parliament with the support of all government parties. Other subsidiary laws passed in the following months, elections to the new regions were held on December 1, 2001, and the regions began to operate on January 1, 2002. Passing Civil Service Legislation in Slovakia

In the Czech Republic, the process of passing civil service legislation followed a path similar to that of the Czech and Slovak cases of regionalization. The Zeman government (1998-2002) sought to demonstrate that it had internalized the EU criticisms, and consistent EU pressure (including the “upgrading” of civil service reform to the status of short-term priority in 1999) encouraged the government to draft and introduce civil service legislation to the Chamber of Deputies. Given ODS’s principled rejection of the law, the ČSSD government was forced to court allies in alternative parliamentary caucuses. As EU institutions stood on the sidelines of the substantive debate and the government sought compromises with KDU-ČSL and US deputies, the legislative process proceeded very slowly. By the time the bill had passed in the Senate, over a year had elapsed since its introduction to the Chamber of Deputies. Again, though, the EU encouraged symbolic concessions, served as an object of rhetorical manipulation, and effectively encouraged the government to support a compromise draft bill that contrasted in significant ways with the original version that the government had submitted. The civil service law passed the Chamber of Deputies in March 2002 and the Senate in April 2002 (Zákon 218/2002). It provided for the establishment of a central civil service office and training institute and, against the original intentions of the government (and as a result of the government’s compromises with the parliamentary parties), did not contain provisions for the “guaranteed

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tenure” (definitiva) of civil servants. 8 The law was designed to enter effect after the next general elections, on January 1, 2004. Unlike the Czech case, which essentially conforms to the familiar pattern, the case of civil service reform in Slovakia offers an intriguing contrast. In Slovakia, the dynamic began in a similar fashion, with the Commission recommending quick action and maintaining substantive neutrality, the new government signaling its symbolic internalization of criticisms, and EU actors, in public speeches and reports, distancing themselves from the domestic political fray. In the preparatory phases of the bill, however, EU actors eventually offered substantive criticisms and recommendations on the shape that the legislation should take. The following paragraphs trace the sources and implications of this more aggressive approach, paying particular attention to contrasts with the familiar pattern of substantive neutrality. With regards to civil service legislation, the 1997 Slovak Opinion was somewhat more commendatory than it was vis-à-vis Slovak regionalization and the Czech case in general. While noting that “there is an urgent need to upgrade professional capacities, reinforce ethical standards and promote a Corporate sense of public service across all government departments,” the Opinion nonetheless lauded the Mečiar government for preparing a draft civil service law, stating that “the new law should represent a substantial improvement” (Commission 1997b). Still, this praise was muted by the document’s negative evaluation of the Slovak political situation, and the Commission included adoption of a civil service law as a short-term priority in the March 1998 Accession Partnership. The Mečiar government’s reaction to the Opinion mirrored its reaction to the Opinion’s provisions on regionalization. It did not use the Commission’s criticism as a major justification for passing the bill. During the bill’s first parliamentary reading in February 1998, for example, Labor Minister Oľga Keltošová stated that it was based primarily on the principles of the 1914 Dienstpragmatik, then on international agreements on human rights and basic freedoms, then on conventions of the International Labor Organization, and, finally, on “contemporary directions in EU states and the legal provisions of public service in developed European countries” (Národná rada SR 3. februára 1998). Nor did the opposition bang the EU drum in opposing the bill. They argued instead that the law would be too costly, that it was designed to protect individuals who had gained their positions based on political connections rather than merit, that it left the question of the legal status of teachers and other public employees unsettled, and that it was not explicit enough in charging civil servants with enumerated

