From the mid-1800s onwards, most countries in the region followed the continental development path: either the Germanic or Napoleonic administrative model (Painter & Peters, 2010; Kuhlmann et al., 2025). This was largely dependent on which empire they belonged to, primarily the Russian, with its Napoleonic model-orientation or the Habsburg, with the Germanic model-orientation. This approach was almost exclusively composed of public law, which remained dominant until the post-communist period.

Before communism, academic life in the region was also closely connected to Western European and global academia. Many scholars studied and/or taught abroad, and proficiency in foreign languages was widespread.

Soviet occupation reoriented these countries eastwards, accompanied by the characteristic features of Byzantinestyle governance and social organisation. The communist turn severed these ties and introduced the Soviet model of strict separation between university teaching and academic research. Universities were tasked exclusively with instruction, whereas research was concentrated within the Academies of Sciences. The Academies operated specialised institutes –e.g., in physics or chemistry or law– but many social sciences, such as political science or sociology, were dismissed as “bourgeois pseudo-sciences”. Consequently, no corresponding institutes were established. This structural divide between research and education persisted after 1990, and universities required years, sometimes decades, to rebuild research capacity and reintegrate teaching and research.

During the communist era PA occupied a peculiar position: it was a very marginal, almost non-existent university discipline (Jenei & Mike, 2008; Gajduschek, 2007). Communist ideology viewed state bureaucracy in capitalist countries as a tool of oppression and an “alienated” social stratum. Lenin famously argued that the majority of state functions could be reduced to simple tasks –e.g., registration, filing, checking– potentially performed by every literate person, such as washerwomen (Lenin & Chretien, 2015, Ch. III). The Marxist theory of labor division into productive and nonproductive spheres held that administration fell into the latter, which was not the focus of the communist government. As a result, public administration was deemed unnecessary as an academic discipline. In practice, CEE countries did not have specialized PA education programs in the conventional understanding until the fall of communism in the 1990s. The Baltic countries –Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania– became part of the Soviet Union in 1940 but did not have any type of PA education until they regained their independence in the 1990s (Sarapuu & Saarniit, 2020).

In CEE countries, which were formally independent yet practised Soviet-type communism, PA education was developed after the post-Stalinist liberalizations in the late 1950s. One of the first PA programs was established as early as 1956 in the former Yugoslavia (Ljubljana), where a College of Public Administration was established (Stare & Vintar, 2008). It began offering a two-year programme in 1957, followed by Poland where in the 1960s 3-year programmes of Professional Administrative Studies (Polish abbreviation ZSA) were created at certain Law Faculties (Mikulowski, 2008). These programmes were organised exclusively as weekend sessions (every two weeks) and were directed toward the communist party apparatus, police and security services, the army, public administration, and enterprise officials occupying managerial positions with no formal higher education qualifications. In Hungary, the first institution offering full-time education and an equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in public administration was developed in 1978 out of a central training institute for municipal officials (Gajduschek & Hajnal, 2022).

These very early institutions had several issues in common. First, these programs were incorporated directly into the law faculties, thus instituting the strong subordination of public administration studies into legal studies or a single discipline (PA) faculty2 that continues to be offered today by German technical colleges of public administration (Fachhochschulen). This trend is particularly observed in the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and the former Yugoslavia, where the early PA programs concentrated on legal issues, focusing on public law, such as administrative and financial law (Hajnal, 2003; Kopric, 2013; Marcetic et al., 2013; Staronová & Gajduschek, 2016).3 Second, many of these programs were at the bachelor level and mostly provided education and practical training for civil servants against the backdrop of the single-party political system, planned economy, and state ownership.

In the 1980s, yet another type of early PA programs at economic faculties appeared in the former Czechoslovakia with a focus on the “economics of non-productive services”, including public administration, public utilities, and human services (i.e., schools and hospitals) (Staronová & Gajduschek, 2016; Placek et al., 2025), which provided master level equivalents. It was exactly these sub-disciplines that were later transformed into some of the first “true” PA programs with an interdisciplinary character.

After the fall of communism in 1990, the transition created a critical juncture, allowing and somewhat necessitating deviation from earlier trajectories. First, the introduction of the curricula and their content was largely dependent on the individuals leading the work and often required explaining what public administration as a scholarly field was conceived of (Randma-Liiv & Connaughton, 2005). Only the processes of Europeanization of the public administration as a profession strengthened and broadened both the professional and academic communities around public administration, creating a momentum for change in PA as an academic discipline.

