8.5 The Functional, Formal, and Social Politicisation of the Czech Ministries
Starting with functional politicisation, the extent of political influence on officials’ day-to-day activities is a critical aspect of their work in public administration settings. The extent of such influence varies depending on the position of the official (Graph 2). More than half (51 percent) of rank-and-file officials and about the same percentage of directors of section (54 percent) do not perceive political interference with their work as a significant issue. However, the situation is different with lower and middle management staff. Full 42 percent of departmental directors reported that politicians often influence their day-to-day work, while only 29 percent of them state the opposite. The opinions of division heads about political influence are harder to interpret. On the one hand, 37 percent of them report that their work is politicised, while 42 percent do not. The view of division heads on political influence is somewhat ambiguous because 21 percent of them took a neutral stance.
Graph 3: Perceived Importance of Criteria for the Appointment of Officials
Graph 3: Perceived Importance of Criteria for the Appointment of Officials
Note: * The differences are significant at p≤0.01 (Pearson’s chi square). Question worded “At your Ministry, which criterion is decisive for the appointment to the work positions?” (“Don’t know” and “No response” answers removed). Source: GACR survey
Note: * The differences are significant at p≤0.01 (Pearson’s chi square). Question worded “At your Ministry, which criterion is decisive for appointment to the work positions?” (“Don't know” and “No response” answers removed).
Source: GACR survey
Moving onto formal politicisation, there is a remarkable agreement among the survey participants about the one criterion that is decisive for the appointment to a civil service position. That is the candidate’s professional ability, i.e., his or her professional expertise, core competences, achievements, years of working experience and level of education. The officials see these attributes as decisive for the appointment of rank-and-file officials, lower management, and to a certain extent, middle managerial staff (Graph 3). More than fifty percent of respondents at each level of the service agree that this is so. Over eighty percent of managerial staff believe ability is decisive in the hiring of rank-and-file bureaucrats and lower managers. Approximately one third of rank-and-file officials and division heads perceive the appointment of top management to be driven by politics, while 33 percent of department directors and 56 percent of section directors believe the appointment to the position of section director is usually based on their professional ability. Investigation of the criteria that policy workers deem important for promotion within the civil service demonstrates a distinct pattern of responses from lower and middle management ranks. In both cases, the majority of officials agree that merit is the basis for promotion of
Graph 4: Promotion Criteria to Managerial Positions
Graph 4: Promotion Criteria to Managerial Positions
Note: * The differences are significant at p≤0.01 (Pearson’s chi square). Question worded “At your Ministry, which criterion is decisive for a promotion to the following work positions?” (“Don’t know” and “No response” answers removed). Source: GACR survey of division heads) or having clear political motives, as do 29 percent of rank-and-file officials and 23 percent of division heads.
Note: * The differences are significant at p≤0.01 (Pearson’s chi square). Question worded “At your Ministry, which criterion is decisive for a promotion to the following work positions?” (“Don't know” and “No response” answers removed). Source: GACR survey
their kind of manager (Graph 4). To an extent, they believe personal relationships also play a role in promotion to the positions of a division head and department director. On the other hand, all officials said that political affiliation is practically irrelevant for lower and middle management-related promotions. The officials’ viewpoints are more diverse when it comes to promotion to the top management rank, the section director.
Although 50 percent of section directors and 37 percent of department directors think that such promotions are due to merit, their viewpoint is not shared by lower-ranking bureaucrats who mainly see these promotions as a result of personal favouritism (24 percent of division heads) or having clear political motives, as do 29 percent of rank-and-file officials and 23 percent of division heads.
The issue of an official’s membership in a political party is an additional factor that must be taken into consideration. The data suggest that membership in a political party is very rare among the officials surveyed. Reaching further conclusions on the extent of party membership in relation to individual positions is not possible because there are no statistically significant differences among the employees surveyed in that regard. In any case, our inquiry shows that, in absolute terms, only 44 of the 1,351 officials surveyed were members of a political party—just 3 percent of the sample. Rare as it is, the officials’ party membership is mostly associated with the centre-right TOP09 Party and the centre-left Social Democratic Party and the Green Party.
Because direct membership in a party is so rare among officials in the Czech ministries, I focused on the attitudes of ministry bureaucrats toward the parties as an indication of their political engagement or lack thereof. In that respect, the officials surveyed showed particular affinity for the TOP09 Party (17 percent) and the Social Democrats (16 percent), followed by the Green Party (11 percent) and the centre-right Civic Democratic Party (10 percent). Affinity for all other parties, including the Communist Party, was claimed by little more than a tenth of the officials. Importantly, one-third of the officials surveyed have no affinity for any political party at all. Attribution of political party affinity by position shows only small, statistically insignificant differences, which preclude drawing any inferences about the relation between a particular work position and its holder’s affinity for a particular political party. What can be inferred from the data, however, is that on the right-centre-left spectrum, most survey respondents (28 percent) showed affinity with the right, while affinity for the left and the centre amounted only to 17 percent and 14 percent, respectively. The preference for the political right