Building Institutions for Public Sector Professionalism in Central and Eastern Europe

BUILDING INSTITUTIONS FOR PUBLIC SECTOR PROFESSIONALISM

IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE [(]

Alexander Kovryga[1] and Sherman Wyman[2]

“ Man Owes What He is to Union with His Fellow Man ” O.V. Gierke

This paper is premised on the assumption that the scope and quality of public sector professionalism critical to healthy political-administrative relations in any developing or developed democratic state. Initially we will explore the nature of professionalism and profession and then turn to a selective review of the development of public sector professionalism in both developed and developing countries throughout the world. From this review we will attempt to identify key institutions, functions and roles appropriate to professionalization in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).

Approach

The Formative Context I: The Overall Picture

Institution and Institutionalism

Why Change Through Professionalization?

· A Brief Sketch of the State of the Study of Professions

· Profession and Professionalization in the Context of Social and Economic Re-engineering

· Profession as an Agency of Moral Regulation

· Ethical Regulations and Trust

· Trust-building and Credentialing

· Professionalization as a Policy Issue: Western Models vs. Eastern Reality

The Formative Context II: What Is Inherited and What Is Embedded

· The Marginal Status of Profession and Professionalism

The Theory: Ontological Assumptions on Profession and Professionalization

The Dangers of Professionalization:

· Professionalism, Administrative Bureaucracy and Building of Institutions of Modern Governments

Putting It All Together

Conclusion: The Tasks Ahead

Further Steps

References

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Approach

This paper is guided by the principle of methodological determinism. This principle means if we are about to be practical and realistic in social and economic reformation in transitional countries, we must possess a methods and instruments that complement and compatible with the object of our activity.. The ability of change agents to intervene in the transitional processes is directly connected with whether or not they are armed by appropriate means. Thus, the deliberate building of open democratic societies and market-driven economies (DSMDE) is possible if we are armed both conceptually and instrumentally with an appropriate vision of what must to be done, and equipped with effective methods and processes.

Among the variety of different topics and lines of enquiry established during the course of the CEE transition are two quite complicated and less developed issues: 1) the processes of public sector professionalization and 2) building institutional infrastructure for public sector professionalism (IIPSP). We assume that the CEE transition is, a reality of institutional transformation and institutional building.[3] In this context we have to concentrate on conceptions which reflect the entire construction of the process of societal reproduction and are therefore capable of capturing the elusive reality of transition in form adequate for operationalization and practical interventions. Our study built on the hypothesis that the profession is such a conception and a proper set of polymorphous institutions. We also assume that the complexity of IIPSP demands extensive multi-disciplinary research, complex public policy changes and well-grounded re-formations.[4]

Naturally we need to check and verify its very basic questions such as the following: What are the contemporary institutions, which are adequate to the history, culture and modern situation? Which institutions can serve as real vehicles in the transmission of our cultural heritage, cope with nowadays technological and managerial revolutions, and fit into extremely demanding frameworks of up-to-date political and moral requirements?

The Formative Context I: The Overall Picture

The context for the institutionalization of professional public administration in transitional countries is the globalization of institutional markets and processes for accelerated change in public management. We have to deal with the transnational macroprocess of re-institutionalization and search for new forms of relations between state, regional and local institutions, socio-cultural, economic, and political traditions.[5]

A major reshaping of systems of governance and public administration (GPA)[6] in developed as well as in transitional countries, has accelerated during the mid-eighties and nineties. These phenomenons are captured by a number of social scientists and theoreticians.[7] They require a revolutionary change in public administration involving a paradigm shift form the historically dominant Weberian model of bureaucracy to the new public management (NPM). NPM is set of management ideas, which has been heavily influenced by values and governance techniques derived from economics.[8] NPM has played a major role in the administrative reforms of many OECD countries.[9] These attempts to reshape and improve public administration and governance produced in the U.S. and Europe what has been called a ‘movement to reinvent government in public administration’ and a 'new public management revolution'.[10] The primary efforts here focused on: reducing the size of government through programs of privatization, restructuring of government departments, productivity programs, and retrenchment and retraining of public servants. These programs, often driven by the World Bank/IMF structural adjustment loans, are reflected in the CEE countries in EC PHARE and TACIS programs, TRANSFORM, etc. Thus, the dramatic political and economic changes in the CEE transitional countries have been joined with externally driven mandates for institutional reorganization and new institutional capacities. The deficiency of competence, low effectiveness and functional inadequacy of existent systems in CEE countries, major parts of which were inherited from the soviet times, are a leading cause for the movement for professionalization. The speed and success in transition to DSMDE considered as largely depended on the professionalization of GPA.[11] We therefore argue that public sector professionalism is a if not the key instrument in reform and cultural policy of the CEE.

Institution and Institutionalism

Walton Hamilton coined the term institutionalism in 1916. He provides one of the most deep wording of idea of an institution which “connotes a way of thought or action of some prevalence and permanence, which is embedded in the habits of a group or the custom of a people… Institutions fix the confines of and impose form upon the activities of human beings. The world of use and wont, to which imperfectly we accommodate our lives, is tangled and unbroken web of institutions.”[12]

Our culture is a synthesis or an aggregation of institutions, at the same time the approach and way of knowledge itself should be considered as an institution. Moreover, among the different ways of knowing is the institutionalism. “Institutes as the ordained principles of a realm of learning or of life have long existed; they are known to theology, law, education and all subjects ruled over by dialectic… The institutional method had to wait until the idea of development was incorporated into academic thought and the mind of the inquirer became resigned to the inconsistency which attends growth.”[13]

