The reform of the Belgian federal administration 10 years on: what balance has been achieved between operational autonomy of top managers and the supervision carried out by the horizontal ministerial departments?

Abstract

In the wake of the Copernic reform, Belgium’s senior federal civil servants are now appointed for a fixed term and guided on performance via management plans. This article sets out to assess the impact of the introduction of the fixed-term system on the autonomy of senior civil servants with regard to the horizontal departments responsible for the budget, on the one hand, and human resources, on the other hand, within Belgium’s federal administration. Based on the so-called ‘inconsistencies’ approach, the article focuses briefly on three inconsistencies: internal, discursive and contextual. An analysis of these inconsistencies confirms one of the forms of ‘cheating’ in the relationship between ministers and senior civil servants formulated by Hood and Lodge (2006), namely that the first can be inclined to reduce the margin of discretion of the latter by maintaining formal or informal mechanisms to exercise control over the provision of resources.

Points for practitioners

Greater managerial autonomy for senior civil servants, as advocated by NPM, cannot succeed without a transformation of the traditional modes of operation of the political-administrative relationship accompanying structural reforms. The low degree of autonomy of senior civil servants does not stem so much from the introduction of a ‘contractual’ relationship, but from the lack of support shown by the latter in the implementation of such reforms. In the case studied, senior civil servants can only be made more accountable and given greater autonomy if the ‘pyramid’ of control is reformed and internal audit activities developed.

Keywords

administrative organization and structures human resources management modernization public administration public sector reform

1. Introduction

New Public Management has underpinned the administrative reforms of recent years (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011; de Visscher and Varone, 2004). Inspired by the private sector, NPM seeks to change the running of public services by introducing a more performance-driven approach. More specifically, the purpose is ‘to transform public management to make it more results-driven, in financial and political terms, rather than hinged around the consumption of resources, an input-driven strategy’ (Giauque et al., 2010: 243–244).

The introduction of a contractual relationship between the political authority and senior civil servants features among the key measures of the NPM. The Copernic reform of Belgium’s federal government (2000–03) effectively illustrates this ‘managerial’ orientation. In the wake of this reform, the most senior federal civil servants are now appointed for a fixed term of six years and guided on performance via management plans that consist of explicit objectives and performance indicators (de Visscher et al., 2012). The aim of the reform is to make senior civil servants accountable for the management of their department (Putseys and Hondeghem, 2002).

This article – based on the results of the MANDATE¹ research project – aims to assess the impact of the introduction of a fixed-term system on the autonomy of the senior civil servants with regard to the horizontal departments responsible for the budget, on the one hand, and human resources, on the other hand, within Belgium’s federal administration. To this end, we opted for an interpretive design, which, by promoting a ‘bottom-up’ analysis, aims to question the construction of the practices and beliefs of the stakeholders (Poulsen, 2009). The adoption of such an approach therefore makes it possible to highlight and explain any adjustments made to the said reforms. At the same time, we must be aware that the perceptions of the stakeholders are closely linked to their initial expectations, which could also explain the disappointment they may express at the thought of these reforms.

We begin by explaining the context of the research, the theoretical framework and the methodology used (Section 2), before briefly describing the measures adopted at the time of the Copernic reform with regard to the management of human and financial resources (Section 3). We then go on to present the empirical results of our survey on the perception senior civil servants have of their management autonomy (Section 4). In the fifth section, we discuss three possible explanations of the results produced by the Copernic reform in the light of the typology of the inconsistencies in the field of human resources management developed by Pichault (2007, 2008).

2. Delegation in the field of human and financial resources: sham or reality?

The international literature on public management reforms suggests that, in many countries, the Public Service Bargains (PSBs) are evolving, under the influence of NPM, in a managerial direction (delegated type of agency bargains, according to the terminology used by Hood (Hood, 2001; Hood and Lodge, 2006). In this type of PSB, senior civil servants have extensive operational autonomy and, in exchange, are being made accountable in the event of mismanagement. The emphasis is therefore placed on outcomes. In contrast, the traditional administrative logic is based on compliance of the civil servants with the rules and procedures, loyalty towards the ministers in place, and in return, the total responsibility of the minister (Serial Loyalist, according to the terminology used by Hood and Lodge, 2006).