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responsibilities. The chamber referred the bill to committee, but, on April 3, 1998, HZDS’s Tibor Cabaj proposed delay the bill’s further consideration. His motion succeeded, pre-electoral posturing entered high gear, and the Mečiar government’s engagement with civil service reform dissipated (Nižňanský, Kling, and Petráš 1999). The Dzurinda government’s early approach to civil service mirrored its early approach to regionalization. The government was eager to demonstrate its comprehension that EU accession required the construction of a legally protected civil service. In its programmatic statement, the government pledged to “create the conditions necessary to raise the professional level of public administration employees and to assure their systematic education” (“Programové vyhlásenie” 1998). In the early months of 1999, Finance Minister Brigita Schmögnerová suggested that the National Council would pass civil service legislation by the end of the year. A similar assumption underlay the already mentioned agreement between the Slovak government and the Commission in the spring of 1999. The documents that set the foundation for the twinning projects rested on an assumption that the civil service law would pass by October 1, 1999 and secondary legislation by the turn of the millennium. Through all of these steps, the government signaled to the Commission: we recognize the legitimacy of the EU’s criticisms, we feel bound by the priorities of the Accession Partnership, we intend to pass relevant legislation speedily, and we appreciate the role that EU assistance has to play in Slovak civil service reform. It is not surprising that the government’s timetable proved overly optimistic or that the reform was delayed when diverse actors within the government battled over the details of the legislation. It is also unsurprising that domestic actors used the EU as rhetorical fodder to justify their particular positions. The element that distinguishes the case of Slovak civil service reform from the other cases, however, is that EU institutions became substantively involved in the process of preparing the legislation and continued to participate in the domestic fray once disputes began to rage within domestic institutions. This does not mean, though, that the EU abandoned the façade of substantive neutrality. In reality, EU actors simultaneously maintained substantive neutrality and offered concrete remarks on the substance of civil service legislation. This “double position” is a key to understanding the process that ultimately led, in July 2001, to the passage of the Slovak civil service law. Examination of the Regular Reports and Accession Partnerships reveals no dissimilarity between the Commission’s approach to Slovak

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civil service reform and its approach to the areas already considered. The 1998 Report lamented that “the long-awaited civil service law has not been adopted” and contained no recommendations on the articles that such a law should contain. The 1999 Report reminded the government that “the current legal framework does not provide the basis for a stable, politically neutral and highly professional civil service” but did not advocate any specific provisions that a civil service law should contain (Commission 1999b). The 2000 Report bespoke a deep impatience: “unless a satisfactory [legal] solution is found soon (i.e., one that guarantees a professional, impartial, politically neutral, efficient and flexible civil service), this will constitute a major obstacle to Slovakia’s ambitions for early accession to the EU” (Commission 2000b). Once again, though, the Commission did not make concrete recommendations. It presented itself, as usual, as beyond the political fray, as an exasperated observer of frustrating intra-governmental rows. The rows about which the Commission complained, of course, were eminently real. The bill was finally presented to the government in April 2000. The government was immediately weighed down by disagreements, especially between Labor Minister Peter Magvaši (SDĽ ) and Deputy Prime Minister Mikloš (SDKÚ). It initially put off considering the bill until July 2000. Mikloš, who supported the idea of passing civil service legislation, disagreed with the particular vision implied by Magvaši’s version. He accused Magvaši of kowtowing to the Slovak Public Administration Trade Union (Slovenský odborový zväz verejnej správy, or SLOVES), with whom the Labor Ministry had worked closely during the bill’s preparatory stages. According to Mikloš, the bill would transform the current ranks of state bureaucrats into a closed caste of mandarins. It would discourage talented young professionals from seeking jobs in state employment. It would include perquisites—six weeks paid vacation per year, large bonuses upon retirement, generously reinforced pensions, full pay during sick and maternity leaves—that would strain state budgets and allow superior individual performance to go unrewarded. The bill would bestow existing ministerial personnel with tenure too casually and would not recognize the possibility of “fast-track” career paths for exceptional public servants. Magvaši, for his part, defended the law, taking Mikloš to task for delaying a bill that was already well behind schedule and for defending a vision of civil service that thrived on politicization and patronage. These disagreements persisted into July 2000, at which point the government delayed the bill again, preferring to establish a specialized commission designed to work through disputed points. The commission

