Janus Unravelled:External State-Building Against "Party Politics As Usual". the Case of Civil Service Reforms in Fours Ministries in Albania

After the end of the Cold War, the EU has actively promoted the development of solid state institutions in the Western Balkans. Public administrations received special attention, as they were deemed vital for the evolution of truly functioning democracies. However, this effort only partially succeeded. The two main explanations in the literature, political competition and EU conditionality, cannot account for this outcome and, specifically, for the cross-country and cross-sectoral variation we observe in patterns behind hiring and firing of top civil servants. In this article I argue that politicization of ministries is a function of party organization. Newly emerged parties that have mobilized power with the state administration are more likely to employ patronage than parties composed of reformed communist elites. I test my theory on the civil service reforms Albania has conducted between 2000-2014. I focus on hiring and firing practices of top civil servants in four ministries by using an original dataset based on expert survey. This article shows that newly emerged parties are more likely to politicize public administration and, in particular, in those areas characterized by strong redistributive and regulative effects, such as Ministry of Economy and Health. More technical ministries, like Finance, are less likely to observe these patterns, no matter which party is in government. Against, theoretical expectations EU conditionality does not have stabilizing effects in careers of civil servants in the Ministry of European Integration, despite high levels of funding programmes in the training of top civil service.