The performance targets set for them and the degree of management autonomy granted are determined in performance agreements. In consideration of the undertakings made, the political authority undertakes, on the one hand, to remove or restrict a priori controls on the availability of resources, thus increasing the autonomy of senior civil servants, and on the other hand, to strengthen the a posteriori checks by hinging them around public policy outcomes (Guillaume et al., 2002).

The OECD (2011) has developed a composite index measuring the extent of the delegation of HRM. It is generally more extensive in the Nordic countries (Sweden, Finland, and Denmark) and in those who have a Westminster political system, such as New Zealand, Australia, and the United Kingdom. The results of this study support the contention of Hood and Lodge whereby the managerial type is most likely to prevail in countries that had a serial loyalist agency bargain before the reform, which is the case in the aforementioned countries.

In practice, the margin of discretion of senior civil servants for the management of resources depends on the balance of power between these senior civil servants, on the one hand, and the ministers and their political advisers, on the other hand. This balance of power results everywhere in an unstable equilibrium between the logic of accountability and the logic of the primacy of politics (Drumaux and Goethals, 2006), not to mention the centralist stakeholders or the horizontal departments responsible for finance and the civil service, who take a dim view of the rollout of any administrative reform that might undermine their central position in the administrative machinery. They therefore undertake intense activity in order, as the case may be, either to thwart any attempt at reform or to pass off the reforms as their own, to control their impact on the organization of the departments and administrative processes (Bezes, 2009).

Under the MANDATE project, the research team conducted four case studies relating to the Netherlands, Denmark, Canada and the United Kingdom, in order to compare them with the Belgian case. These countries were selected according to the design of the ‘most similar vs. most different systems’ (Peters, 1998). In all four countries, performance agreements have been established between the political authorities and senior civil servants. However, the way in which the contracts are designed, the use made of them when assessing senior civil servants, as well as their impact on the degree of managerial autonomy, vary considerably from one country to another.

In countries with a Westminster system, therefore, quite different from that of Belgium, it is observed that the contracts are drawn up according to specific instructions and serve as the reference document at the time of assessment. In contrast, managerial autonomy with regard to the horizontal departments has been extended. This is the case for Canada, where, since 1986, performance agreements require a prior list of goals and a self-assessment of results by the Deputy Minister (Bourgault and Dion, 1993). The Management Accountability Framework, introduced in 2003, has strengthened accountability by ‘outlining the expectations of the Treasury Board with a view to the sound management of the ministries and agencies’ (Treasury Board Secretariat, 2011). In return for this rather formal contractualization, deputy ministers seem to have greater autonomy than a decade ago to manage their budgets, and more recently, for human resources (Bourgault, 2011).

In the United Kingdom, the introduction of performance agreements for senior civil servants can be traced back to the creation of the Senior Civil Service in 1996. These contracts are highly formalized and serve as a benchmark during assessment (Hondeghem and Van Dorpe, 2013). The permanent secretaries have autonomy to manage their staff, and set salaries and promotions, within the overall limits set by the Cabinet Office. HM Treasury is responsible for coordinating the budget and oversees as such the implementation of PSAs (Public Service Agreements) and guides the ministries in developing their performance management systems. Some authors believe, however, that managers have less autonomy in the field of staffing than that of budget (Vancoppenolle, 2006).

In Denmark and the Netherlands, whose political systems are similar to that of Belgium,² the senior civil servants had, even before the introduction of performance agreements, a large measure of autonomy to manage their departments. It appears that these agreements have little impact on their relationship with the horizontal departments.

