The measures adopted to increase the accountability of Belgium's senior civil servants: strategic analysis of the political-administrative system at federal level

Abstract

Over the past decade, Belgium, like many OECD countries, has set out to modernize the management of its public affairs. In April 2000, the Belgian federal government adopted a far-reaching reform of the structures and functioning of the State: the Copernic Plan. One of the ambitions of the changes introduced by the reform is the accountability of senior civil servants. In line with this reform, various measures were developed, the results of which appear to be mixed. This article aims to analyse the outcome of these mechanisms through the behaviour of the stakeholders and their impacts on the regulation and practice of the mechanisms. To do this, the author uses the strategic analysis developed by Crozier and Friedberg (1977). In doing so, the interaction of the stakeholders in response to the measures introduced to increase accountability is highlighted in order to understand certain stand-offs still blocking the processes of modernization.

Points for practitioners

This contribution sets out to analyse the outcome of the measures introduced to increase the accountability of senior civil servants by the Belgian federal reform passed in 2000, the Copernic Plan. To do so, the author uses the strategic analysis developed by Crozier and Friedberg (1977) and therefore considers the political-administrative space in which the accountability measures are rolled out as a concrete action system. Within it, the resistance of the stakeholders involved in the development of the mechanisms and their implementation are studied, shedding light on the destruction of certain measures in the regulation and their hijacking in practice.