ABSTRACT
A major purpose of the post-communist reform programme was to institute a more law-abiding civic culture furthering public transparency, the values of a civic society and a functioning market. One formidable challenge was to pass laws and establish institutions regulating relations between the state, society and the new business community but even more important is the internalisation of these civic values into the elite’s thinking and behaviour. This legal approach to how to organise decision-making is often associated with political modernisation and modern bureaucracy and is contrasted with more traditional forms based on informal mechanisms like ‘clientelism’ and unwritten codes. Here it is not the ‘impersonal’ law but individual connections and the self-interest of holders of public office that prevail.