Performance agreements have existed in Denmark since 1992 (Chemla-Lafay and Chol, 2006). At the agency level, the contracts were first introduced between them and their department, and then between agency heads and the permanent secretaries. Initially it was not intended to extend the performance contracts to the latter. In fact it was felt that these contracts were applicable only in an environment where it was possible to very clearly define the objectives and outcomes to be achieved. In addition, in the Danish system, concluding such an agreement between the minister and his permanent secretary seemed to contradict the relationship of vital trust between the two protagonists, the latter being considered as the personal and confidential adviser of the first on public policy issues (Salomonsen and Knudsen, 2011). However, the use of performance contracts has been widespread since 1997, but unlike the agency heads, the content of the contracts of the permanent secretaries is kept secret (Balle Hansen, 2008) and the formal assessment of the objectives defined in the contract seems far from being the rule in all the ministerial departments (Montuelle et al., 2011; Putseys and Hondeghem, 2002).

With regard to budgetary autonomy, the Ministry of Finance sets out the guiding principles for the allocation of frame budgets between departments, but leaves the departments themselves the task of allocating funds within the frame between the services of the department and the agencies dependent on them. In the field of HRM, the departments and agencies (the latter embracing more than 90 percent of employees in the civil service at national level) define the conditions of employment – with the exception of wage conditions – organize their recruitment and ensure the management of their staff (Blöndal and Ruffner, 2004).

The situation is quite similar to the Netherlands, where contracting through werkafspraken (literally working arrangements), introduced in 2001, aimed to give more autonomy in exchange for greater accountability by the senior civil servants belonging to the Top Management Group. According to Van Dorpe and Hondeghem (2011), assessment of the performance of top managers is very inconsistent from one department to another. As for the autonomy of senior civil servants in terms of budget management and staff, it is in fact quite extensive and the introduction of werkafspraken has done nothing to change this. The horizontal departments play more of a support than a control function (Steen, 2009).

Table 1 shows that the Canadian and British public administrations are moving more clearly towards the managerial type of PSB, resulting in increased autonomy for executive civil servants, while in the Danish and Dutch cases, this development is more mixed and has little impact on this autonomy.

Table 1.

Comparison of the relationship between autonomy and performance agreement

Canada⁴	United Kingdom	Denmark	Netherlands
Type of PSB before the reform	Serial loyalist	Serial loyalist	Serial loyalist	Serial loyalist
Service contract of the executive civil servants	– High degree of formalization – Taken into account in the assessment of senior civil servants	– High degree of formalization – Taken into account in the assessment of senior civil servants	– Low degree of formalization – Variable impact according to department in the assessment of the senior civil servants	– Low degree of formalization – Variable impact according to department in the assessment of senior civil servants
Management autonomy with regard to the horizontal departments	Growing	Growing	No change	No change
Type of PSB after the reform	Close to the simple delegated agency bargain	Close to the simple delegated agency bargain	Hybrid between serial loyalist and simple delegated agency bargain	Hybrid between serial loyalist and simple delegated agency bargain

In the remainder of this article, we focus on the situation of senior civil servants within the federal administration in Belgium. The results of the MANDATE research show that the Belgian case is similar to that of small continental countries in the sense that the management plans (performance agreements) of executive civil servants are not very formalized and that their weighting in the assessment varies from one department to another. However, it differs in two respects: first, the PSB consists of a mixture between serial loyalist and consociational types³ (de Visscher et al., 2011). On the other hand, the autonomy of senior civil servants with regard to horizontal departments was limited from the outset and this has hardly changed following the implementation of the plans, as we shall see below. After presenting the results from the MANDATE project, we will focus on the factors that hinder the measures envisaged in the Copernic plan to increase the operational autonomy of senior civil servants in the field of human and financial resources, on the basis of the typology of the inconsistencies in the reform projects developed by Pichault. The latter argues that the often modest results produced by reform projects can be explained by inconsistencies or tensions between three ‘poles’: the content earmarked for change, the organizational context in which each innovation takes place, and processes marked by power relations between stakeholders (Pichault, 2007). While the reasoning of the author focuses on the reforms relating to the management of human resources, we believe, however, that this typology can also be extended to budgetary matters.

