Public Service Development in EstoniaEstonia: From PatronagePatronage to Meritocracy

This chapter aims at exploring the development of the Estonian public servicePublic service system from 1991 to 2019, through the different periods of post-communist reforms. EstoniaEstonia represents one of the fastest political and economic transformations among the post-communist countries. Replacing the communist public servicePublic service by merit principles relied not only on the adaptation of a democratic legal framework but also on a fundamental change in the valuesValues, attitudes, and beliefs of politicians, public servicePublic service executives, individual public servants, and citizens. The Estonian government has developed an open position-based public servicePublic service system where the responsibility for all the main components of the public servicePublic service such as recruitmentRecruitment and selectionSelection, performance appraisalPerformance appraisal, trainingTraining and development, and pay are in the hands of single organisations, and where the politicisationPoliticisation level is one of the lowest among the post-communist countries. However, the public servicePublic service reform of 2012 which can be described as a pragmatic managerial-oriented reform, may adversely affect meritocratic principles in the public servicePublic service. Full decentralisation of the public servicePublic service gives enormous power to managers of individual public sector organisations, whose high managerial discretion in people management processes may lead to misuse of power and revival of elements of patronagePatronage. This makes the entire institution of public servicePublic service vulnerable and provides the biggest challenge for years to come.