General Principles and Challenges of Public Organisation in Central Europe

The project “General Principles and Challenges of Public Organisation in Central Europe” is part of an overall project of the Mádl Ferenc Institute for Comparative Law (Budapest) and the Central European Academy (Miskolc / Budapest) which aims at providing the legal PhD education in Hungary with comparative textbooks on the situation in Central European states in English language.

One of the first books of the projected book series deals with the organisation of the public administration in Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Serbia. It aims to provide a comprehensive comparative overview that can be used domestically and internationally, making the primary system and literature of national public administration and administrative law accessible to readers and students interested in the subject. The presentation of public administration is essentially organizational, as this is the easiest to understand and compare. The description of the system focuses on the organization of the public administration in the narrow sense, i.e., the administrative bodies which primarily perform administrative and public authority functions. The explanation will aim to make general, timeless statements rather than a detailed analysis of current legislation. The concluding part of each country report contains a critical approach to the existing system, possible expected changes, challenges, and lex ferenda proposals.

The Institut für Ostrecht (IOR), in co-operation with the Chair of European Public Law and Jurisprudence of the Andrássy German-speaking University Budapest (AUB), agreed to write the German country report. The targeted readership of the volume being Hungarian and, more generally, East Central European PhD students, the authors of the German chapter, Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. Herbert Küpper (IOR / AUB), Prof. Dr. Michael Anderheiden (AUB) and Dr. Miklós Szirbik (AUB), describe and analyse the organization of the German public administration in a way especially adapted to the professional background of this readership.

Publication of the book “General Principles and Challenges of Public Organisation in Central Europe” is projected in late 2023.