In the democratic transition, the biggest question for these programs was whether higher education in PA represented a separate field of study or just a sub-field of law or economics. The fight for ‘independence’ has defined the profile of PA programs; it remains an issue in several CEE countries today. This era can therefore be best described as the search for a PA identity within an institutionalized dual structure, i.e., PA as a subfield of law or economy and PA as an interdisciplinary field.

The difficulty in establishing public administration as a separate field stemmed from the peculiarities of the public sector: the supremacy of public law over public administration. The renewed emphasis on the rule of law (or rather the German concept of Rechtsstaat) reinforced the prominence of legal education, which is visible through an examination of the career paths of top civil servants from selected countries, and which suggests that most of them still have a legal education (Rybář & Podmanik, 2020; Krajnák et al., 2020). This meant that the traditional law faculties became dominant and offered law-based PA programs emphasizing administrative and constitutional law. In this vision of PA education the problem-solving process is reduced to a simple issuing and implementing of rules and regulations. Staronová & Gajduschek (2016) pointed out that this view is quite dominant among MPA programs.

At the same time, during the 1990s, international organisations (e.g., World Bank, IMF, SIGMA/OECD) strongly promoted NPM-inspired reforms, including the managerial approach to public administration education. In the early 2000s, however, newer PA programs were established that were based on interdisciplinary and managerial principles, predominantly at new social science faculties that emerged after the fall of communism, emphasizing governance, strategic planning, policy analysis and other problem-solving aspects. In these cases, the PA programs were established as a completely new discipline, often supported by international partnerships and support. The Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPAcee), could also assist programs in interested universities to form adequate PA programs, as will be discussed later. Higher education in general and PA education utilized a number of horizontal mechanisms to increase Europeanization, such as managing and recognizing student and staff mobility, networks and projects for strengthening links of the PA scholarly community (Randma-Liiv & Connaughton, 2005; Verheijen & Connaughton, 2003).

The Bologna Process, introduced at the end of the 1990s and formally institutionalized through the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) brought about major changes in European higher education, including PA programs. Its most important features include the introduction of a three-stage degree structure, the establishment of a system of comparable degrees and transferable credits (ECTS), and the development of quality assurance frameworks. The Bologna reforms required a clear distinction between bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs, replacing the earlier dual structure of socialist tertiary education, which consisted of two perfectly independent and closed paths: “college degrees” (typically three years) and “university degrees” (typically five years). The Bologna framework increased flexibility and opened new educational and career pathways by facilitating movement across academic fields. At the same time, it obliged universities to design master’s curricula that did not merely duplicate bachelor-level content, while still accommodating students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds by providing foundational knowledge traditionally covered in the early years of the previous system.

ECTS generally enables the mutual recognition of diplomas and study periods among EU member states, albeit with certain limitations, particularly in fields such as public administration. Based on the ECTS framework, universities within the EU can establish joint degree programs, in which a single diploma is awarded jointly by two or more institutions, for example, a CEE university and a Western European partner. The system also facilitates student mobility, allowing students to complete part of their studies (one or more semesters) at another institution, with credits earned abroad recognized by their home university. Such mobility has become widespread through the Erasmus Programme of the European Union, which supports participating students by waiving tuition fees at host institutions.

It is worth noting that, unlike in the United States and several Western countries, public universities in the CEE region are generally considered of higher quality than private ones. The ease of establishing private institutions in the post-transition period encouraged some profit-oriented providers to minimise costs at the expense of educational quality. For instance, these institutions rely mostly on instructors on a contractual basis (e.g., hiring attorneys, judges to deliver lectures as a part-time activity), rather than having full-time research staff.

To understand higher education in the PA today, it is essential to consider the broader political transformation that is taking place in some of the countries, notably Hungary since the 2010 elections, Poland under President Kaczynszky (2005-2010), Czechia headed by Babiš as Prime Minister (2017-2021 and from 2025), and recently Slovakia, since the 2023 elections. Although it is premature to discuss its full effects on PA education, Hungary provides the best case study with the longest reign of illiberal and authoritarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán since 2010.

