When nation building is at odds with economic reform and EU membership

While small state logic and the imperative of a return to Europe by and large explain why the stringent EU requirements were adopted by the candidate countries prior to membership it, is not suffi cient to explain why they did so to varying degree and at different speeds. Through a comparative analysis of four countries, it is argued that different choices in nation-building affected the countries’ capacity to handle large-scale reforms resulting, in a ‘go-go’ process in the Czech Republic and Estonia and a ‘stop-go’ process in Slovakia and Latvia. Consequently, at present, as membership of the European Union is well underway, Slovakia and Latvia have already had their nation building discussions. The pending question is what the political consequences will be in the Czech Republic and Estonia if and when nation building finds its way back to the political arena

Europeanisation and Implementation in Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland

U članku se razmatra pitanje implementacijskog kapaciteta javnih uprava u četiri zemlje Srednje Europe: Sloveniji, Češkoj Republici, Mađarskoj i Poljskoj. Autor polazi od pretpostavke da poteškoće s implementacijom variraju u različitim sektorima, odnosno da proces tranzicije i europeizacije s jedne strane ima homogenizacijski učinak među različitim zemljama, dok s druge strane dovodi do visokog stupnja varijance među različitim sektorima, pri čemu odražava zadatke koji se dodjeljuju svakom tipu javne uprave. Ta se pretpostavka nastoji empirijski testirati, tako da se poteškoće s implementacijom tretiraju kao ovisna varijabla, uz razlikovanje dijela javne uprave koji ima proizvodne funkcije od onog dijela koji ima regulacijske zadatke. Jednak broj i tipovi poteškoća s implementacijom ukazuju na to da su one povezane s procesom tranzicije i europeizacije, a ne s nacionalnim ili sektorskim kontekstom. Rasprava se nastoji dopuniti analizom općih obrazaca doživljenih poteškoća s implementacijom.The paper is dealing with the implementation capacity of public administration in four Central European countries: Slovenia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. The author’s point of departure is that implementation diffi culties vary between sectors, i.e., that the process of transition and Europeanization on the one hand has a homogenizing eff ect between the countries, while on the other it generates a high level of variance across sectors, refl ecting the tasks assigned to each type of administration. An empirical test of this hypothesis is attempted: implementation diffi culties are treated as the dependent variable and distinction is made between the administrations that have production functions and the ones that have regulatory tasks. The discussion is supplemented with an analysis of the general patterns of experienced implementation diffi culties