Studies of democratic transitions have not traditionally paid attention to administrative reform, even though the importance of the state in democratization has been recognized in the second generation of democratization studies on Eastern Europe. This paper argues that administrative reform is an important and underestimated aspect of democratic transformation which should be studied in order to understand some key problems of democratic consolidation in East Central Europe. Even though administrative reform is a very broad term, it is possible to define key features of the reform package that has been ‘on the menu’ offered by the EU and OECD for post communist states. Some of the key elements of reform that affect the way democratic politics is exercised are depoliticization and professionalization of the administration and transparency and accountability. The paper will review administrative reform developments in CEE in the light of democratization and show that, there are several important characteristics of democracies in CEE which make administrative reform an important factor. First, the new democracies are suffering from the dominance of post communist networks which capture key state structures and which continue to exist partly to the politicization of state administrations. Secondly, the high polarization in democratic politics, as most recently evidenced by developments in Hungary, is also directly linked to the unresolved issue of civil service neutrality. Last, but not least, we are facing an increasing realization among both experts and the public that corruption in key state structures undermine democratization and democratic quality.
