(De)politizacija državne uprave zemalja u regionu: Nadmoć politike nad pravom

The paper attemtps to establish the extent to which legal framework of ex Yugoslav states that governs the status of civil servants can facilitate or hinder politicisation of the civil service. For this purpose the concept of «formal political discretion» developed by Meyer Sahling has been used. This concept denotes the level of discretion granted to politicians by legal framework (civil service laws) to influence the process of appointment and dismissal of senior civil servants. The paper concludes that the level of formal political discretion granted by legislation does not have substantive influence on the process of (de)politicisation. What matters much more are patterns of government alternations after parliamentary elections. If the Government alterations are characterised by wholesale pendulum changes from one side of the political spectrum to another, there is a strong risk of wide politicisation, notwithstanding the well established legal framework that also quickly becomes the subject of political attacks, as recently occurred in Serbia and Croatia. If there is, on the other hand, a relatively large degree of continuity of parties in the Government, such as for example the case in Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina, then it is likely that the level of politicisation will decrease, despite the possible flaws and inconsistencies within the legal framework. The final conclusion of the paper is that depoliticisation of the civil service is primarily a political issue where the politics, unfortuantely, still has a strong supremacy over law