Bileišis, Mantas

The object of this study is to assess administrative reforms and change from the point of view of theoretical administrative models of hierarchical (traditional) administration, New Public Management (NPM), and New Public Governance (NPG) in Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia. Normative models offer a critique of legacy administrative practices; their wholesale implementation is seldom practical or successful. Reforms framed as “modernization” in these countries over the past three decades have generally followed the principles of NPM. Although policy arguments for introducing elements of NPG can be observed in the studied cases, the paper argues that NPG’s rhetorical attractiveness for resolving perceived shortcomings of other models lacks specific implementation mechanisms that would be viable within the existing institutional framework of the studied countries. Factors, such as the relatively small size of Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia, and obvious benefits of EU integration, appear to have moderated reforms to a point that core institutional features have become stable, and are also similar among the three countries: the dominance of hierarchical administrative model with rigid separation of powers structure and strong courts that can adjudicate administrative decisions, with numerous NPM inspired “modernization” measures, including the introduction of various interactive public services. The paper’s findings support the idea that Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia are administrative systems that have stable core governance institutions, and national public administrations modernize various aspects of their operation by introducing elements of NPM and NPG within the executive, but not reviewing the basic setup of these institutions. From this point of view, the findings are in line with the assumptions of the normative model of Neo-Weberian State (NWS).

This paper discusses the results of two focus group discussions with managing officers within the European border guarding community. Frontex - EU’s executive border and coast guard agency conducts multiple activities, which involve member-state officers in various forms. In one of these Frontex format we have identified a group of officers and officials who have extensive professional experience at both national and European levels of border security policy and enforcement. In our study we find that the perception of European border security challenges closely related to how these officers see EU integration overall. For the officers it is clear that effective external border security enforcement requires further policy harmonization and there is alignment of views how that can be achieved. At the same time the officers take a mostly fatalistic stance towards the political feasibility of overcoming many of the hurdles. The key hurdles that discussions have identified are: (i) a lack of political agreement on what the endgame of integration is, (ii) opaque motivation of national and European political decision-makers towards border security policy, and (iii) resource misallocation. EU border security is one of the two flagship EU integration projects that show a global political ambition and constitute key hallmarks at the same time causing challenges that current EU institutions find hard to tackle with. Assuming that neither federalization, nor a retreat from the Schengen agreement will occur this paper discusses what border security management models are feasible within the existing institution constraints and the findings from the focus group discussions, offering a contribution to the theory European administrative space from a street-level bureaucracy perspective.

From a historical-institutional angle, this chapter focuses on Lithuania’s internal security services development. Resulting from both a decades-long period of economic growth as well as demographic decline, the Lithuanian security services are faced with an unfavorable recruitment environment, severely impeding the staffing of military units. In the light of the newly recognized threats from Russia, Lithuania needs to expand its military, which, amongst others, necessitates the expansion of the professional officer corps beyond the number of cadets graduating from the Military Academy. Despite increasing investments in defence and other measures, currently expansion requirements still cannot be met. Changes to the Interior Service Statute, which regulates the officers’ status of uniformed services within the areas of responsibility (AoRs) of the Ministries of Interior, Finance and Justice may offer some room to expand and develop the professional military officer corps. Although under Wartime Law, many of these services would be subjected to military command and considered part of the armed services, until now, defence policy developments have had little effect on the professional development of Interior Service officers. This chapter explores why the security services fail to coordinate the development of professional military competencies amongst themselves. We find three possible reasons. First, the security services fit into the broader Lithuanian governance model, which is characterized by multi-level fragmentation and appears resistant to integration policies, even in instances of great political salience. Furthermore, as the Interior Service Statute covers many agencies and services, some have their civilian functions ‘militarized’, whilst others have their military functions ‘demilitarized’. In doing so, the development of military competences across all services is hampered. Third, and seemingly paradoxically, increased defence spending seems to drive the military and other services in the armed forces apart.

