Bureaucracies in Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans

The establishment of modern, professional bureaucracies has been a major objective of post-communist transformation. Indeed, administrative transformation and reform have been instrumental for the success of the political and economic transformation and the integration of Central and Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans into the European political, economic, and security structures. ¹ Linz and Stepan (1996), for instance, list a ‘usable state bureaucracy’ as one of six arenas of consolidated democracy. The quality of a country’s bureaucracy is also widely recognised to affect the prospects of economic development (Evans and Rauch 1999), the management of EU accession (Hille and Knill 2006, Zubek 2008) and the implementation of EU policies (Falkner and Treib 2008).