Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 20th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview PA Reform Author(s) Ionut-Bogdan Berceanu National School of Political Studies and Public Administration Bucharest Romania Title Reforming governments in emerging administrations. Case study: South-Eastern Europe File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Ionut-Bogdan Berceanu Abstract The aim of the article is to explore the characteristics of the reforms in emerging South-Eastern administrations under the changes and rules imposed by the European Union pressure. In these countries, the choice of the method to be used for reforming governments under EU rules is an important issue because national public administrations as well as the judiciary are the guarantors for the implementation of these rules. The idea of emergence is generally used to indicate the appearance of patterns, structures, or properties that cannot be adequately explained by referring only to the system’s pre-existing components and their interactions The term “emergence” covers a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approach specific to administrative sciences, too. In this article, the concept of “emergence” signifies lato sensu a kind of change and it will be used to refer to countries that have a high volatility and that are in transition and to define the changes that suffer the public administrations of the countries from South-Eastern Europe. The “emerging administration” can be considered the administration which is transforming its own system and values under the influences and impact of the external environment (represented in this case by the European Union and its processes of European integration and Europeanization). In recent years, the states from South-Eastern Europe pressed by international bodies, some of them because of their accession to the European Union had to face political, economics, social and administrative changes. These countries are trying hard to catch up with the other countries to reach the established objective: the accession and integration in the European Union. Proofs of this are the reforms and the European integration policies taken by these states. Thus, we can say that the reforms adopted by the governments from South-eastern Europe represent a part of the emergence of public administration system and a consequence of the process of European integration. Taking into consideration the above exposed relation between the concept of “emergence” of public administration and the reforms, in this paper, we attempt to provide some answers to the following related issues: 1. Does the European Union, through the processes of accession and integration and through its policies affects the institutional framework of the national states in order to make these countries to undertake administrative reforms that are aimed to enhance the transparency of public bodies and to improve the efficiency of public services? 2. Are the transitional countries being pressed by their accession to the European Union to modernize and homogenize their governmental systems? 3. Which are the characteristics of the reforms that generate the emerging administrations in South-Eastern Europe? We will analyze in the case study of the paper the following countries from this geographic area: Bulgaria and Romania as recent EU Member States, Croatia as acceding country and Republic of Macedonia as candidate country. The paper will make use of documentary research of national and European regulations. Keywords: administrative reforms, emerging administrations, European Union, South-Eastern Europe. UPDATED ABSTRACT
