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The impact of the EU through public administration democratization in Albania; a comparison with the Croatian model
Section 1. Public Administration
Irna Dobi (Peshkepia), PhD.cand at European University of Tirana, in International Law
E-mail: peshkepiairna@yahoo.com
The impact of the EU through public administration democratization in Albania; a comparison with the Croatian model
Abstrakt: The European Union (EU) has helped accelerate Western Balkan countries’ efforts to deepen their democracies [16; 17; 27]. No other region of the world has a vibrant regional organization willing to promote democratization through its willingness to open itselfup to new, neighboring members who meet certain democratic and market conditions and to provide aid to assist democratization and marketization. Has the EU extended its success in promoting democratic statebuilding from Central Europe to the Western Balkans?
Keywords: Democratization, public administration, candidate countries, state-building etc.
Introduction
This paper investigates the impact of the EU’s approach to democratic statebuilding on political reform in Albania comparing with Croatian democratic process in public administration. It does so by focusing on the logic behind and outcome of reforms of political institutions that the EU model claims to spur. In particular, it explores reforms in two interrelated areas: public administration, which is at the centre of EU statebuilding efforts, and local (municipal) democratic government, which is considered a key European standard and one of the main foundations of democracy.
According to Fukuyama [15] describes the relations between Europe and Western actors to promote statebuilding process as “the creation of new institutions and the strengthening of existing ones” that are democratic. All internationally supported approaches to statebuilding assume that domestic actors lack the capacity and/or political will to build democratic states on their own, and that they require help from international actors [13].
However, the Central Europe experiences as Knaus and Cox [18] argue that caracterized by three existing state-building models — the authoritarian, where internationals are vested with executive authority; the traditional, development; and
the EU-member state — only the latter’s voluntary process that promises the concrete political and economic prize of EU membership has been successful. Democratic requirements; rigorous and objective evaluation of aspiring members fulfillment of these requirements during theprocess; EU aid for reforming institutions; and the strong desire of East European states to join the EU club supposedly work together to transform administrations that deepen democracy in credible candidate countries [18].
Still, it is not clear that the EU accession process that worked effectively in Central Europe is well suited to help Western Balkan states address the significant challenges they confront to their state building processes [44]. These challenges include not just the transformation of formerly statesocial-ist institutions, but also the reconstruction and the cultivation of internal consensus about the nature and configuration of new states.
A review of literature on democratization approaches produces three hypotheses on the impact of the EU state-building model on both coutries. It gauges the progress spurred by EU leverage over public administration and local governance reforms and then evaluates the impact of EU aid. An assessment of the nature of EU demands and domestic political dynamics in these policy areas is found to
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Section 1. Public Administration
help determine the effect of EU leverage over these reforms.
The impact of the EU state-building model in Albania and Croatia is by the EU’s less than clear or prioritized demands and aid that is not well formulated to build capacity, as well as middling political will to implement democratic reforms required by the EU.
Recognizing that the Albania and Croatia faced more daunting reforms than the Central European states, the EU developed a stabilisation and association process, which aims to help the Western Balkan countries build their capacity to adopt and implement EU law, as well as European and international standards. The EU offers a mixture of: trade concessions; economic and financial assistance; assistance for reconstruction, development and stabilisation; and stabilisation and association agreements (SAAs).
The EU encourage a process of change among countries, within its conditionality They view this process as a key aspect of the EU member statebuilding model that addresses problems associated with the authoritarian state-building model in which international actors play a highly interventionary role in domestic governance [45].
Based on the above mentions, the papers emphasize concrete issues that could be synthesized in some large categories:
- both states public administrations between tradition and modernity;
- National experiences on the impact of the administrative reforms in both states;
- Myth or reality in considering “Croatian model of public administration”;
- Administrative convergence and dynamics as support of the evolution towards a certain model;
1. Croatian public administrations between tradition and modernity from weberian bureaucracy to new public management
The public administration has been undergoing profound transformation from the dissolution of the regime in both coutries. The incorporation of information and communication technologies (ICT) in all aspects ofwork in public administration has been a crucial element in triggering this transformation. Fortunately, public administration work today has
little to do with inefficient bureaucratic machineries of the past; however, there is still room for improvement in order to make public services more efficient, cost-effective, burden-less and friendly for citizens and businesses.
