Working Group 1 – Politico-Administrative Relations
Politico-Administrative Relations in the Policy Making Process
The Case of the 1995 Government of the Republic Act
Moonika Olju
Jako Salla (presenter of the paper)
Department of Government
TallinnUniversity
Estonia
Paper to be presented at the 15th Annual NISPAcee Conference
Leadership and Management in the Public Sector: Values, Standards and Competencies in Central and Eastern Europe
Kyiv, Ukraine
17th-19th May 2007
Abstract
The aim of the research is to discover the possible configurations of politico-administrative relations in the policy making process. In order to do so the preparation of the 1995 Government of the Republic Act is analyzed as an example during the period of 1992-1995. The main motive of the research is to discover configurations of politico-administrative relations that emerged during the preparation of this important legislative act. In the context of administering the summit this research proposed here focuses more deeply on processes.
Because the aim is to generalize analytically, the inductive research is method used. The theoretical part is constructed on theory developed by Guy Peters. The research strategy is divided into two parts: the first part is dedicated to finding and describing regularities in the policy making process and in the second part the authors evaluate the applicabilityof the theoretical model of B.G. Peters. For the purposes of research a qualitative secondary analyses was conducted; the data base is built on archive materials.
The empirical data was collected in the scope of the Estonian Science Foundation project, “The management and analysis of the institutional arrangement of Estonian public administration reforms.” In order to fully comprehend what took place during that period, one unstandardized interview was conducted with one of the key-persons form the process.
The period of interest is divided into 4 parts, 3 different governments were on power during the period. Authors found five important types of actors who, depending on the period, more or less influenced the policy making process and the outcomes: politicians, secretary-general, experts, senior civil servants, other actors. Main institutions that took part from the process were: government office, parliament commission, Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Interior.
The analysis revealed that besides politicians and civil servants, experts and other actors participate in the policy making process in a considerable manner. Also four different policy making configurations were discovered and the analysis enables to conclude, that out of five ideal models of B.G.Peters only the administrative state model explained adequately the policy making process – and this was only applicable to one of the four stages.
1. Introduction
In this paper we examine the configurations of relations of politicians and civil servants in the policy making process. The empirical base of the study is the preparation of an important legislative act – Government of the Republic Act. The period in focus is from 1992 to 1995. Empirical data is gathered through an interview with important actor in the process (to compensate the loss of some important documents), transcripts and protocols (qualitative secondary analysis).
Although it is an inductive study, we still pay some attention to theory and try to test the applicability of one of the most known theories in the field. Namely, we will try to find out whether B. Guy Peters’ ideal model of politico-administrative relations is suitable to describe the process. The purpose of the study is to examine the processof policy-making; we look for regularities, similarities, differences during this turbulent period in Estonian history when the relations of politicians and bureaucrats were still in their early developmental stage. This fact also sets limits to the applicability of the theory that might not be constructed to work in all possible situations.
The paper consists of three parts: first, the theoretical part where we take glimpse to history of politico-administrative relations; second, empirical part, where we analyze the data gathered; and finally, inferences where we also evaluate the applicability of the models of Guy Peters.
2. Theory
A well-known model of the political system, Easton’s black box, presents a vision how the environment shapes the political system. Easton himself has acknowledged that the model is devaluating some important elements, in the model little attention is paid to the structure and processes that transform the input to output (Easton, 1965, 111-112).
30 years after Easton created the model, Parsons claimed (1995, 462) that the communication and interplayof politicians, bureaucrats and public service providers has been a neglected area of research – a missing link in the policy process. Since Woodrow Wilson the claim that politicians and civil servants should be held apart in order to protect the latter from political influence has been strong. The other classic, Weber, was not so categorical finding that it would be extremely hard if not possible to separate political decision-making from administration (Aberbach et al, 1981, 5).
Yehezkel Dror also opposes himself to the separation of politics and administration (1968: 95): “The political executive and the bureaucracy of government form a symbiosis, in which the details depend on a concrete state and a period.”He also finds that bureaucracy is becoming more powerful in policy issues that are more complex and governments tend to depend of organizational decision-making process.
The well-known typologies of politico-administrative relations have been formed by Aberbach (et al) and Guy Peters. Aberbach’s four images (1981) describe the evolution of the roles of politicians and civil servants in the 20th century. Guy Peters’ created his ideal model (1988) by generalizing the findings of other scholars.
