State Secretaries Reform in Ukraine : Attempt to Delineate Responsibilities between Ministers and Senior Civil Servants

Balabushko, Oleksii

World Bank, Washington, DC

关键词: LIMITED;    PUBLIC SERVANTS;    EMPLOYMENT;    MANAGERS;    CIVIL SERVANT;   

DOI  :  10.1596/1813-9450-7702
RP-ID  :  WPS7702

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: World Bank Open Knowledge Repository

【 摘 要 】

The relationship between politicians andsenior officials has been on the reform agenda in manycountries, often on the premise that balance betweentechnical, nonpartisan appointments and ensuring theresponsiveness of public servants to the policies of thecurrent government could be improved (Matheson et al. 2007).This paper examines an attempt to de-politicize senior civilservice in Ukraine through the introduction of statesecretaries, to understand whether the diagnosis ofimbalance in this political/administrative interface wascorrect, and why the reform failed. The paper draws on asurvey of government officials and experts as well as legalacts, available documents, articles, and personalinterviews. The paper concludes that politicized civilservice was a problem of form rather than function—theimmediate problem was the undefined political role of theexecutive. It led to compression of the roles of policymakers and senior civil servants, making the reformultimately irrelevant.