The concept that better describes the transformations in the public administration process is the concept of “Transformational Government”. This concept originated in 2003 with the
work of European organizations such as Belgium’s FEDICT [47], and borrows the name from the 2005 British initiative “Transformational Government enabled by technology” [48].
Furthermore, one needs to bear in mind that in order to move public administration towards the transformational government concept, one of the most important points is to ensure that the majority of the citizenry is actively included in the benefits of information society. For this matter, infrastructural modernisation was not sufficient, since skills and awareness of the existing possibilities were equally necessary.
For these reasons, the majority of European requirements for post-comunist governments and the European institutions assistance have actively start on the promotion of Inclusion policies, including the promotion of national skills.
The European Commission sees Inclusion policy as a key enabler of the goals of economic and social progress set in the Lisbon agenda and will continue to be in the post-2010 agenda.
Departing from the idea of transforming the risk of digital divide into “digital cohesion” and opportunities for every citizen to benefit from technology, Inclusion focuses on bringing the advantage of the internet to all citizens, putting special emphasis on the risk groups. The main activities covered under Inclusion policies are divided into Accessibility and Competences. The first, Accessibility, deals with promoting assistive technology and universally accessible software, websites, etc. focusing on the “Design for all” principle. This includes websites or applications designed to be friendly to users with disabilities, for instance enabling colour contrasts, text-to-voice technology, etc. The latter — Competences — makes reference to skills, knowledge and attitudes relevant to education in the context of
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The impact of the EU through public administration democratization in Albania; a comparison with the Croatian model
an inclusive information society. Moreover, as Government is being implemented in European public administration, it transforms the way citizens interact with the administration and it modifies the working settings of public employees, requiring them to gain new competences. Therefore, ensuring that all employees have at least a solid command of the basic skills, was an excellent way to guarantee the success of a knowledge-centred modernisation strategy and actual preparedness of employees to cope with the renewed demands of their jobs.
The most necessary changes in public service delivery to accomplish such goals are promoting Inclusion policy and Skills in order to allow the maximum number of citizens to benefit from the information society, and for public administration and gover-ments, to incorporate ICT in their working processes as a valuable tool for efficiently gaining and offering better services to the citizens and businesses. For public administration, these challenges will have to be met by combining the best strategy of incorporating ICT in its areas ofwork, and bringing its benefits to the citizens.
2. Croatian Public adminsitration reforms
Public administration reforms were very broad and complex. In order to perceive the complexity of the functioning of the Croatian public administration the institutional framework of Croatian public sector and the basic components of the state administration and local self-government will be presented during the analysis.
During the reforms in the Croatian public sector have been a constant issue on the agenda of politician, public servants and the broader public. However, often the reforms were seen as mild, inconsistent and even unsuccessful, despite of the high level of attention dedicated, and money and time consumed. According to Kopric (2009), even though reforms aimed at increasing administrative capacity, they failed because of a too narrow understanding of the political, organizational, functional, personal issues involved.
Croatia has a two-tier system of government administration: central and local government administrations. Institutionally, the public sector consists of different entities that carry out the fundamental functions of the State, including central and local
government, their agencies and bodies and other legal entities established and financed predominantly by the State. In wider terms, the public sector includes not just specific institutional executors but also activities or services of common interest, proprietary relations between the government and local authorities, public finance, public goods and state legislative. Consequently, the system is highly complex, as can be seen from the paper, which definitely makes it complex to manage. Second, functions performed by different entities differ and there was the problem of observing immediate long-term consequences of public sector reforms.
The Weberian nature ofcivil service was enforced partly due to legislation regulating Employment in Civil Service. The employment of civil servants was regulated by the Law on civil servants and employees. Professional activities were performed by civil servants, while the activities of technical support in bodies of the state administration were performed by employees (Ministers, state secretaries and assistants, directors of state administrative organizations, and state secretaries and assistants are officials of the Republic ofCroatia). The internal organization ofper-sonnel was hierarchical, civil servants were appointed to their positions according to qualification criteria prescribed by law or other regulation, promotion was often subject to legally defined criteria and implies and advancement to a higher level of salary.
