Jolanta Itrich Drabarek Knihy

This book is the outcome of in-depth academic research on the civil service carried out by acknowledged international and national experts in the field. It brings together papers and speeches presented at the international symposium „The civil service in Poland: 20 years of experience and the outlook for change“, which was organized at the University of Warsaw. The authors summarise the studies on the transformations in the civil service systems in European and other countries, especially those pertaining to Anglo-Saxon culture. They also aim to provoke deeper reflections on the process of establishing the civil service in Poland, especially against the background of the legislative changes introduced in late 2015 and early 2016.

The book analyzes the theoretical and practical aspects of civil service in Polish public administration and discusses it in a European context. While civil service is explored from a comparative, historical and systemic perspective, the study takes a close look at the history of Polish civil service from 1922 to 2014, civil service in the Second Republic, the status of civil servants during the Polish People’s Republic and the formation of civil service after 1989. There is a special focus on solutions adopted in the light of the Civil Service Act of November 21st, 2008, and the importance of civil service for the modernisation process of public administration in Poland.