Europeanization, Domestic Legacies and Administrative Reforms in Central and Eastern Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Hungary and the Czech Republic

In this paper, I explore how European dynamics and domestic legacies interact in generating a specific pattern of change at the domestic level. Specifically, I examine the different impacts of the European Union (EU) on the adoption of administrative reforms in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in the 1990s and the early 2000s. I claim that the EU's influence on the reforms was mediated by the reformist legacies of preceding communist regimes in those countries. While the EU affected the reforms through the mechanism of anticipation in countries with strong reformist legacies, the influence of the EU flowed through the mechanism of conditionality in countries with weak reformist legacies. I illustrate my case through a comparative analysis of Hungary and the Czech Republic.