Europeanization and Democratization - CIRES

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“twinners” played negligible roles in this process. Still, it would be
inaccurate to claim that the EU was irrelevant to the process of civil service
reform. Though the particular bargains affecting the shape of the civil
service were struck by domestic actors without the EU’s substantive input,
domestic bargaining was conducted under the shadow of the EU’s
persistent criticisms of reform timing. Pavel Telička, the chief Czech EU
accession negotiator, noted after the publication of the 2001 Regular
Report that “the Commission is certainly not mistaken in one regard: the
civil service law is the alpha and omega of everything.” 19 In other words,
failure to pass a civil service law would significantly hinder the Czech
Republic’s pre-accession standing. ČSSD, Christian Democratic, and
Freedom Union deputies reach a similar conclusion; given that all three
parties were solidly pro-EU, further political wrangling over the bill would be
too risky. EU pressure did encourage compromise; it was a persistent
reminder to domestic decision makers that timely accession and the good
graces of EU actors required this particular institutional reform.
Civil service reform in Slovakia
Like the Czech Republic, Slovakia delayed comprehensive civil
service reform throughout the 1990s. The same variables that explain the
Czech delays—particularly the lack of reform tradition and uncertainties
arising from stateness questions—help to explain the Slovak delays. As in
the Czech case, though, the most important explanatory factor has to do
with the preferences of governing party leaders. Although their ideological
predilections and personal styles differed dramatically, both Czech Prime
Minister Klaus and Slovak Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar saw real
advantages in their inherited systems of personnel administration. Mečiar,
whose Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) dominated the
coalition cabinet that ruled Slovakia between 1994 and 1998, also preferred
to use state positions for patronage purposes and failed to pursue civil
service reforms that might restrict his power over the bureaucracy.
Again as in the Czech Republic, elections in 1998 affected the
domestic political balance and the context within which EU pressure played
out. A broad coalition of organizationally underdeveloped anti-Mečiar
parties emerged victorious in the September 1998 elections. Before the
elections, leaders of the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK), the Party of
19 Radio Praha, “Pavel Telička: Přijetí zákona o státní službĕ je zásadní otázka,”
November 13, 2001.