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was of limited use, however, and the intra-governmental battle raged up once more in January 2001. Finally, that month, Dzurinda, Mikloš, Magvaši, and Deputy PM for Integration Pavol Hamžík (SOP) reached a binding decision: if the bill was to be passed into law by the time the 2001 Regular Report was published, the government would have to reach a solution by early March. On March 4, 2001 that the government settled and passed a compromise version. Given the drawn out process of reaching compromises within the government, the EU’s impatience is understandable. The current case is more complicated than the others, however, for here, EU actors played a more direct role in postponing the bill’s presentation to the government and stoking intra-governmental debates once the bill was officially under consideration (Beblavý 2001a, 2001b, 2002; Beblavý and Sičáková 2002; Beblavý and Tokoš 2000). The first individuals to criticize the draft were Phare contractors. By February 2000, no less a force than Commissioner Verheugen had joined the growing chorus of EU actors criticizing the version. In November 1998, Sigma, the Parisbased OECD unit that had been funded by Phare since its creation in 1992, remarked on materials submitted by the Labor Ministry. Two months later, one of the final documents of the previous Phare administrative reform project was delivered to the ministry; that document also contained detailed recommendations and criticisms. In November 1999, as part of the bridging project that had commenced early that year, another Phare consultant delivered a detailed analysis to Magvaši. Representatives of the Commission Delegation in Bratislava and the Enlargement Directorate-General in Brussels entered the fray with substantive remarks beginning in November 1999. In a November speech at the French embassy in Bratislava, a Delegation representative stated that “even though the preparation of the law is under way, we have the feeling that the current version of the law is not compatible with European standards” (quoted in Beblavý and Tokoš 2000). In December, Delegation chief Rochel met with and delivered a statement to Magvaši that detailed the Commission’s major objections to the bill as drafted. In February 2000, Commissioner Verheugen sent a letter to Eduard Kukan, Slovak Minister of Foreign Affairs, suggesting that the draft law did not sufficiently address the concerns raised in the 1999 Regular Report. Verheugen attached to his letter a memo from Sigma, which, again, identified substantive deficiencies in the draft bill. The period of continuous substantive criticism from the EU came to a head on March 22, 2000 , when Rochel, a Sigma representative, and the chair of the Slovakia desk at DG Enlargement met with Magvaši, Kukan,

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Schmögnerová, and others to discuss the draft law. The Commission representatives demanded that “the Labor ministry rework the draft civil service law as soon as possible on the basis of the remarks presented by Sigma/OECD. The reworked draft [should] then be resubmitted to the European Commission for its unofficial judgment” (quoted in Beblavý and Tokoš 2000). The EU actors’ specific criticisms varied marginally from one document and meeting to the next, but a common thread of at least four remarks connected them. First, the draft bill did not observe the necessary balance between the rights and responsibilities of civil servants, affording distressingly more weight to the former. In the words of the memo attached to Verheugen’s letter, “the law ha[d] obviously been drafted by officials without sufficient directives or guidance and in their own interest. The law looks more like a draft prepared by a trade union than by a government responsible for the performance of the administration and for the budget” (“Five Statements” 2000). By demanding that responsibilities counterbalance rights and perquisites, European actors were essentially positioning themselves as a counterbalance to SLOVES. Second, the law was too long and rigid. A good civil service law, as Rochel suggested to Magvaši, should be “brief, to assure that it is clear, understandable, implementable, and sufficiently flexible” (quoted in Beblavý and Tokoš 2000). Third, the draft bill did not sufficiently scrutinize current employees before granting them tenure. Current employees should not automatically receive tenure, but should go through a probationary period and survive tests of their professional abilities in order to qualify for civil service benefits. The necessity of a probationary period went hand in hand with the fourth criticism—that the law, as drafted, would enter force too quickly. Were the state to confer civil service protections on all current eligible employees, it would not be able to downsize and reorganize in the ways envisioned, among other places, in Nižňanský’s “Concept” for administrative reform. For these and other reasons, “the existing draft law should not be passed without serious re-drafting” (“Five Statements” 2000). The EU’s involvement in the process of drafting the bill is important to appreciate from a number of angles. By criticizing the bill’s provisions and demanding that Magvaši redraft the law—which, after the high-level meeting in February 2000, he did—the EU itself delayed the bill’s presentation to government. The Commission’s criticisms must therefore be taken with a grain of salt, as its involvement in the drafting process was endogenous to the bill’s temporal delay. Also, as is already clear, substantive criticisms waged by EU actors overlapped

