Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 20th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview Local Government Author(s) Lucica Matei National School of Political Studies and Public Administration Bucharest Romania Nicolae Andrei, Title Healthcare and education policies within the framework of local autonomy in Romania: An empirical study File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Abstract Local government issues are always a field of great interest for both administrative sciences scholars and practitioners. Both within the core of the central and local government authorities, it is of great importance to distinguish between the responsible authorities themselves, their leaders and the staff members or specialists practicing in those authorities based on specific acts. Our paper will address the actual state, development and consequences of local autonomy within the context of the administrative reforms that have taken place in Romania in the past two years (2010, 2011) in the field of health and education. Tackling the legislative basis of autonomy we state that the purpose of our paper is to unveil the interaction between local and central authorities in order to reach the decentralization targets confined within the new reforming laws. The analysis focuses on the existing situation before 2010 and on what has been done so far at the national, regional and local level. The subject of our paper requires undoubtedly an analytic approach similar with the three perspectives of the Working Group, namely it looks at the legislative basis of autonomy at the local level in order to identify the possibility of getting the resources needed and the local administrative and political institutions that are supposed to manage such policies. Thus in our point of view the paper should qualify as an empirical paper on the actual state, development and consequences of local autonomy within the context of administrative reforms in Romania. The present survey will follow a design methodology that will combine qualitative and quantitative methods. Our theoretical background will be supported by a careful analysis of the texts of the reforming laws enacted in 2010 and 2011. The case study at regional level is focused on five municipalities from one county in Romania. In order to have feasible results, the municipalities will be chosen from those who had been affected both by the healthcare and the education system reform. We shall use direct observation, comparative analysis and document analysis. In preparing this paper we will address issues through theoretical, empirical and historical facts about the main topic. The theoretical part will be followed by a legal framework and supported by the empirical study. The study will contain data regarding hospitals and schools management issues (funding, coordination, decision-making process, investment proposals). The data will be collected from the local institutions of the selected municipalities (mayor’s offices and local councils). A direct link between the proper functioning of the local institutions of direct democracy and the efficiency of the applied reforms will be undoubtedly revealed. At this point the tensions - if any – between the central and local authorities are to be discussed. We are interested to find out how far goes the local autonomy in effectively managing the local schools and hospitals – seen as very important local institutions - by the local authorities and to identify the major problematic thresholds. We expect to identify good and bad practice examples in our case studies, but nevertheless to record a notable progress in the state of Romanian local decision autonomy. This article is partly designed to investigate aspects of the work processes of transformation within the public administration in Romania, as a new country on its struggling path in the European Union. Key words: local governance, autonomy, health system, education system, local institutions UPDATE
