ABSTRACT
This chapter describes over three decades of development of the civil service system in post-socialist Poland. The analysis is structured around five major tensions present in this system: (1) between attempts aimed at the unification of the legal framework, on the one hand, and constant fragmentation tendencies, on the other; (2) between politicisation and largely failed attempts to introduce merit-based employment culture; (3) between decentralised management and initiatives aiming at establishing some central steering functions in the system; (4) between preservation of the traditional stability of public service employment and progressive tendencies towards flexible management of the public workforce; and (5) between the classical public law regime of employment and the trend towards relying more on private law regulation. The conclusion is that the history of civil service reforms over the past decades demonstrates a rather unsuccessful attempt to integrate into the Polish system the broadly defined “Western standards” of professionalism, merit-based recruitment, and insulation of the civil service from undue political influence.
