The changing colours of the post-communist state: The politicisation of the senior civil service in Hungary

Abstract.  This article examines claims that senior civil services in post-communist Europe are subject to instability and politicisation, and that both features are at the centre of what amounts to the emergence of a distinct type of executive governance different from Western traditions. At the conceptual level, the article develops four modes of politicisation that differ with respect to the political control over the making and breaking of bureaucratic careers. Modes of politicisation serve as an analytical tool to assess and classify the politicisation of post-communist senior civil services and to compare them to prevailing modes of politicisation in Western democracies as well as the communist past. At the empirical level, the article examines the politicisation of the senior civil service in post-communist Hungary. It argues that the politicisation of the Hungarian senior civil service is characterised by high turnover, recruitment of outsiders and heavy reliance on the appointment of officials who come and go with their bloc of political parties while bridging the out-of-office period in the private sector, academia or at a political party. The article concludes that the politicisation of the senior civil service in post-communist Hungary has more in common with the communist past than with the prevailing modes of politicisation in Western democracies. The main difference from the communist era lies in the periodically changing political colours of the post-communist state.