Another issue stressed in the progress report was the lack of coordination “political and technical levels”. Even though initiatives and reform programs would probably stand a chance of being better coordinated if administered from one center (supposedly The Ministry of Administration), important projects influenced process design and performance quality such as the Croatia was administered by a special body established and under direct supervision of the Government, Central State Administrative Office for Croatia. The public sector in Croatia has been developed to satisfy the public needs, as well as to perform the fundamental functions of the State. The field of activity of public administration, and thus of the administration of convergence is very broad and complex.
In order to perceive the complexity of the functioning of the Croatian public administration
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Section 1. Public Administration
the institutional framework of Croatian public sector and the basic components of the state administration and local self-government were presented.
International and Croatian legislative definitions of the public sector were not defined uniformly.
The first step needed in order to evaluate public sector reforms undertaken in the past two decades would be to devise a system for sorting out different types of government bodies and quasy-autonomous entities that would differentiate entities first by function and secondly, by appropriate governance modes.
2.1 Professionalization of the public administration
The establishment of a modern administration meets a lot of challenges: on one side, creating a contemporary professional civil service with responsible civil servants, who possess the needed competences and potential, and on the other — the requirements, coming from the membership of the Republic of Croatia in the European Union.
The reform of the public administration aims at creating an atmosphere, which actively encourages the innovations, introducing good practices and EU achievements. The process of modernization of the administration requires through and improved knowledge of the employees, considered with the EU acquis, mastering skills for applying new style in work, initiative and will for achieving good results in servicing the citizens and businesses. The public assessment for providing high quality, transparent, competent and timely service to a great extend depends on the professionalism, the wish and responsibility of the staff to develop and improve their knowledge and skills.
The European dimension of the professional skills and employees’ qualification in the administration consists in assuming contemporary models for organization and functioning of the administration according to the best practices in the EU Member States. The dynamics in the development of the public administration leads to opening of strategic planning at the level of organization; development of public-private partnership; outsourcing; coordination of the efforts between the municipalities for development of joint projects, development and management of projects for absorption of means from the EU funds.
The Strategy focuses on the application of contemporary models and techniques for governing the potential of the employees, on creating anticorruption environment with clear control rules, encouragement and motivation of the employees for disclosure and prevention of conflict of interests.
Key element of the effective and modern policy in the area of the human resources in the administration is the improvement of the system for permanent development of employees’ competencies, professional skills and qualification.The European Union was an actor that during the accession trials, assists Croatia in democratizing the organization and functioning of its public administrations, just as it did in the case of the CEE countries.
2.2 Croatia through europeanisation achieved democratization reform
Europeanisation generally implies a product “of the European Union” or “generated by the European Union”. Scholars active in the field however, find it rather hard to simply draw causality lines between European stimuli and national changes. If to consider that Europeanisation names the impact of European integration on Member (and Candidate) countries, then national changes in the latter might be linked to the presence of the Union in the region. It is this very situation which generates methodological complications; still, finding a (some) subject (s) where European Union and the changes associated to it lack in presence might just do the trick. However, as studying Europeanisation so far, mainly concentrated on units of analysis where the European stimuli were present (be it inside Member or Candidate countries), the pretended independent variable (the impact of theEuropean Union), remained a constant. For relevant discussions on the topics above, please see inter alia, Ladrech (1994); Knill and Lehmkuhl (1999); Bomberg and Peterson (2000); Börzel and Risse (2000); Laegreid (2000); Radaelli (2000); Olsen (2002); Featherstone (2003); Falkner (2003); Grabbe (2003); Haverland (2003); Töller (2004); or Howell (2004).
The European Union grew from 6 to 27 members. The last and most serious enlargement (in terms of number of acceding countries) raised different and interesting concerns for the national administrative capacities of both Members and Candidates
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The impact of the EU through public administration democratization in Albania; a comparison with the Croatian model
to the European Union. What was the exact nature of the European administrative requirements; and how can they be integrated in an Europeanisation logic and were they used so far in the case of the Croatian accession to the European Union, are the three questions to be addressed below.
Europeanisation defines the impact of the accession criteria upon the national orders of Central and Eastern Europe. Three possible types of Europeanisation for candidate countries are envisaged here: the “top-down” approach (the Union gives, while the candidate countries take — type Ec (Europeanization candidatesl), “bottom-up” approach (the Union gives what was previously influenced by the candidates, the taking being thus facilitated — type Ec2) and an approach dealing with the policy transfer between Members and Candidates (type Ec3) The first approach refers to the Ec1 to the top-down europeanisation reform which means “top” are european level standards and “down” are public administration reforms in Croatia.