The main points of the institutional approach can already be found, for example, in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He criticizes Hobbes, Locke and others for their assumption on the nature of the behavior of possessive individuals in a particular historical and social context. He argues that so-called “men's natural preferences and traits of all human beings” are products of particular social and institutional environments. “Rousseau viewed preferences, such as the desire to accumulate property, not as universal postulates upon which one could found a scientific theory of politics, but as products of society-- its norms and its institutions.”[14]

The institutionalism as an approach to study in social sciences rooted into works of Wilhelm Roscher, Gustav Schmoller and others of German historical school or Historismus.[15] The Methodenstreit – as a methodological discussion on meaning of history and epistemological approaches in social sciences between Austrian and German schools gave the birth and the core “spirit” of this approach.[16]

Although some aspects of institutional approach could be found in works of such early figures as Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidwick, the beginning of “proper” institutionalism in economics attributed to the first works of Thorstein Veblen.[17]

In recent studies Sven-Erik Sj?strand considers institution “as a kind of infrastructure that facilitates – or hinders – human co-ordination and allocation of resources. Institutions thus function as a kind of rationality context, which simultaneously emerges from and governs human interactions. Consequently institutions are public goods, relevant to and shared by many, and they are in principle characterized by non-excludability. Institutions simplify action choices; they are not separate from, but part of, the individual (inter)actions. Thus, institutions not only define and delimit the set of actions available to individuals; they are simultaneously shaped by individuals and make individual interaction possible. Institutions … continuously (re)produced by individuals in their daily activities and (inter)actions on the micro level.”[18]

Different types of institutions have been described by scholars as embedded and stored in a time and space by a diverse number of means. They could be embedded in concrete empirically given organizations, establishments and forms of human activity and in the sign’s forms and ideas and concepts.

Sj?strand pointed further that “Institutions are related to human expectations… Normative expectations, or norms, stabilize human (inter)action and make individual behaviour more predictable… Norms can be found in formal and articulated forms, as well as in forms that are more informal or tacit. Many concepts have been used by scientists to cover the whole range of possible ‘groupings’ of norms. Designations such as laws, regulations, rules, routines, conventions, traditions, customs, myths, and habits have been used. These (groupings) of norms often simultaneously express instrumental (i.e., define efficiency) and values (i.e., provide meaning).”[19] Eventually Sj?strand defined institution as a “social construct for a coherent system of shared and enforced norms.”[20] Examples of institutions could include the family, the church, the corporation, the property rights, the university tenure, etc. However, there are many problems arise in interpreting the idea of institution. The institution is not something out there. “Rather, it is a way of subdividing the social and cultural organization of society into components meaningful to the participants in that society, and hence to observers and to analysts of the society. In a broad way institutions implies an observable arrangements of people’s affairs that contrasts with characterizations of people’ activities deriving from assumptions, intuitions, or introspections. The term also implies specificities of time and place and contrasts with universals (or general characterizations).”[21]

Economic sociologist Andrew Schotter beliefs that the creation and existence of “social institutions” directed by and connected with arisen of economic problems.[22] Richard Scott, one of the leading contributors to institutional theory and student of institutions and organizations from the sociological perspective, states that “Institutions consist cognitive, normative, and regulative structures and activities that provide stability and meaning to social behavior. Institutions are transported by various carriers – cultures, and routines – and they operate at multiple levels of jurisdiction.”[23]

Among the crucial and, at the same time, most difficult questions are the dynamics of institutional evolution and development – the emergence, reproduction and dissociation of institutions. All these questions addressed by the attempts to develop the theory of institutional change. [24] In the conclusion he just briefly mentioned the role of institutions as facilitators of “the application of reliable knowledge to the performance of the continuing activities which a community has come to regard ad significant… The application of knowledge is often primary reason for the existence of an institution and for any changes that occur in it.”[25]

We consider the environment of creation (production) and transfer of knowledge as a basic and framework reality which made possible the origins, emergence and existence of any kind of socio-cultural institutions. The deliberate intervention into complex processes of institutional evolution by the means of “institutional design,” “institutional building” and attempts of cross-national and cross-cultural “institutional transfer” became the most sophisticated fields of human activity during the XX century. As Walter Neale asserts, “An institution does not stand alone. It fits into the system of institutions, so that changing the rules of one institution means that the rules of other institutions must adapt and so change.”[26] Each institution exists in a web of different and interweaving relations with other institutions. Such a feature and “past-binding” nature of institutions lead to many difficulties in any kind of institutional changes, institutional design and institutional building. This is a vast area to study, and the transition of CEE countries provides both tremendous opportunity to build up what is desired and unprecedented challenges as well.[27] It is our strong belief that the success of transitional transformation and future development democratic and prosperity of CEE countries depends upon improvement of knowledge on the nature of institutions and techniques for their deliberate construction/modification.

Why Change Through Professionalization?

Although, even though Plato in The Statesman many centuries ago presented the idea of ‘government professionals’ weaving the future with the help of knowledge, a comprehensive vision of what this means, what and how we can/should professionalize the public sector has yet to be developed.[28]

As a general framework, we probably can consider this “trend” toward professionalization as one of the crucial axis of cultural-historical development of human social activity. The professions and processes of professionalization of activity serve as a kind of bridging mechanism and a method for developing, matching and coordinating core processes of the human universe: the production-and-reproduction of activity, and transfer of culture and experience; the processes of functioning and changes and development; and the processes of organization and governance. Not everything would and should be professionalized, but certain features of human thinking have since the earliest civilizations been anticipated as “professional” and processes and passed on to those who follow.

A Brief Sketch of the State of the Study of Professions

During the last quarter of 20th century the profession become a subject of rather scrupulous analysis practically in all social sciences. The rapid and ultimate advancing of knowledge-based economy and society brought deep and practical interest in “structural and cultural understanding of the institutionalization of expertise.” [29]