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significantly with Mikloš’s objections to Magvaši’s draft bill. One reason why the law got stuck at the government level for such a long time was that Mikloš and his allies waved the documents the EU had submitted as proof that the bill still failed to meet the Commission’s substantive demands. In fact, Commission personnel’s subsequent statements fueled Mikloš’s arguments to this effect. On May 5, 2000, for example, the head of the Slovakia desk in Brussels sent a private letter to Slovak chief negotiator Ján Figeľ which suggested that the new version did not meet the Commission’s recommendations (Beblavý and Tokoš 2000). In February 2001, Rochel delivered a memo to Hamžík stating that the new bill “would not ensure a service compatible with those in the European Union countries” (“Slovak Public Service” 2001). By involving itself in the substance of the domestic debate, the EU served simultaneously as an interested subject, delivering standpoints and recommending substantive changes, and a rhetorical object, usable by Mikloš and his allies in their attempt to reorient the bill that the Labor Ministry had drafted. At the same time as EU institutions were pushing for changes and domestic actors were using EU documents as political leverage, however, EU institutions were also clinging to the more recognizable, substantively neutral language familiar from the cases of regionalization and the Czech civil service law. Magvaši and his allies could use the facts that the EU had prioritized civil service legislation since 1997, that the annual reports criticized Slovakia for failing to pass such legislation, and that Slovakia’s acceptance of future Phare assistance depended on the quick passage of a civil service law to defend their claims that the laws must be passed as soon as possible and that the obstructions raised by Mikloš were preventing the law from being passed. Thus, the EU’s multiple roles enabled domestic actors to reinforce their own positions. Magvaši suggested that the EU required the quick passage of civil service legislation. Mikloš suggested that the EU required the passage of a particular kind of civil service law. Both men, given the multifaceted EU approach, were correct. In the event, dueling parties within the government eventually reached a compromise. Mikloš and the SDKÚ achieved a number of key concessions in the run-up to the government meeting and at the meeting itself. The law would established a strong central office of personnel management called the Office of State Service (Úrad pre štátnu službu, or ÚSS). Unfilled positions, though, would be open to competition from aspirants from outside the state administration. The minimum age for civil servants would be dropped to eighteen (from twenty-one). “Fasttrack” progression would be possible for exceptionally talented

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individuals, and the system would be opened up to more part-time specialists. Many of the benefits that Mikloš attacked as expensive and gratuitous were scaled back. Current employees, for example, would only receive tenure after a probationary period of two years and after passing examinations, and tenured employees who were dismissed because of organizational reconfigurations would only receive pay for eighteen months before being “cut free.” Civil servants would be evaluated once every year (instead of once every two years) on a fivepoint (instead of a three-point) scale, and employees who received an unsatisfactory evaluation could be evaluated again only six months later. “Bad apples” could be thrown out, after two consecutive negative evaluations, in 1.5 years; under the previous version, it would have taken four years. The law would enter force on January 1, 2002, though the flexibility required to bring regionalization and other organizational reforms would essentially be possible through the end of 2003 (Beblavý 2001a; Čupíková 2001). The compromise passed the government by a unanimous vote, and the government parties supported and passed a slightly amended version of the law on July 2, 2001. At that point, the head of the Slovakia desk in Brussels delivered a statement to the Slovak government, signaling the Commission’s de facto retreat from the details of the debate: “With happiness I can say that the latest version took into account the majority of the amendments of the Commission, and I can call this a fundamental improvement. Our experts from Sigma confirmed this, after we asked them to perform a professional analysis of the new version” (letter as read on floor of the Národná rada SR 20. júna 2001). Even after the Commission voiced its satisfaction and exited the scene as an active subject, though, Mikloš and his parliamentary allies continued to use the Commission’s substantive materials to push for amendments to the bill. Opposition parliamentarians, meanwhile, took the government to task; by delaying the civil service law for so long, the opposition claimed, the government had both betrayed its commitments and injured Slovakia’s image in the EU’s eyes. This situation was an eloquent encapsulation of the complex dynamics that this section has identified. After the civil service bill passed through the government, the Commission re-emphasized its substantively neutral face, distancing itself from the substantively engaged face it had displayed for the last twenty months. Slovak parliamentarians, though, continued to pick up on both strands of the EU’s participation, with the opposition now adopting Magvaši’s sense of urgency and center-right parties suggesting that the law was still not “European” enough. In the case of Slovak civil service reform and the law (Zákon 312/2001) that eventually passed

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parliament in July 2001, the EU used multiple tools and offered both neutral and engaged pressure. These pressures had uneven impacts: different domestic actors used different manifestations of EU pressure to support their particular goals. Here, the EU’s roles as neutral subject, engaged subject, and rhetorical object intertwined and overlapped in complex ways. 9 Conclusions