We skip the model of Aberbach et at because it focuses more of actors but we are more interested in processes and communication. Therefore we pay attention to Guy Peters who classified politico-administrative relations into five models of communications. Since the model is relatively well-known we describe it only shortly. The first model is described as formal-legal, it is a vision where politics and administration are strictly separated through the roles parties have. In the village life model politicians and bureaucrats have similar values and goals, most important being preserving of government, smooth process of governance. Third, functional model is similar to village life model, but the integration of the parties is developed through functional lines, the actorsin a policy area, independent of their status, form a functional group that has little or no connections outside. In the fourth, conflict model administrators and politicians fight for domination in policy process. The last model Peters introduces is a model of an administrative state where the bureaucracy has gathered the power and it has happened at least partly with the acceptance of politicians.
3. Background
On 21.10.1992, after many heated arguments, the Government of the Republic Act was adopted by the Parliament. The Act was very general by nature containing many mistakes and grey areas in it. The next day after the adoption and on the same day with the inauguration of prime minister Mart Laar’s government the parliament approved the decision to start a new draft act, according to which the new Government of the Republic Act was to be prepared (Estonian Government session transcript nr 76. 19.10.1993). The new draft act had two aims: firstly, to specify all the details of government and secondly, that was stated in the coalition agreement of the new government, that the central government reform cannot be prolonged and must be completed as soon as possible which meant decreasing the number of ministries and incorporating national agencies into ministries (Estonian National Independence Party, “Pro Patria” and “Moderates” coalition agreement 19.10.1992).
3.1 Stage 1- making the concept of the draft act 1992-1993
Although the Government of the Republic Act was to encompass an important aim of the government, it is interesting to note that the government lost virtually all interest in the act in the first stages of preparation. The assignment of finding someone to make the act was given to the Ministry of Justice that then sent the proposal to prepare the draft act to the Department of Law in TartuUniversity not as a proposal, but as a call for proposals. 5 lawyers accepted the challenge and formed a workgroup (Interview transcript nr 1). The only task of the ministers was to supplement the group with technical information and the government issued an ordinance, which stated that all ministries are obligated to give information to the group (Estonian Government session transcript nr 6. 21.01.1993). There was no political input to the making of the draft act, as the politicians or Ministry of Justice showed no interest to the draft act. Therefore the act was made based on the 1938 Government of the Republic Act, on the laws of Germany and Austria and scholars own views.
The lack of interest by politicians was compensated by secretary generals of ministries, who participated in the policy making process as the concept of the draft act was discussed at their training day where the experts in charge of the draft act also participated and where “some compromises transformed into the language of “law”. The politicians did not interact with the experts and the Ministry of Justice only communicated with the work group via letters (Estonian Government session transcript nr 33. 29.04.1993).
So even though politicians showed no interest in this matter and decisions were made with secretary generals, the experts led the process, but remained neutral and left the final conceptual decisions for the politicians to make and sent the prepared document to the ministry of Justice (Ibid).
Therefore the process of the making of the concept of the draft act could be seen as follows:
Figure 1. Making the concept of the draft act. Source: authors.
From the figure it can be seen that the central actors were the experts, who prepared the act and were also the ones, who had the final say. This stage can be characterized with the fact that politicians did not participate in the decision-making, politicians did not interact with secretary general and no-one dominated in the policy making; the work of experts remained neutral, leaving the political decisions undecided.
3.2 Stage II – preparing the draft act 1993-1994
The work group presented the paper to the Ministry of Justice, which in turn sent it to government. The government asked all ministries to send their opinions about the draft act to the ministry (Estonian Government session transcript nr 76. 19.10.1993). After receiving the proposals, the Ministry hired the same experts to turn the concept into a draft act. For some reason no feedback was given to the experts not even the proposals for change and so the experts merely took the concept and formed it into a legislative act (Interview transcript nr 1).
In this stage the politicians still became a bit more interested in the draft act, but not as much as the secretary generals, which derives from the fact, that while the experts had only one non-formal meeting with politicians, where they mostly had to explain the judicial aspects of the draft act and some political decisions were made, the secretary generals had frequent meetings with the experts and “ministers were tolerant about the decisions made with chancellors, there weren’t many disagreements” (Interview transcript nr 1).