Among the most radical effects of illiberalism on PA education was documented in Hungary, which entered yet another completely different path with the establishment of a state-based National University of Public Service (NUPS) in 2012, by integrating the National Military Academy, the National Police Academy and the former Faculty of Public Administration from Corvinus University of Budapest. The law establishing NUPS removed it from the institutional framework of regular higher education institutions and put it directly under the supervisory regime of the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice, which does not have to go through the regular process of institutional accreditation performed by the independent higher education accreditation body. Hajnal (2014) rightly notes that the idea of merging civilian and military/police education into a single higher education institution with a monopoly over civil service education was highly unusual from an international perspective. However, it fits the institutional reforms of Prime Minister Viktor Orban to create a “strong state” with almost unlimited control over various sectors.

At the same time, the law practically abolished the right of any other university to issue the MPA degree, which was previously offered by most universities’ law faculties, and so the state institution became a monopoly for the education of civil servants. Starting in 2019, the Central European University, the most prestigious international university of the region offering US accredited PA programs (Staronová & Gajduschek, 2016), in terms of international rankings in political science and related fields was forced out of the country as Hungary refused to sign an agreement allowing it to operate. This action, seen as targeting the institution founded by George Soros and a blow to academic freedom, led to the closure of most teaching activities in Budapest. The European Court of Justice later ruled that Hungary’s actions breached EU law. The move was widely condemned as an attack on academic freedom and an attempt to silence critical voices in Hungary.

Table 1. Path dependency – major periods in the history of CEE countries and related governmental and educational characteristics

Period	Political system	System of tertiary education
Before WWI	Mostly authoritarian, mostly as part of a larger empire (Russian, Habsburg), following either the Napoleonic (Russian) or Germanic model, conveyed and somewhat distorted by the occupying power. Both models favour lawyers in generalist / managerial PA positions.	Similar to, though somewhat lagged behind the Western arrangement.
After WWI	Most countries become independent and can build their own system of government and a PAE system adequate for the needs of governance.	Similar to, though somewhat lagged behind the Western arrangement.
After WWII	Communist system. PA is considered as an organization responsible for directly implementing government (that is ultimately communist party) decisions. Civil service is not acknowledged as a “profession”; PA is not recognised as a discipline, nor as a “techne” (a specific set of practical knowledge and skills).	PA is typically not accepted as a field of scholarly discipline or as a field of university education/degrees. A strict institutional separation of research and university education.
After 1990	Transition from the communist system. A challenging period without clear directions and tested solutions at the beginning. A new system of democracy and the rule of law, in which a PA –mostly inherited from the communist regime– has to function. PA identity is questioned. Various pressures: internal: legal tradition; external: managerial mainstream.	The place of PAE is in question, theoretically and practically (growing out of law or economics schools or an independent PA identity). Challenge from EU accession: Europeanization of the curriculum. The Bologna process. Restructuring education BA–MA –PhD. Opportunities for European cooperation.
From 2010+	Illiberal governmental arrangement with great differences among countries. Some general features: cutback of rule of law institution; an increasing power of government within society, the executive within government, the political top (around one person) in the executive. Diminsishing role of professional civil service, especially in policy-making. Professional career is limited.	Typically no change in the system of tertiary education.

Source: Prepared by the authors.

Curriculum composition is frequently seen as an indicator of public administration identity. Education may be influenced by public administration practice, on one hand, and academic approaches, on the other. Thus, the disciplinary balance is assumed to reflect how experts –both practitioners and scholars– understand the goals of government and the appropriate means to achieve them which is the basic understanding of public administration identity.

Hajnal’s (2003) seminal study analysed the presence of eight disciplinary fields in roughly 200 public administration programmes across 22 European countries. Cluster analysis produced three groups that may be interpreted as educational but also as an indication of general administrative identity types. Namely, the corporate, the public, and the legal clusters.

Hajnal’s clusters broadly correspond to the three administrative traditions identified by Painter & Peters (2010) and Kickert (2008): AngloAmerican, Napoleonic, and Germanic.

CEE countries were spread largely between the legal and corporate clusters. Hungary, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia belonged to the former, while Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovakia belonged to the latter.

An inventory undertaken by Staronová & Gajduschek (2016) analyzed curricula of all PA programs in Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Slovenia. It indicates that since Hajnal’s (2003) categorization the development of PA programs has stimulated a gradual reaction to the importance of interdisciplinarity, management and Europeanization by increasingly incorporating comparative, analytical and methodological courses into curricula. Their main findings are presented in table 3.