Ec (Europeanization candidates)2 means that Croatian Europeanization need for institutional and enlargement framework reform, becoming a Member State has influenced the European Union’s policy of enlargement to the Western Balkans.
Ec (Europeanization candidates)3: Croatia interact amongst them and with Member States (at the administration level). In this case, Europeanisation names exclusively the policy transfer dimension, without the direct intervention of the European Union.
The study of democratization exceds the endogen level of the state, and develops the possibility to analyze the contribution of external actors to generating, nurture or consolidate the democratization. In the CEEC case, the European Union appears as a assistance donor for democratization minimum democratic public administration in the European acquis as well as in the content of the national responses of the CEEC to the accession requirements.
In addition, linking Croatian Europeanisation to Democratization was a possible way of escaping the “causality puzzle”, still offering perspectives for the study of the national impact of European stimuli.
3. Albania public administration reforms In post-socialist countries, development has been pursued at the outset of transition mainly
through downsizing measures aimed at achieving fiscal stabilization. These measures benefited of the full support from the international community. Many earlier reforms, often under pressure from structural adjustment and fiscal stabilization, were concerned with administrative efficiency and involved retrenchment of civil service. The most basic transformation was moving resources from the State to the private sector, which in 1999 produced more than half of GDP in the central eastern European region [49].
A distinguishing feature of development in Albania during the first years of transition has been its capacity for a quick economic progress. For many years, Albania was held up as an example for other transitional countries to follow because of its apparently favourable macroeconomic indicators. Nonetheless, during 1996-1997, Albania was convulsed by the fall of several huge financial pyramid schemes with about two-thirds of the population investing in them and nominal liabilities amounting at almost half of the country’s [20]. the Albanian government recognized PA reform as fundamental for the attainment of the medium-term objectives for growth and poverty reduction.
The Government strategy for State administrative and institutional reform included strengthening the coordination of public policies; improving policy and program implementation; transparency, effectiveness and accountability in resources management; and government-citizens relationships and public accountability. However, reforms were addressed mainly by drafting laws and formally establishing new agencies, revealing donor pressure more than a serious commitment of the Albanian government, still unable of implementing much of the reforms.
The process towards distributed public governance has not been accompanied by a parallel reduction in the number and functions of ministries while public agencies and independent authorities have increased. In this scenario, the protection of the public interest becomes increasingly difficult and priorities move away from the need to create new separate bodies to the challenge of finding the right balance between accountability and autonomy, openness, performance management, as well as strengthening the steering capacity of central ministries [30,
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Section 1. Public Administration
p. 9, 21]. Furthermore, steering these central nonministerial bodies through contract-based public management is beyond reach, which poses crucial whole-of government issues such as policy coherence and clarity of the administrative organizational system at the central level [46].
In the first years of transition, the focus was mainly on reforms at the central level to build key democratic institutions, as well as on basic economic reforms, while less attention was paid to local government reforms. Sub-national administrations were formally re-created in the early 1990 s, with a number of laws approved which govern their competencies and authorities. Much of that legal framework has yet to be implemented and local governments in Albania have very limited administrative and fiscal autonomy [8].
Sub-national governments include communes (komuna), municipalities (bashki) and regions (qa-rqe). Communes and municipalities are the lowest level of local PA, while the 12 regions represent the upper level. The EU requrements in the lasts years demands Albanian governments to improve these system and in the last elections for muncipalities on June 2015 organized with the new system but still remain to analyzed if these change will be a sucesful proces or not.
The law on the organization and functioning of the local self-government established that the relationship between levels of government will be based on the principle of subsidiarity, which states that public functions should be assigned to the lowest level of government, whenever no compelling reason would suggest otherwise. The decentralization strategy has included reforms in local financing, a package oflaws on physical assets and on local public enterprises, aimed at improving allocative efficiency, governance and accountability, the institutional status of local government, the development of managerial capacities at the local level, etc. [1].