More specifically, the so-called ‘discursive’ and ‘internal’ inconsistencies characterize a lack of consistency in the content of the reforms. In the first case, the author stresses the need to reform a large number of HRM variables simultaneously to prevent the ‘major components of HRM policy from remaining rooted in tradition’ (Pichault, 2007). The second case illustrates, according to the author, an example of ‘pseudo modernization’ that he believes results from the discrepancy between the rhetoric and practice in the field, resulting in a strengthening of bureaucratic-type procedures and regulations. The third type of inconsistency, the so-called ‘contextual’ inconsistencies, relates to a problem of coherence between the context and content of the reform. In this case, Pichault observes, the new policies blur traditional benchmarks and civil servants are caught between two stools. ‘How to bridge the inevitable widening gap between innovative HRM policies and existing organizational ‘routines?’ the author asks.⁵

Survey methodology

In a first phase, a questionnaire⁶ was drawn up with the aim of measuring the perception senior civil servants have of the impact of the introduction of a mandate system on identity, on the relations with the political environment and on the implementation of a performance management system. For each dimension, a trajectory (Pollitt and Bouckaert, 2011) was defined to measure the degree of progress towards a managerial Public Service Bargain. Specifically, the extent of changes was measured using a Likert scale on the basis of closed questions. Open questions as well as space for ‘comments’ allowed respondents to complete their answers if they so wished. The target group of this research consists of the Presidents of a Federal Public Service (FPS) who are ‘responsible for managing a FPS, both in terms of strategy and day-to-day management’ – and directors-general who ‘supervise the work of a general department’ (Fedweb, 2013).

The Presidents of FPS received questionnaires during February 2009. The directors-general, meanwhile, were contacted in the autumn of 2010. Eighty-five percent of the presidents (11 out of 13 in office) and 52 percent of the general managers (27 of 49 in office) took part in the written phase of the research. These questionnaires were subsequently the subject of a simple statistical analysis to calculate frequencies, averages and, where necessary, possible correlations.

In a second phase, semi-structured individual interviews were conducted – between March and May 2009 for the presidents, and between December 2010 and February 2011 for the directors-general – with senior civil servants who participated in the written survey, but also with some office holders who did not respond. In total, 19 directors-general and 11 presidents of FPS responded favourably to our request for an interview. The overall response rate of the research amounts to 72.6 percent (a total of 45 senior civil servants). As a reminder, only the results relating to the relationship with the horizontal departments are analysed in this article.

For the qualitative part particular to this article, we conducted a categorical analysis (Maroy, 1995). The passages of interviews related to the management of human and financial resources were coded to establish categories that make it possible to interpret the results on the basis of the approach known as ‘inconsistencies’ in the HRM reforms in the public sector formulated by Pichault (2007, 2008).

3. The management of human and financial resources within the Belgian federal administration in the wake of the Copernic reform

This section describes succinctly the main aspects of the Copernic reform on the management of human and financial resources.

A ‘virtual matrix’ system

In the wake of the Copernic reform, the ministries were replaced by ‘federal public services’ (FPS), ten vertical and four horizontal. The first support operational competencies in various areas of public policy of the State (justice, social affairs, etc.), the second has a mission of strategic thinking, as well as support, coordination and control missions with regard to the vertical FPS in the following areas: budgeting and management control, human resources, the use of new information technologies and communication, and overall coordination of services (de Visscher et al., 2004).

This organization is complemented by the presence in each FPS of supervision services for Personnel and Organization (P&O), budget and management control (B&CG), and ICT, which are the ‘relays’ of the horizontal FPS in the different FPSs. More specifically, the horizontal FPS Personnel and Organization ‘is responsible for the drawing up of the human resources strategy and the development of practices, methods and quality standards, and ensures that they are consistently applied across government’ (FPS P&O, 2004a). The P&O supervisory manager, meanwhile, is ‘responsible for implementing the general policies of the FPS to which he belongs and for ensuring that the day-to-day management of human resources meets federal standards’ (FPS P&O, 2004a). The horizontal FPS P&O thus offers its ‘specialized assistance’ to the supervisory managers for the implementation of personnel policies.

