DECENTRALISATION AND QUALITY OF GOVERNANCE: SELECTED ISSUES FROM THE CZECH AND SLOVAK REPUBLIC

Abstract

Public administration reforms in the Czech Republic and in Slovakia started almost immediately after the Velvet Revolution in 1989. More than two decades of concrete experience with decentralisation in the specific environment of two selected transitional countries, now provides enough material for an attempt to assess the main pros, cons and risks of decentralisation as a public administration reform tool in these conditions. The goal of the paper is to discuss some important issues connected with processes of creation of modern governance in transitional countries, focusing mainly on decentralisation, its general problems and its specific limits in the environment of accession countries in Central Europe. Both Slovakia and the Czech Republic use decentralisation as the dominant tool to change their current public administrations. decentralisation might well be a good thing to achieve better governance in accession countries in Central Europe, but only under certain circumstances. Decentralisation alone does not bring positive results, automatically and immediately.