Table 3. Proportion (%) of various disciplines in curricula

	Law	Pol. Sci.	Economy Finance	Management	Policy analysis & methodology	Policy fields	Other
Czech Republic	21 %	15 %	21 %	10 %	12 %	6 %	14 %
Slovakia	24 %	21 %	19 %	18 %	10 %	4 %	21 %
Estonia	5 %	25 %	7 %	11 %	22 %	6 %	14 %
Hungary	26 %	20 %	13 %	16 %	7 %	0 %	15 %
Slovenia	11 %	50 %	6 %	0 %	0 %	0 %	11 %

Source:Staronová & Gajduschek (2016, p. 262).

The region –especially when contrasted with the US– remains characterised by a strong legal and technical orientation. The above-mentioned research found that in three out of five East Central European countries examined, legal subjects accounted for over 20 % of public administration curricula, while specialised public administration schools devoted around 40 % of coursework to legal topics (Staronová & Gajduschek, 2016). Kopric (2013) observed similar patterns (18-40 %) in SouthEastern Europe. Pevcin et al. (2019) in their qualitative analysis of 11 East Central European countries also reach a similar conclusion. Nemec et al. (2012) searched for managerial courses in the curricula of existing PA programmes and found only limited offerings (even in Czechia where PA programs arose from Economic faculties). This indicates that such curricula are supply rather than demand driven. Overall, most researchers agree that while the proportion of legal subjects has gradually declined in the past decades, it remains substantial.

In sum, CEE countries, similarly to other non-Western countries (Knox & Orazgaliyev, 2025; Salazar Morales et al., 2025), continue to emphasise technical legal subjects in PA curricula. An outlier in this regard is Estonia where PA programs have a non-legal character of the curricula and a higher share of analytical, planning and strategic courses.

After 1990, change occurred gradually, leading to divergenceinthe disciplinary composition, reflecting public administration identity. For the first decade, trajectories depended heavily on how public administration and the civil service were positioned institutionally during the communist regime. Most public administration programmes were established from scratch in the 1990s. Many universities –especially new ones– created public administration programmes within law faculties, often relying heavily on parttime legal practitioners, which kept costs low. Obviously, such programmes were overwhelmingly legalistic. Other programmes emerged from economics faculties, reflecting managerial and financial emphases. In such cases (e.g. Czechia), the programs that originate from Economics Universities have limited or no law courses.

Where the autonomy of public administration was accepted or even institutionalised (e.g., in the form of specialised scholarly journals, perhaps educational units) during late communism, the legal model remained strong after the collapse of the system. Where public administration had no distinct tradition, managerial approaches –aligned with NPM and encouraged by international organisations– gained stronger influence (Pevcin et al., 2019; Gajduschek & Hajnal, 2022).

In subsequent years, countries’ longer-term administrative traditions regained importance. Former Habsburg countries typically gravitated towards the Germanic model, while others, such as Poland and Romania, exhibited features of the Napoleonic tradition. Since these traditions historically emphasised law, their revival partly explains why Hajnal (2003) could not identify a “public” cluster in the region at the time. However, in a follow-up study based on expert interviews, Hajnal (2014) found that several countries previously classified as ‘legalistic’ shifted towards the other categories, including the ‘public’ category, as the French administrative sciences extensively embraced sociology and political science, after WW2.

The origin of a programme within a specific faculty remains a strong determinant of its curricular profile. This, however, is gradually changing with the new admissions to the faculty as well as external pressures, the impact of other programs or accreditation requirements.

We cannot rely up-to-date, valid, and generalizable scholarly information regarding the methodology of teaching. In our previous study that analysed all PA programs in five countries, we found that frontal teaching was still dominant. Partly this stems from the relative dominance of legal content within the curriculum. The classical style, still greatly present, of education in this field is still lecturing –to be somewhat sarcastic but still quite realistic– in a large room, for hundreds of students, by a prestigious, typically old, and boring professor. Seminars of a few dozen students accompany these lectures, where readings are discussed or judicial cases interpreted.

Education may transfer elements of knowledge, skills and attitudes. Frontal education may be adequate for knowledge transfer and less for the other two fields. It seems that the generally applied method of instruction and the focus of knowledge-transfer mutually reinforce one another.

This arrangement, however, may be challenged from several angles. First, it is the instructors’ general experience at the universities that students are unable to focus on long lectures; actually, 10-15 minutes of lecturing seems to be the maximum.7 As more and more universities implement systems that allow students to evaluate instructors, and these results may be included in the overall evaluation system, instructors are encouraged to seek other strategies. This is most typical at prestigious universities. More interactive methods, including case studies, individual problem solution, group work etc. are more and more widely used. These methods may be imported from international experience (from Western Universities, both by the students and instructors). Originally, civil service training organized by international donor programs was crucial to introduce these techniques into the region. (Gajduschek & Hajnal, 2003).

