Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 17th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview IV. Working Group on PA Reform in CEE&CA Author(s) Veronica Junjan University of Twente Enschede Netherlands Dorina Maria Nastase Title Institutional transfers in Romanian public administration or “For us it is different” File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Background The reform of public administration institutions in Romania has been developed in the last 20 years under the sign of “(ex)change”. The political and collective discourse used the “Return to Europe” as a synonym to democratization and operationalised it through the accession to the European Union. Under the umbrella of this process, the transfer of norms, rules, values, took place in a fluid and unnoticed way. The transfer and issues concerning the institutionalization of the norms and values by the “recipient” has received, until recently, to our knowledge, relative scarce attention in empirical investigations. Objectives Current paper addresses the mechanisms that influence the process of transfer and of institutionalization of norms, values, and rules addressing public administration reform. The results obtained during research conducted by projects ACCESS and DIOSCURI in the subfield of public administration are used in order to analyze the process of institutional introduction and transformation, development of hybrid solutions, and reciprocal learning. The investigation addressed personal histories of the “encounters” and identification of original answers in crisis situations. Method Due to the qualitative nature of the investigation, both research projects used in-depth interviews and focus groups. The interviews were conducted, at national level, with Western and Romanian experts involved in the integration process. At local level the respondents were Western and Romanian experts that offered consultancy and training and Romanian civil servants who, at their turn, applied further the received knowledge and reported back on their experience in “translating” these new norms, rules and values to their everyday working experience. The interview and focus group questions were developed based upon the protocol established by the coordinators of the research projects. Results The results of the investigations suggest that institutional transfers have been focused primarily upon the "repairing" of the deficit of administrative capacity. The latter has been defined in terms of accession to the EU and operationalised in the institutional terms of the acquis communautaire. Both formal and informal interactions focused on transfer, learning and internalization of norms, rules, and values. The encounters fulfilled a twofold role, not only in terms of modernization and professionalization, but also of introduction of elements characteristic to a post-bureaucratic public administration. An individualized approach of the problems caused by the institutional modernization, and taking on individual responsibility for the success of the institutional transfer are elements that suggest a reversed dynamic, where post-bureaucratic solutions are used to address issues of institutional modernization.