Some public administration literature that focuses on public administration reform indulges in constructing grand narrative theories such as New Public Management (NPM), or New Governance (NG). The most recent such theory that has been gaining attention over the past decade is the Neo Weberian State (NWS). The content of the theory with regard to its practical implication when it comes to reform is still unsettled. However, one key assumption behind the NWS is that reforms should be handled with care, as they may undermine the very institutions that have brought Western societies to the levels of their development they are in now. NPM's drive to increase efficiency, and NG's - democracy from the point of view of NWS is impossible if reforms deconstruct institutions that ensure the protection of the public interest and rule of law. NWS's critique of post-communist reform efforts in the new eastern EU member-states is a case in point suggesting that leapfrogging the construction of a professional bureaucracy is ill-advised and does not lead to politically desired outcomes. In this paper we aim to evaluate which path of reform may lead to the best outcomes in a particular area of the public service - two non-military uniformed services of Lithuania - customs and penitentiary. These services have to a large degree avoided sweeping reforms throughout the independence period, in both cases - a soviet institutional legacy is also a factor. Both Customs and the Penitentiary service are suffering from multiple corruption scandals and very low public trust levels. These services are continuously in the crosshairs of reform, but few have been clearly articulated, even less so - implemented. Applying NPM to uniformed services, due to the nature of their functions was complicated, so as reforms in the 1990s and 2000s went along in the other sectors, policy-makers have largely left uniformed to their own devices, and this has led to retrenchment of the bureaucratic principles as would historical institutionalisms theory predict. We suggest that NPM-oriented governance avoids intervention in areas where NPM principles are hard to apply, leaving such areas without proper attention to continue down undesirable development paths. When the deconstruction of a hierarchy appears impossible, higher order governance needs to remain modelled as hierarchy as well. NWS in this case does offer a management modernization agenda, which could keep state institutions in step with social, technological, and economic developments.

Teacher competency is one of the main concern of the Lithuanian educational system. Exemplary teachers customize their work agendas, either eliminating unnecessary steps or entire processes or adding undocumented steps to their work processes. They seek out the data and documentation they need from sources that might not be known to others in their institutions. Lithuania has officially defined the competencies necessary for the teachers of general education schools. However systematic teachers’ competence models do not exist and assessment of the teachers’ competencies is not performed on the basis of such models. The purpose of this research was – evaluation of level of teachers’ generic and didactic competencies, their developmental needs and circumstances (context) of their development from the perspective of the school administration. Quantitative methodology – representative survey of the school administrators was carried out. 615 school directors and deputy directors representing the Lithuanian general education schools participated in the survey. The main findings of the research indicated that teacher competencies development mechanisms are operating autonomously and in isolation from the general educational strategy of the country and its strategic priorities. The need for development of teachers’ generic and didactic competencies is usually formulated not taking into consideration the preestablished competency frameworks but on the basis of available market supply of teacher training.

Organizational processes are often described as being “top-down” or “bottom-up”. At the level of EU integration relations between EU and member-state institutions can also be conceptualized in these terms. European integration is based on decisions made by representatives of its member-states and member-states have a large degree of discretion in the implementation of EU policies. This gives off an appearance of a “bottom-up” quality to pan-European policy. But when it comes to part and parcel of public administration many national government agencies can only perceive this process “top-down”. The complexity of policy design process and absence of co-ordination of how national agencies go about their business means that policy adoption is seldom straightforward across member-states. Once policies are set in motion, there are limited possibilities of review stemming from the “bottom”. In some sense, this is the story of the road to Brexit. The paper claims that current challenges to European integration may in part be attributed to this institutional setup. This paper revisits the concept of European Administrative Space to see if it can be framed in terms of “bottom-up” integration, whereby essentially member states would be encouraged to test their proposed national reforms from the point of view of EUfriendliness. Proliferation of such a practice would not require any major legal change or governance process standardization. With proper monitoring the practice could augment the existing international co-operation between government agencies by opening venues for cost sharing, and streamlining the “top-down” policy decisions once political will becomes available.

The scope of impact of EU integration on national governance structures is minimal. Member states need only to comply with standards of democratic governance, whereas the exact means how to achieve results remains specific to a member state. Prior to the Eurozone crisis, there was a belief that economic convergence would lead to institutional convergence among EU member-states and thus strengthen integration. However, the crisis has showed that the causal link might be the opposite – differences in how policy is implemented may lead to divergence between the member states, and those differences may act to impede integration. Uniformed services form the core of the coercive capacity of a sovereign state. On the one hand in EU these organizations need to be overseen by democratically elected civilian leaders, and act on the basis of the rule of law; on the other – the management of these services is highly contingent on national contexts. The impact of international best practices is patchy at best and local political consideration constantly risk trumping the adoption of such practices. The Lithuanian case is of particular interest in this context, as its civil, and uniformed service regulation and structure is highly complex, and does not correspond to the organizational structure, and even the constitutional division of power between branches of governments. A small state with a about 70.000 service-members has a structure of a dozen laws that regulate different aspects of different service. This internal fragmentation means that there is a diffusion of managerial practices even at the national level. We hypothesize that this lowers the capacity to perform the tasks presented to uniformed services.