For its part, the FPS Budget and Management Control is ‘responsible for providing assistance to the government with the development, implementation and monitoring of the budget and financial policy’ (FPS B&CG, 2009). Furthermore, as is the case for human resources, each vertical FPS has a supervisory manager to support the FPS ‘in the planning, monitoring and evaluation of budgets’ (FPS P&O, 2004b). In other words, the role of support to horizontal FPS, but also the fact that there is no hierarchical relationship between the horizontal and vertical FPS (Depré and Parys, 2005) indicate the presence of a virtual matrix.

Reorganization of administrative and budgetary control

To give more autonomy to top managers in the management of their service, Copernic set out to reform the system of administrative and budgetary control. The presidents of FPS (and the directors-general at their level) are granted a budget for staff, on the one hand, and for operating expenditure, on the other hand, in order to achieve the objectives assigned to them in their management plans. The budget is estimated on the basis of the staffing plan for staff expenditure, and from a cost accounting perspective for operating expenditure. In return, the procedures for administrative and budgetary control are streamlined, that is to say fewer authorizations are required prior to the provision of resources (Auwers, 2007).

To this end, the Copernic reform provides for the development of an integrated control comprised, on the one hand, of effective internal control and, on the other, of the establishment of internal audit activities. This new organization must make it possible to measure ‘the degree of achievement of objectives, actions or results (not just financial) and the allocated resources’ (Van Dorpe et al., 2011).

4. The empirical results: ‘disillusioned’ general managers

This section presents the empirical results of the MANDATE project on the relationship between executive civil servants and the horizontal FPS.⁷ Three questions were asked to the presidents of FPS and the directors-general. The first set out to evaluate the perception of their autonomy with regard to the departments in charge of human resources and budget. The second question was about the development of their autonomy: has it increased since the implementation of the Copernic plan? Finally, the last question sought to gauge their opinion on the role of horizontal services and supervisory managers.

Relations with the horizontal services in charge of budget and management control

The results of our research have shown that autonomy is seen as more extensive among presidents of FPS than among directors-general. The perception therefore varies according to the level in the hierarchy. More precisely, no president considers their autonomy as limited or non-existent, while this is experienced by 44 percent of directors-general. Regarding the increased autonomy over the last 10 years, only five out of 27 directors-general have sensed such a change. In contrast, six out of 11 presidents perceive an increase, while recognizing that it is limited. Finally, the presidents have a slightly more favourable view of budgetary services in comparison with the directors-general. The results of the quantitative survey are summarized in Table 2.⁸

Table 2.

Perception of senior civil servants of the horizontal services in charge of budget and management control

Presidents	Directors-general⁹
Degree of autonomy	Average to high Average of 7.35 out of 10	Limited to average Average of 4.9 (SD = 3.6)
Evolution of autonomy	Limited	Limited
Control or support	The same in terms of support and in terms of control Average of 5.2 out of 10	A little more control than support Average of 4.4 (SD = 3.4)

Relations with the horizontal services in charge of personnel and organization

As with the previous point, the statistical analysis reveals that the presidents perceive their autonomy as being greater than that of the directors-general. Thus, the latter say that they have a limited autonomy while the presidents perceive their autonomy as ‘average’. Regarding the evolution of autonomy during the last 10 years, only six out of 27 directors-general and six out of 10 presidents report having seen a positive development. Finally, the opinion of senior civil servants of the horizontal services responsible for human resources varies from ‘primarily as a support’ for the FPS presidents (with an average of 7.7 out of 10) to ‘as much support as control’ for general managers (with an average of 5.6 out of 10). The results are summarized in Table 3.

Table 3.

