NPM in a Statist Welfare Regime during Crises: A Slovak Case.

• In Event: Country studies on the impact of New Public Management on nonprofit service providers

Abstract

The NPM in the third sector studies is considered an expression of the state's complementary relationship to a civil society where nonprofits are seen as partners to government in delivering public goods funded by public funds. Existing research on the third sector within the NPM framework predominantly focuses on Western countries, while there is some gap in understanding how the NPM plays out in contexts of regimes of delayed democratization and statist welfare regimes. The state and civil society relationship in Slovakia develops from the pattern of delayed democratization with persistent elements of statism in the welfare partnership regime. Despite the pressures from the EU towards a partnership approach in public sector management, the socio-economic standing of civil society organizations in Slovakia shows stagnation. The lingering statist tendencies in public governance are in an asynchronous relationship with the self-organizing capacity of civil society that, despite limited resourcing, shows elements of new governance. This disconnect became visible during the two crises – the COVID-19 pandemic and the War in neighboring Ukraine that provide the empirical background for the research paper. The case study looks at the activity of civil society and identifies its agency in terms of its response to both crises. The paper explores patterns of civil society self-organization and interactions with the state and policy formulation. It suggests network institutionalism as a possible way to explain the nature of civil society agency in Slovakia during both crises. It argues that in the context of delayed democratization, the New Public Management paradigm acquires hybrid forms influenced by the persisting statism, which is visible in the centralized and top-down approaches in governance that are hesitant to move towards a more complementary relationship with the non-state actors. At the same time, as a result of normative exogenous pressures (EU), opportunities for cooperation open up and are explored.

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Author

• Boris Strecansky, Comenius University in Bratislava