Slovenian local administration reform 1993-2010
Slovenian local administration reform 1993-2010

Summary/Abstract: Citizens around the world are awakened as never before to their right to an effective government, to a government that can perform honestly and efficiently. This awakening is the greatest source of pressure for better public policies, administrative reform, and a "New Public Management." Administrative reform is now an unquestioned priority of the international community, of OECD, of the World Bank, of the European Union, and of many regional bodies. This is also the case in Slovenia. Since the Independence of Slovenia in 1991, there was a strong need for reform of public sector, connected to the new situation where some institutional structures and practices had to be replaced with more democratic and flexible ones. Former communist – Yugoslav institutional framework was destroyed and inappropriate for unified small state trying to adopt democratic tradition of Western Europe and to enter the European Union as final instance of its formal democratization. If first years after the Independence were mostly burdened with revitalizing Slovenian economic system and defining major shape of political and administrative institutions, only after the 1995 and due to accession to European Union Slovenia started to think about more effective and customer oriented public administration. Slovenian reform of public administration was mostly theoretically supported by the New Public Management approach defined by Lane (1995, 2000) and Osborne and Geabler (1993) as most influential writers on reforming public sector in the way opposite to bureaucratic organization. Slovenian researchers and academics prepared different studies on how to implement ideas on more flexible, effective, economic and user oriented administration in Slovenia. Under the pressure of public dissatisfaction with public administration performance and after quite loud academic debate on reforms and under the pressure of European Union Slovenia started with more serious public sector reform in 1997. The reforms of Slovene public sector can be divided in four basic periods of development. In this overview of Slovenian public sector reform we will try to define basic characteristics of Slovenian public administration reforms in its historical aspect, stressing basic shifts towards more effective, better organized, more user-friendly and less clientelistic and bureaucratic practices of work. With other words we will try to define best practices and warn from some missteps on the way towards better public administration in Slovenia.

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