Perception of the senior civil servants of the horizontal services in charge of personnel and organization

Presidents	Directors-general¹⁰
Degree of autonomy	Average Average of 6.3 out of 10	Limited Average of 4 (SD = 2.9)
Evolution of the autonomy	Limited	Limited
Control or support	Mainly as support and a little as control Average of 7.7 out of 10	As much as support as control Average of 5.6 (SD = 3.1)

Generally speaking, we can see that the relationships with the horizontal services in charge of human resources are ‘better perceived’ than those with the budget departments. In contrast, the degree of autonomy in the management of human resources appears for its part to be lower than for budgetary matters.

5. Inconsistencies in the implementation of the Copernic reform

Based on the qualitative survey, we conducted a categorical analysis of the responses in an attempt to explain the inconsistencies in the development of increased operational autonomy of senior civil servants in terms of human and budgetary resources in the wake of the implementation of the Copernic plan.

Internal inconsistency: performance? Yes, but ‘without stick or carrot’

The first type of inconsistency arises from the fact that certain aspects of the policy are changed while others remain unchanged: the Copernic reform seeks to increase the autonomy and accountability of mandate holders through, among other things, increased attention to the development of skills and the establishment of an envelope and staff planning system, while the statute of the civil servants and the Royal Decree organizing the administrative and budgetary control remain unchanged.

Our survey among senior civil servants reveals this half measure in the implementation of the Copernic plan. In short, while they are required to evolve in an individualizing system based on performance, the civil servants appointed for a fixed term of office face significant difficulties on a day-to-day basis when they want to reward ‘deserving’ employees, or, in contrast, ‘punish’ those who have not achieved their objectives satisfactorily. The categorical analysis reveals that the rigidity of the statute of the civil servants (‘Camu’ statute), as well as the lack of budgetary flexibility (persistence of ex ante controls), are obstacles to the development of performance and accountability.

For example, this inconsistency can be observed in particular in the use and implementation of development circles.¹¹ Indeed, some senior civil servants question the effectiveness of the proposed tool. Development circles that indicate a shift of HRM towards skills management seem disconnected from performance issues. This leads, on the part of some senior civil servants, to a devaluation of the tool. Daugnaix and Göransson (2010) also find that ‘senior civil servants complain about the lack of positive and negative consequences linked to the results of the assessment’.

This result obtained from the categorical analysis seems to confirm the results of the questionnaire. In fact, of 12 mandate holders (presidents and directors-general) who reported having observed an evolution of their discretion, 11 of them claimed that it was in training and development, but also in human resource planning. In contrast, the senior civil servants did not perceive improvement in the ‘structure of remuneration and rewards’, nor in the ‘individual discipline’ and ‘dispute settlement procedure’.

More generally, in its study of HRM in public administrations in Belgium, the OECD highlights the inconsistency arising from the partial implementation of reforms: ‘within the Federal Government, the general statute governing statutory employment changed only marginally, while management priorities have changed and many reforms in public management have been implemented. This makes it difficult to apply a consistent staff policy and for different players to understand the key values, including sometimes between employers and the administrative jurisdiction’ (OECD, 2007: 53).

The discursive inconsistency: ‘hijacking’ for the benefit of the supervisory services

This second inconsistency relates to the gap between rhetoric and practice: ‘changing the variables of HRM towards more formalization and centralization and less flexibility creates a gap between the modernist discourse and actual practices of HRM’ (Pichault, 2008: 69). It appears fully in the management of human and financial resources within the FPS. In practice, we therefore observe a decentralization of FPS Personnel & Organization and Budget & Management Control towards the vertical FPS. However, this decentralization – that allows greater control by the FPS on the use of available resources – is associated with a centralized resource management, which, according to the department in question, is carried out either by the supervisory manager or, to a lesser extent, by the President of the FPS. This centralization of resources within the FPS is seen as a ‘dispossession’ by most directors-general.