Our impression is, although without a substantial, systematic scholarly evidence, that –while the teaching method is still relatively frontal– interactive training techniques are spreading and the difference from the mainstream is decreasing.

While schools and PA curricula in CEE replicate technical-professional themes mainly anchored in law, we also find that these topics often adapt to local settings and address contextual problems. In many PA schools and programs, partnership relations are reported (Staronová & Gajduschek, 2016; Placek et al., 2025) in the process of training and developing curricula between universities and various PA organizations and institutions. The existing partnerships are mainly in two directions –with various public institutions at different levels of government (both with administrative structures of the central government and with municipalities and regional administrations) and with the NGO sector. The orientation towards these partners is primarily related to the understanding that these are the main structures in which students of public administration are expected to find their place. The search for a connection with potential employers is so far a rare but extremely positive trend.

There are two main organizations that play a crucial role in helping schools provide PA programs that meet international expectations. In 1994, the Network of Institutes and Schools of Public Administration in Central and Eastern Europe (NISPAcee) was established with international support, most notably from the United States, and to a considerable extent adopted the organizational model of the Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration in the United States. NISPAcee has played a significant role in the consolidation of public administration (PA) as an independent academic discipline in the region (Staronová & Gajduschek, 2016). It has pursued this mission through various instruments, including a scholarly journal (NISPAcee Journal of Public Administration and Policy), handbooks addressing specific issues,8 and a practice-oriented newsletter. In addition, NISPAcee’s annual conferences provide opportunities for scholars and educators from the region and from Western countries to meet, exchange teaching experiences, and present research findings. The organization has had a substantial, though typically indirect, impact on most PA programs in the region, particularly those with an international orientation. At the same time, NISPAcee offers forums for discussing issues specific to Central and Eastern Europe and for presenting scholarly approaches to these challenges, potentially within distinctive conceptual and theoretical frameworks. Overall, NISPAcee has continuously addressed the challenges facing PA education in the region by offering relevant content and pedagogical approaches.

The European Association for Public Administration Accreditation (EAPAA)9 plays a crucial role in shaping and promoting curricular standards in PA education (Nemec, 2006; Brans & Coenen, 2016). While EAPAA allows a relatively high degree of institutional autonomy in defining disciplinary orientations and methodological approaches, it nevertheless encourages a more coherent and balanced curricular framework for public administration programs. In this respect, EAPAA accreditation may help counteract the one-sidedness or disciplinary bias that characterizes some programs housed predominantly within law or economics faculties.

In post-communist countries, EAPAA has assumed an increasingly important role in safeguarding and enhancing the quality of public administration education. Over the past decade, institutions in these countries have sought EAPAA accreditation with growing intensity, reflecting both internal reform efforts and external pressures for international recognition and standardization. As of the end of 2025, more than one third of all EAPAA-accredited bachelor’s and master’s programs are offered by institutions located in post-communist countries. This trend underscores the association’s growing influence in the region and highlights its function as a key mechanism for quality assurance and curricular convergence in public administration education.

Table 4. EAPAA accredited programs in CEE

Country	University	Name of Program	Level	Accredited
Czechia	Masaryk University	Public Administration	Master	2019-2026
		Public Economy and Administration	Master	2019-2026
Estonia	Talinn Uni of Technology	Public Administration and Governance	Bachelor	2023-2030
		Public Administration and Innovation	Master	2023-2030
Hungary	Corvinus University	Public Policy and Management (PUMA)	Master	2019-2026
		Public Policy and Management (KGKP)	Master	2019-2026
Poland	Cracow Uni of Economics	Public Economy and Administration	Bachelor	2019-2026
		Public Economy and Administration	Master	2019-2026
Romania	Babes-Bolyai Uni Cluj	Public Administration	Master	2022-2029
	National School of Political Studies and Public Administration	Public Administration	Bachelor	2018-2025
		Public Sector Management	Master	2018-2025
	Buchurest Uni of Economic Studies	Public Administration	Bachelor	2019-2026
Slovakia	Matej Bel University Banska Bystrica	Territorial Management	Bachelor	2019-2022
		Territorial Studies	Master	2019-2022
Slovenia	University of Ljubljana	Public Sector Governance	Bachelor	2025-2031
		Public Sector Governance	Master	2022-2029

Source: Authors, on the basis of reports for EAPAA accreditation.