Despite some initial fundamental regulatory and institutional achievements, key challenges that threaten the successful implementation of the government’s decentralization strategy are the following:
The impact of external assistance in decentralisation reforms 2003;
(b) Weak administrative capacity (both local and central);
(c) High fragmentation and small size of local units;
(d) A still undefined role of the regions and the interactions between levels of government, which create conflicting authorities, duplications, and inefficiencies;
(e) The poor coordination of decentralization implementation;
(f) The absence of clear service standards and measurement criteria of performance in local service delivery;
(g) An inadequate degree of revenue autonomy and predictability.
The Albanian reform strategy included a first phase addressing only the higher civil service aimed at developing a professional and managerial core. It was done by legally defining their status and by specifically regulating recruitment and progression. A second phase addressed the whole-of civil service, aimed at introducing a results-orientation and emphasis on effectiveness of public programmes and policies. The main objective behind reform is the establishment of a professional and sustainable civil service, mainly through stability and security for civil servants and staff professionalism [33, p. 67]. In conclusion, capacity to implement reforms has been weak and political interferences have been a threat for their successful implementation.
Strengthening the administration’s stability and increasing the performance of PAs and civil servants remain central areas of concern [33, p. 5]. However, the current implementation of PA reforms continues to focus on mechanical and formal. alterations of the structure of the civil service rather than procedural operations and effectiveness and a change in behaviour within the civil service and its citizens-orientation.
The Albanian PA continues to be characterized by rigid hierarchies and a custodial attitude, which government-led reforms have not yet begun to address.
Summing up, macroeconomic stabilization pursued in Albania at the outset of transition, mainly through the support of international institutions, achieved substantial results in terms of GDP growth,
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The impact of the EU through public administration democratization in Albania; a comparison with the Croatian model
employment and inflation. However, as the 1997 crisis made clear, it was more a recovery than a sustainable process of development. PA reform was neglected, bringing about a weak governance system and widespread corruption. This called for a thorough public management reform, which drivers came from international institutions operating in Albania.
The Albanian PA continues to be characterized by rigid hierarchies and a custodial attitude, which government-led reforms have not yet begun to address. Only a core set of international institutions and foreign governments have contributed to public management modernization initiatives in Albania. Problems ofcoor-dination are exacerbated because ofseveral donors involved in the same field, during the same period.
Conclusion
The paper analysed public sector reforms in transition countries, through the case studies ofAlbania and Croatia, with the aim of addressing a relevant literature gap in terms of a widely-accepted model of PA reform agendas in transition countries In particular, the experience of these two countries could be compared with the different theoretical models.
Undoubtedly, the specificity of the case studies as context and topic sensitive does not allow for comprehensive generalizations, though providing useful insights for other transition countries. The two case studies bring about interesting results on the extent to which New Public M style reforms fit the context conditions in transition countries and on the potentiallities of the New Weberianism as an interpretative model. Both countries have generally started civil service reform before a structural overhaul of the PA. This condition is common to other postcommunist countries [35]. A neo Weberian approach. «A NWS became the requirement without having a completed Weberian state, because it is the only solution for providing a synthesis between
legalism and managerialism. [...] A NWS, in which governmental actions are based on the rule oflaw, in which private enterprises are involved for competing quality in the service delivery, and in which civil society organizations have a full range involvement in public policy making, from decision making to service provision, strengthening of civil sector and its organisations”. Key elements are the emphasis on the professionalization of the public servants, their depoliticisation and transparency.
It is of fundamental relevance to develop a PA modernisation model based on the key characteristics and needs of transition countries and, subsequently, to use this model — instead of the NPM — for intepreting and assessing the results.
PA reforms have two ways to influence development: Downsizing public sector, which frees up resources and provides new opportunities for private actors, and making public sector more responsive, which, although requiring some investments in the beginning, contributes to better public policies and more integrated economic and social development.
The Albanian and Croatia experiences provide evidence that downsizing measures can help achieve fiscal stability in the short term, while prove to be ineffective in setting the conditions for a longer term sustainable development and also give rise to some unexpected problems of their own.
In retrospect, the case studies seem to confirm the position found in the literature which recommends that matters of constitutional governance should be dealt with before matters of administration; that legal frameworks should be in place before dealing with administrative arrangements; that a functioning core civil service is a pre-condition of more distributed public governance arrangements; and that rationalising rules and enforcing compliance should come before starting to reform the rules [29; 32].
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