It therefore puts the supervisory services at the heart of the resource management mechanisms, based on a division into programmes (and no longer according to administrative departments, see below). Moreover, due to their hierarchical position, the president is responsible for the overall strategy of the FPS. This means that he may exercise, in some cases, a significant influence on the distribution of budgets. His perception of the department may be different from that of the directors-general. Finally, this perception of ‘dispossession’ can also be explained by the fact that the directors-general and supervisory managers are at the same hierarchical level (N-1). This situation, which is at the very least ambiguous, gives rise in some cases to a request for clarification of the position and role of the supervisory manager in the current organization chart. One mandate holder stated in this respect that they (the supervisory departments) should be driven out of the budgetary decision-making process occurring within the executive committee. This statement reveals a gap between the rhetoric of accountability and autonomy, on the one hand, and actual practice, on the other. Göransson (2010: 60) concurs when she says that ‘senior civil servants had imagined that they would have staff budgets and financial means specific to their department. The reality is often quite different, the staff budget managed by the supervisory manager for Staffing and Organization takes the human resources needs of all FPS into account and the budgets centralized with the supervisory manager for the Budget are divided on the basis of programmes and not by administrative departments. Even though they often coincide, the responsibility of the director general manager for a budget is not established.’

Some of the senior civil servants interviewed, while admitting that they only have an average degree of autonomy, nevertheless believe that centralization of resources at FPS level makes it possible to ensure a margin of manoeuvre in the case of unforeseen difficulties. This type of discourse, identified by a minority in the categorical analysis, nevertheless goes some way towards explaining some of the ‘median’ results identified by the quantitative analysis.

Contextual inconsistency: the internal audit is ‘conspicuously absent’

The third inconsistency stated by Pichault (2008) is ‘contextual’. He describes it as follows: ‘The modification of a set of HRM variables in a new direction, not accompanied by a transformation of traditional ways of working, cannot trigger by itself an organizational change’ (2008: 69). The inconsistency here relates to the difference between the modernization policy and the – unchanged – environment in which this new policy is rolled out. Within the framework of Copernic, the Mandate system, whose goal is to make civil servants accountable for the performance of their work, cannot bring about change single-handedly without concomitant reform of the entire administrative and budgetary control. But reforming the ‘pyramid of control’ (Sterck et al., 2005) is further off than ever. Eliminating a priori controls meets with resistance from more than one source.

Shoring up the accountability and empowerment of senior civil servants is in fact closely associated with the development of control and internal audit activities. Given the delay in the implementation of internal audit activities, maintaining the current procedures for administrative and budgetary control, as provided by the Royal Decree of 16 November 1994, has the effect of ‘discouraging’ the senior civil servants who, in some cases, have already implemented a system of risk assessment and adopted internal control procedures. This situation may partly explain the negative perception of their management autonomy by some senior civil servants. For example, one mandate holder says that the Inspectorate of Finance has ‘put up its defences’, alleging that it is wary of losing its ex ante power of control through the development of internal control within the FPS.

The Royal Decree of 2002 relating to the internal audit provided for one audit committee per FPS, but the Royal Decrees dated 17 August 2007 then changed the original plan by creating a single Audit Committee of the Federal Administration (CAAF). However, the FPS must establish internal audit activities, either by establishing their own internal audit department, or by using a subcontractor, and thus make it possible to ‘feed’ the CAAF (Mottoul, 2010; Van Gils et al., 2008). The latter, officially installed on 2 April 2010, now seems to want to impose a single audit service across government, a move that raises the suspicion of presidents of FPS, who fear that the internal audit will be too dependent on the government (Expert interview, 2012).

The dithering around this reform, due in part to the complexity of the subject, but also to resistance from the ‘traditional’ players of administrative and budgetary control – the FPS Budget, the Finance Inspectorate – are causing the delay in the implementation of the internal audit within the Belgian federal SPF (Auwers, 2007). According to the 169th Report of the Court of Auditors (2012: 314), ‘the use of the Coso model is insufficient. The internal audit activities making it possible to assess the reliability of internal control systems are poorly developed … According to the latest report of the CAAF, in July 2012, only 11 of the 22 relevant services had created an internal audit service.’ Moreover, the OECD in its 2007 report already referred to this contextual inconsistency when it claimed: ‘In Belgium, the staff management systems are actually highly regulated, which means high transaction costs and considerable difficulties for the delegation of authority to managers for the implementation of a performance-based management, as well as for the management of the size of the workforce. This situation is also a source of tension between the application of the statutory rules and the new vision of a performance-driven HRM’ (2007: 12).