Before 1997, EU actors gave vague indications that “administration mattered” for the CEE states hoping to accede to full membership. They did not make it clear how administration mattered or what their expectations of candidate country administrations really were. This ambivalence, reinforced by the non-existence of an acquis for administrative reform, led to a scattershot EU administrative reform policy. The Commission bankrolled a wide range of administrative reform projects during this era, but these projects had limited effects and did not encourage domestic policymakers to reorder their preferences. They did not upset domestic equilibria which, in both the Czech and Slovak cases, remained heavily weighted toward the respective prime ministers. Before 1997, the EU had no direct causal influence on institutional preferences, dynamics, or outcomes. All the same, the Europe was not irrelevant to the politics of administrative reform during this period. Actors across the political spectrum used the EU in diverse and occasionally contradictory ways. The same actors who avoided an EU administrative reform project on Monday could welcome a second project on Tuesday. If the first project reinforced political opponents’ relative strength, it could be shunned. If the second project buttressed allies’ political weight, it could be used. Also, given the widespread commitment to “rejoining Europe,” the EU was employed as a rhetorical ideal, capable, actors hoped, of sanctifying their own positions and discrediting opponents’ positions. These dynamics changed in the late 1990s, as a more coherent vision of administrative reform conditionality emerged. The EU’s clearer policy stressed the necessity of stable relations between accountable central and sub-central bodies, on one hand, and a stable corps of legally protected civil servants, on the other. The policy was designed to apply to every candidate country equally, and EU actors across the region possessed a common repertoire of instruments to encourage candidates to conform to the new policy. In practice, though, both the quality of pressure (substantively neutral versus substantively engaged) and the particular tools wielded to apply this pressure varied

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among cases, among institutions, and from time to time. The crystallization of EU administrative reform conditions produced no uniform practical approach to candidate countries or policy areas. Instead, different EU institutions and EU-empowered contractors asserted themselves in different ways. Even in cases where EU actors maintained substantive neutrality after 1997, the pressures of accession forced governments to make concessions. Faced by EU pressure, for example, the Zeman government eventually endorsed more self-governing regions and a more open civil service system than it had initially proposed. In Slovakia, the EU time pressures encouraged government parties to surrender critical decisionmaking authority about the number of self-governing regions to the National Council and to hammer out compromises on the shape of the civil service. One impression that emerges from the cases examined here is that after 1997, EU actors were more assertive and energetic in Slovakia than in the Czech Republic. This difference is likely explained by a combination of Slovakia’s 1994-1998 history and the complexity of the post-1998 government. The Luxembourg European Council (1997) left Slovakia out of the “first tier” of CEE candidates because the country failed to meet the Union’s political conditions. Although Slovakia technically cleared the political hurdle in 1998, legacies of the Mečiar era (i.e., the administrative division of 1996, administrative personnel who gained their positions on the basis of political ties) survived the watershed 1998 elections. On numerous occasions, Commissioner Verheugen proclaimed a special interest in Slovakia’s effort to catch up with fellow candidates. The fact that Slovakia had recently outlived a period of populist rule—and that Mečiar’s HZDS continued to attract very significant portions of the Slovak public’s support—may have encouraged EU actors to invest extraordinary energy in lobbying for the speedy passage of called-for reforms. A second reason for the more aggressive effort in Slovakia was the complex composition of the Dzurinda government. Four internally diverse parties constituted the Slovak cabinet. No consistent intracabinet coalition emerged, and rumors of cooperation between certain parties (particularly SDĽ) and Mečiar’s opposition circulated throughout the government’s term. In the absence of stable domestically based alliances among the cabinet’s constituent parties, EU pressure could encourage compromises, especially since, despite their programmatic and personality-based differences, all governing subjects supported early EU accession. As the case of the Slovak civil service law makes clear, though, there was no necessary connection between EU involvement in

