Local State-Society Relations in Romania

2011

This paper investigates the changing politics of local and regional development and governance in Romania. The main aim is to explain the extent and the way that transition to free market economy and accession to the EU have impacted on concepts and models of regional development and regional governance in Romania. The paper argues that despite the systemic changes in Romania, local and regional development and governance present ‘layering’ effects. It is supported that the transition to a completely different socio-economic and political framework in Romania has produced marginal changes, usually on the surface of these policies, without challenging the essence and their dominant characteristics. Moreover, by investigating signs of the regionalism and regionalisation processes in Romania, this paper questions the uniform applicability of ‘new regionalism’ and argues in favour of a broader and more sophisticated research on the regionalism and regionalisation experiences across the ...

1999

The last decade brought about a massive increase in scope and discretion for the local government policy-making in the post-communist countries. The revenue collection was partly decentralized, transferring to the local units the responsibility for funding themselves. On the expenditure side, a lot of attributions were devolved from the center to the local governments, from supporting education and health care to subsidizing the local public services (if they chose, or can afford, to do so). As the reform in the post-communist countries advances, it seems likely that the welfare state will also become more localized. Decentralization of resources will create regional disbalance, the needs will be more variable and services more specialized, therefore the growth of local service provision will be a major trend in the modern, democratic societies that the CEE countries are trying to build.

2022

This paper aims to fill the gap on intergovernmental coordination within Romanian literature. Methodologically, it employs the doctrinal legal research of institutions involved in the vertical and horizontal coordination of local government. Local councils may engage in town twinning and join national or international local government associations, whereas county councils and prefects exist for the very purpose of local intergovernmental coordination. Local councils are coordinated by county councils in the pursuit of county-level objectives, while the prefects head the deconcentrated public administration and may foster vertical coordination with the central government. Coordination among local governments may also occur by setting up or joining intercommunity development associations or administrative consortia, especially if they are unable to secure EU funding on their own. The authors conclude that the complexity of the Romanian institutional framework both fosters and hinders coordination.

Decentralization does not constitute an end in itself, but a way to deliver more effective public services, a process which tends to achieve a greater degree of administrative and financial independence of the local communities. The local authorities know best the needs and problems faced by the local communities, certainly much better than the central administrative authorities could, are therefore they are in a position that allows them to identify the most appropriate means to satisfy or solve them. The process of decentralization should therefore pursue as an ultimate goal the benefit of the citizen by strengthening the power and role of local public administration in order to ensure the economic and social development of the administrative-territorial units. The transfer of the decision power in the context of decentralization signifies the transfer of the power to decide in the matters of the local community, the power to choose between a number of possible solutions to an existing problem the one considered to be most appropriate, including the power to regulate in certain areas. The transfer of the decisional power must be related to the financial power, for without the insurance of the financial resources in the first place, the decisional responsibility is nothing more then an empty form of decentraization that does not guarantee purposefulness.

The Palgrave Handbook of Decentralisation in Europe, 2016

Romanian Journal of Political Science, 2017

This article investigates the puzzling observation that despite the vigorous mass protests that have taken place since 2012 and mobilized Romanian civil society against attempts to implement unpopular policies in fields such as health, environment or justice, and which have led to the fall of two cabinets, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) suffer from structural weaknesses and have a limited capacity to systematically influence public policies, especially in the post-EU accession environment. This weakness has contributed to the fact that, despite the EU accession process, the quality, level of transparency and accountability of government have not significantly improved in the last decade. Based on a recent extensive survey of the NGOs involved in promoting quality of democracy, this article questions: what are the factors that explain the intensity of activity and tactics of Romanian NGOs in the context of post-EU accession? Using regression analysis, I test the explanatory power of hypothesis derived from the financial dependence model, type of activism model, cooperation with state institutions model and network participation model. The analysis shows the waning importance of international donors, while confirming the importance of network participation and the simultaneous employment of confrontational and transaction activism. Overall, the puzzling feature of NGOs’ mass protest capacity mobilization and but low structural influence is generated by the concentration within just a few NGOs of the capacity and interest to get involved in a wide area of activities and efficiently employ both confrontational and collaborative tactics.

This article highlights the disjunction between, on the one hand, the Romanian civic and environmental local movements and the transnational NGOs actively working to implement “democracy” and “civil society” programs in Romania. The 2012-2013 environmental and social mobilizations against the whole Romanian political class brought to the surface this compartmentalization, hitherto latent. These social realities cannot be understood without a discussion of the history of NGOs in post-communist Romania. I argue that the big NGO democratization programs have been oriented towards an imagined normalization of Romania, based on an anti-communist and neoliberal ideology. This explains why they cannot be representative of a larger social spectrum. Next, I discuss the new social movements that emerged in 2012, built around gold-mining issues in the Roșia Montană region. An analysis of the mobilizations and debate around the gold-mines reveals a gap between two civil societies with divergent interests: one favoring the reproduction of capitalism, the other representing local aspirations. In conclusion, this article proposes a more general view on this topic comparing this situation with those of Georgia and Cambodia.

This year, the Visegrad countries celebrate together twenty five years since the socio, economic and political changes lead in collapse of totalitarian regimes. But the political transition brought also problems and new challenges not know previously. The first free elections were held in the Visegrad countries that time and their inhabitants could choose their political representatives. Many of them came originally from the civil society and revolution movements. However, the political decision-making became disconnected from the civil society over time. We study the present rootedness of local political representatives in the civil society measured by their membership and leadership in civil society organisations in all four Visegrad countries. We are as well interested in engagement of activists from the civil society in an institutionalised political life, i.e. political parties and political movements. The purpose of this book is to discuss development of local democracy, local development initiatives and local social capital in growing urban areas in post-transition countries in which the civil society was almost absent or very weak twenty five years ago. This publication comes up with overviews of the situation in four cities, one in each of the Visegrad countries. First the Polish case of Poznan is discussed. Then three capital cities follow: Czech Prague, Slovakian Bratislava and Hungarian Budapest.

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