6. Conclusion

While the Copernic plan aimed at increasing the accountability and autonomy of senior civil servants in the management of human and financial resources, the representation senior civil servants have of it suggests, based on our investigation, that we are far from the original goal. Indeed, only a small number of senior civil servants say that they have seen a positive change in their autonomy over the past decade. Moreover, this perception of mandate holders with regard to the departments in charge of the budget and human resources varies according to the position held – president or director general – and previous career path – a career civil servant or a mandate holder arriving directly from the private sector.

The typology proposed by Pichault highlights several inconsistencies – internal, discursive and contextual – which helps to understand the mixed perceptions of the directors-general – and, to a lesser extent, of the presidents of FPS – in the management of human and financial resources since the Copernic reform. This approach makes it possible to highlight the fact that the lack of autonomy of senior civil servants is not due to the introduction of ‘contractual’ relationships with the political authority, but to inconsistencies in the implementation of the Copernic reform. These inconsistencies, based here on the views expressed by the senior civil servants, confirm one of the forms of ‘cheating’ in the relationship between ministers and senior civil servants outlined by Hood and Lodge (2006), namely that the former can be inclined to wipe out the discretionary margin of the latter by multiplying impromptu interventions or maintaining formal or informal mechanisms to exercise control over the provision of resources. If we consider the internal inconsistency, on the one hand, and the contextual inconsistency, on the other hand, we observe that there is clearly a lack of loyalty on the political side, in the sense that the measures envisaged under the Copernic framework to empower senior civil servants in the management of human and financial resources are slow to be implemented. Conversely, we have no indication that civil servants would not be loyal to their commitments. It is true that they have little leeway (they have a fixed term of six years) and that the political office holders have not been questioned about the behaviour of their administrative staff.

However, it is worth noting some limitations to our study. First, one of the ambiguities found in the results concerns the position of directors-general with regard to horizontal FPS. During the study, it was found that these senior civil servants have hardly any direct relations with the horizontal FPS. The answers are therefore oriented more towards an assessment of their relationships with the supervisory managers. Second, we note that our interpretive approach was limited to considering the point of view of senior civil servants. In future, it would no doubt be interesting to broaden the scope of the study taking into account the views of other key players involved in this reform: ministers and personal advisers, the horizontal ministries. Third, the differences in perception between mandate holders from the private sector and career civil servants, highlighted a few times, also deserve further study. As mentioned in the introduction, these perceptions are closely linked to expectations of senior civil servants with regard to the Copernic reform. As this reform had raised great hopes among senior career civil servants, this could explain the more negative perception expressed by the latter.

Finally, we are aware that the selected sample – the FPS – and the method used do not necessarily reflect the diversity of situations encountered.¹² It would be useful to explore, for example, possible variations according to areas or sectors of public action – justice, culture, finance, etc. In the same vein, the research could be extended to public agencies other than FPS and thus take into account the diversity of administrative organizations (ministry or agency, with or without management contract).

Footnotes

Notes

Christian de Visscher is a full professor at the Université catholique de Louvain (B). Since 2010, he has been head of the Institute of Political Sciences Louvain-Europe. His research focuses on organization, strategy, control and HRM in public organizations, in Belgium and in the European countries. His work has been published among others in Public Policy and Administration, International Review of Administrative Sciences, and Politiques et Management Public.

François Randour is an executive assistant and a doctoral student at the Université catholique de Louvain in the Institute of Political Sciences Louvain-Europe (B). His research focuses, on the one hand, on the administrative reforms in Belgium – particularly relations between senior civil servants and the political authority – and secondly, on decision-making within the European Union. He has published in the Revue Internationale de Politique Comparée.

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