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a policy area and intra-cabinet compromise. When EU actors sent multivalent and inconsistent messages, rival domestic political factions latched onto particular strands of EU pressure and re-employed them against domestic rivals. Such maneuvers, manifest particularly in the Magvaši/Mikloš drama, exacerbated existing conflicts instead of alleviating them. It is important to note, though, that the heightened conflict lasted only so long; in the end, all government partners realized that further delays would seriously endanger the country’s status in the eyes of the Commission and passed a compromise version. In conclusion, and moving again from the explanation of variation to the explanation of similarity, it bears emphasis that certain similar dynamics connected EU-domestic interactions in all the cases examined. Publicly aired EU criticisms always occasioned symbolic concessions from domestic governments. They always sped-up timetables for reform. They always encouraged governments to support sub-optimal (from governments’ own perspectives) institutional outcomes. They always served as texts that domestic actors could interpret and employ to defend their particular approaches, and they always became intertwined with the domestic political process. In the Czech Republic, the main arena for the political compromises necessary to pass regional reforms and civil service legislation was the Chamber of Deputies. In Slovakia, it was the government. In both countries, though, the European dimension of administrative reforms became more important by the time the relevant legislation finally passed, and EU actors played a direct role, at least in pushing the reforms forward. If decisions about whether and how to establish new administrative institutions descended from debates that had raged throughout the 1990s, they also encompassed considerations of the countries’ futures as member states and reflected EU institutions’ increasing commitment to regional and civil service reforms. Notes 1 The European Community (EC) officially became the European Union (EU) on November 1, 1993, when the Treaty on European Union entered force. Thus, I refer to “the European Community” or “the EC” when discussing events before November 1, 1993 and “the European Union,” “the EU,” or “the Union” when discussing events from November 1, 1993 forward. 2 It is difficult to determine the precise percentage of Phare commitments to administrative reform projects in Slovakia in the 1990-1997 period. This difficulty stems from the Commission’s inconsistent accounting practices. Certain Phare Annual Reports, for example, contain a line-item that collapses

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administrative reform with assistance for public institutions, approximation of laws, and consumer protection. Other Annual Reports contain less aggregated line items, lumping only administrative reform and public institutions into a single category. Comparison of all of the EU reports on Phare funding to Slovakia, however, does suggest the soundness of concluding that a greater percentage of the Phare country budget went to administrative reform in the era from 1993 forward than in the 1990-1992 era. In 1993, Phare administrative reform commitments consumed 0% of total Phare commitments. In 1994, between two and four million ECU were devoted to Slovak administrative reform projects. In 1995, between 4.5 and 5 million ECU were earmarked for administrative reform projects. 3 A portion (approximate 700,000 ECU) of the funds committed in 1994 had, in the meantime, been disbursed to support ten small-scale projects in a dispersed range of line ministries. See “OMAS Report” (2000). 4 Both of these final outcomes (the number/shape of regions and the effective date of the law) differed from every individual bill that had been presented. The Chamber of Deputies considered widely divergent proposals for three, eight, nine, thirteen, fourteen, twenty-six, and twenty-seven regions. None of the original four (ODA, ČSSD, government, SPR-RSČ) proposals, though, envisioned the fourteen regions that eventually passed. Although one ČSSD alternative contained fourteen regions, its division of the Moravian regions differed from the division that passed. None of the original bills contained an effective date of January 1, 2000. 5 Both ČSSD leaders and the bill’s sponsors stressed, in the words of ČSSD deputy chairman Zdeněk Škromach, that the bill was “the view of individual deputies but by no means the position of any of the ČSSD political bodies.” The ČSSD deputies’ bill was, in fact, very smartly packaged in the language of the EU and essentially attempted to impute motives that did not exist to EU bodies. According to its sponsors, one of the major purposes of the bill was to streamline the Czech Republic’s ability to draw from structural funds. It would accomplish this, the sponsors claimed, by assuring that all of the new, geographically larger units would have populations of over one million inhabitants, and would therefore be able, each by itself, to attract and effectively manage operational programs under the structural funds. The rationale behind this argument was that structural funds are only disbursed to NUTS II units with populations of over one million. Most of the fourteen regions created by the 1997 constitutional law would be NUTS III regions. They would be too small to manage operational programs by themselves. They would have to be combined into purpose-built NUTS II regions in order to qualify for EU funds. Such combinations, however, are not unusual in EU member states, and there is no evidence that any EU body ever suggested the necessity of building larger NUTS II regions. Still, the bill’s sponsors suggested that the creation of NUTS II regions would encourage opacity, inefficiency, and needless bureaucracy. 6 Strictly speaking, the Concept laid out an “11+1 / 11+1” model. Variants that established Bratislava as an independent self-governing region generally ended in “+1.” 7 This would represent an asymmetrical configuration of self-government (12) and state administration (