Outsiders in the Hungarian Cabinets: Possibility or Failure?

The top level of civil servant system in EHungary is highly politicized. It is also true even though laws declare the separation politicians and bureaucracy leaders in cabinets. The aim of this paper to present the changeable tendencies in the recruiting process of the top civil servants in ministries. More and more outsiders were appointed in permanent secretary position after 2010 in the Hungarian ministries. This phenomenon needs an explanation: who are they, are they professionals or politicians, and what can we know about their career path? Another important question what is the background of their appearance in the public administration. The effective decision-making intention or using their specific skills in the decision-making process are behind it. The preliminary findings show that people outside from bureaucracy have various professional skills in their own policy fields, however, they have to weight issues in the political decision-making. Is it a democratic backslide or not? The results come from a database that contains social-demographic and career data about all members of Hungarian cabinets including political and bureaucratic leaders from 1990 to 2015. The database is suitable for making comparative examination among cabinets in a long time period.