After official co-ordinations and receiving and taking the expert opinion into consideration, the draft act was sent to the government session (Estonian Government session transcript nr 76. 19.10.1993). However it was not discussed there, for the discussion was postponed in order to ask the authors (experts) of the draft act to participate in the session. The aim of the joint session was to discuss the suggestions, which were not implemented in the act due to their political nature (Estonian Government session transcript nr 77. 21.10.1993).
After that session, only one more session took place and the act was approved and sent to the parliament (Estonian Government session transcript nr 80. 02.11.1993). But after discussing the act for a year, the State Justice Committee announced that the draft act is not acceptable and that the act should be divided into two separate acts: one of which would cover the institutional side and the other the side of governance. The government did not agree with the committee and started to improve the existing one (Explanatory letter to the Estonian Government of the Republic Act 13.12.1995). However in October, after the vote of non-confidence to prime minister Laar, the Minister of Justice applied in a government session to draw the draft act back from the parliament (Estonian Parliament Constitutional Committee session transcript nr 9. 11.10.1994).
Therefore the process of the making of the concept of the draft act could be seen as follows:
Figure 2. Making the draft act. Source: authors.
From the figure it can be seen, that the spectrum of actors influencing the contents of the draft act widened: experts, secretary generals, outside experts, government politicians and parliament politicians participated in the process. This stage can be characterized by the fact, that government politicians did participate in the decision making process, but they only approved/dismissed the decisions made by secretary generals with experts and that politicians and secretary generals did not interact with each other.
3.3 Stage III – improving the draft act 1994-1995
After the Prime Minister Laar’s government fell apart, the so called Christmas government of Andres Tarand took the office with a goal to keep the work going until the next elections (Mõttus 2004, Vahtre 2005). One of the things that was carried on, was the draft act of the Government of the Republic act, which needed to be corrected and amended. The task was given not to the Ministry of Justice, but to a former leader of the workgroup (Government of the Republic Act, volume 1, 23.12.1994-05.06.1995). Even though the rest of the workgroup was left out of the process, they were still consulted in conceptual questions (Interview protocol 1).
Nevertheless, the Ministry of Justice was actively involved in the process of the making of the act; it was they who send the act to get amendments from ministries. The draft act is also discussed during the meeting of the secretary generals, where they marked that after all proposals on the draft act have been recieved there should be another meeting to discuss the draft act (Government of the Republic Act, volume 1, 23.12.1994-05.06.1995). It is noteworthy that out of 10 ministries 4 amendments were signed solely by the secretary general, not the minister (Ibid). But amendments also came from the union of Estonian Local Governments and three city governments. The draft act was also discussed at a meeting of the heads of counties. The amendments were not implemented by the working group, but by the Ministry of Justice with the assistance of other civil servants from different governmental institutions (Ibid).
Therefore the process of the making of the concept of the draft act could be seen as follows:
Figure 3. Improving the draft act. Source: authors.
From the figure we can see, that the conceptual input into the draft act came from the secretary generals and former members of the expert group. The amendments were implemented by civil servants of the ministry and the expert. The making of the draft act was co-ordinated between the ministries (in some cases with secretary generals and others with ministers), experts from the original work group and others. Characteristic to this phase is the fact that the decision-making seems to be depoliticised and most of the decisions are made by civil servants of different rank.
3.4 Stage IV- finishing the draft act
The new government that took the power after regular elections in 1995 stated one of its goals to be passing the laws that regulate government activity (Coalition agreement of the Koonderakond, Maarahva Ühendus and Keskerakond 31.03.1995). Therefore the draft act was retrieved from civil servants and discussed in government sessions (Estonian Government session transcript nr 32, 20.04.1995). The act was sent to ministries, State Chancellery, State Audit Office and Ministry of Internal Affairs (Government of the Republic Act, volume 1, 23.12.1994-05.06.1995).
From this point on, the act became very government centred and the prime minister kept an eye on all of the changes that were made in the act. Still, the final amendments in the act were made by the same people who were in charge of amending it during the last government with the addition of the Minister of Justice, who controlled the process of amending by participating in all of the relevant meetings (Ibid). In December 1995 the act was finally adopted, but the original aims of a general governmental reform did not succeed.
Therefore the process of the making of the concept of the draft act could be seen as follows: