Author : Katja Michalak
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (669 download)
Book Synopsis Civil Service Reform and the Quality of Governance in Romania by : Katja Michalak
Download or read book Civil Service Reform and the Quality of Governance in Romania written by Katja Michalak and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Abstract: Romania's society has experienced radical political, social and economic changes since the fall of Ceausescu's dictatorial regime in 1989, concurrent with the collapse of the Soviet Union. This research delves into the causes of changes in Romania's bureaucracy that are both internal and EU-membership-induced, and thus external to Romania, and assesses the extent to which it has experienced the consequent changes in its quality of governance. Of special interest are the causes of inter-ministerial variation in civil service reform, as captured by EU-membership conditionality, political partisanship, and the initial characteristics of the specific ministry. The Ministries of Foreign Affairs; Education, Research and Youth; European Integration; and Agriculture and Rural Development are exhaustively examined from this perspective. Conclusions are deduced regarding the consequent improvement, or lack thereof, in the quality of governance in Romania. The primary causal finding is that in Romania initial characteristics mattered for civil service reform legislation, but not for its implementation. More specifically, the more decentralized the ministry was, the lesser was the extent of realized reform. Additionally, the greater the personnel-turnover rate, the more pronounced was the implementation of reform. Also, a higher extent of external intervention, particularly in terms of EU invasiveness, taking the form of supply of EU funds, technocratic personnel, and supervision, led to the realization of more ministerial reform. As for political partisanship, which is a country-wide issue that potentially affects all ministries, a cross-country comparison between Bulgaria and Romania revealed that the type of party in power, whether post-communist or liberal, is a significant determinant of when the reform law was adopted, but had little impact on its implementation. The prediction, based on the theoretical model, that the Ministry of Education and Agriculture should realize the least improvement in the quality of governance, whereas Foreign Affairs and European Integration should realize the most, concurs with the observed facts of relative implementation success in the different ministries.