The majority of public administration programs in the region do not, however, seek EAPAA accreditation. In some cases, institutions may be completely unaware of this accreditation opportunity or may not perceive it as strategically relevant. In others, accreditation is regarded as unattainable or undesirable, particularly where programs fall short of EAPAA’s relatively demanding standards and lack incentives or capacity to undertake the required improvements. This is especially pronounced in some private institutions, where higher costs associated with accreditation may not be offset by increased revenues, as well as in certain public institutions characterized by rigid personnel structures, organizational constraints, or entrenched power relations that hinder curricular and institutional reform.

More ambiguous cases include highly reputable programs such as the Public and Social Policy program at Charles University in the Czech Republic or the Public Policy program at Comenius University in Slovakia. These programs arguably meet EAPAA requirements and rank among the strongest in the region in terms of publication output (Placek et al., 2025; Misík et al., 2024). Their decision not to pursue international program accreditation may reflect the absence of a perceived need for an external quality label, limited financial and administrative resources, or the prioritization of national program or institutional accreditation processes that crowd out investments in international accreditation.

A more substantial barrier concerns the potential discrepancy between research-oriented academic incentives and the practical needs of public administration. On the one hand, academic careers and institutional evaluations increasingly depend on publications in high-ranking international journals, which require familiarity with dominant theoretical frameworks, concepts, and methodological standards. These journals tend to prioritize issues that are salient in Western, affluent contexts, while problems characteristic of less developed or transitional administrative systems receive comparatively less attention. On the other hand, public administration programs are also expected to equip students with practical skills relevant to domestic administrative environments. This tension may lead programs to prioritize international academic discourse over engagement with national and local governance challenges. Theories and policy solutions effective in highly developed administrative systems may prove less applicable in countries facing different structural, political, or socio-economic constraints. Issues central to public administration debates in the United States, for example, may be of limited relevance in contexts such as Bulgaria or Hungary. An additional tension arises between programs that emphasize analytical, problem-solving, and methodological skills and the expectations of public administrations that often prioritize legally trained, obedient, rule-oriented implementers, as reflected in traditional, law-centered civil service training models.

There is no singularly dominant name for accredited PA programs, accredited programs go by different names, although the title Master of Public Administration appears in a quarter of the cases. Other programs combine governance, management, public economy and innovation to label their programs. This was already noted by Staronová & Gajduschek (2016) in their analysis of 5 countries curricula as well as in single country observations in Czechia (Placek et al., 2025). Neither do similar labels cover the same load. With a few exceptions where public management is at the heart of a program’s focus, most programs core components comprise two or more core foci.

An initial influx of public administration students was part of a rapid increase in students in the social sciences. Nevertheless, this boom in public administration education lasted for less than a decade. Since 2010, in all of the CEE countries, the number of students admitted to higher education institutions in general and PA programs in particular is shrinking (Staronová & Gajduschek, 2016; Jahoda et al., 2022; Sarapuu & Saarniit, 2020). At a general level, demographic and societal changes have resulted in a declining number of potential students.

On a specific PA education level, the numbers are even more alarming. Most (interdisciplinary) programs face the challenge of a relatively small number of applicants, which in some cases leads to program closure (e.g., in Estonia and Slovenia). Initially, the low interest, especially in contrast to business administration programmes, was generally attributed to the enormous (10+ times) wage gap between otherwise equivalent private and public jobs.

Recently, the reasons may be different. Illiberal governments facing discontent from large or even dominant segments of society may lead to distrust of the public sector. Some scholars have documented that the problem of low PA study program attractiveness may be related to the low prestige of the civil service profession (Maly, 2014; Jahoda et al., 2022), particularly at the eve of the democratic backsliding, accompanied by the limited trust in the government and public administration. On the other hand, illiberal governments do not seem to seek professional advice from civil servants, do not trust them, and do not appreciate them as potential sources of technocratic knowledge. An increasingly deteriorating image of public administration may also be symptomatic of the propaganda of illiberal governments (Staronová et al., 2025). As relevant civil service career paths seem to depend on political connections rather than professional achievements, PAE does not seem rewarding even for those who plan to work for the government. The low attractiveness threatens the future of programs, even those accredited by the European Association for Public Administration Accreditation (EAPAA).