State Secretaries Reform in Ukraine : Attempt to Delineate Responsibilities between Ministers and Senior Civil Servants
The relationship between politicians and senior officials has been on the reform agenda in many countries, often on the premise that balance between technical, nonpartisan appointments and ensuring the responsiveness of public servants to the polic...
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| Format: | Working Paper |
| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/06/26497061/state-secretaries-reform-ukraine-attempt-delineate-responsibilities-between-ministers-senior-civil-servants http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24618 |
| Summary: | The relationship between politicians and
senior officials has been on the reform agenda in many
countries, often on the premise that balance between
technical, nonpartisan appointments and ensuring the
responsiveness of public servants to the policies of the
current government could be improved (Matheson et al. 2007).
This paper examines an attempt to de-politicize senior civil
service in Ukraine through the introduction of state
secretaries, to understand whether the diagnosis of
imbalance in this political/administrative interface was
correct, and why the reform failed. The paper draws on a
survey of government officials and experts as well as legal
acts, available documents, articles, and personal
interviews. The paper concludes that politicized civil
service was a problem of form rather than function—the
immediate problem was the undefined political role of the
executive. It led to compression of the roles of policy
makers and senior civil servants, making the reform
ultimately irrelevant. |
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