Paper/Speech Details of Conference Program for the 27th NISPAcee Annual Conference Program Overview WG3: Public Administration Reform in CEE and CA Author(s) Johan Sandén Sodertorn University Stockholm Sweden Chalauri Nino, Title How (quasi-)marketization evolve over Time - the Case of Georgian Debt Enforcement File Paper files are available only for conference participants, please login first. Presenter Johan Sandén Abstract Debt enforcement is a legislative mechanism that aim to make debtors fulfill their obligations. Georgia's current enforcement system is a mix of private and public responsibilities and funding. Contemporary changes in legislation aim to regulate private sector more, and at the same time expand its responsibilities. In this paper, we analyze the transformation from a totally public system of debt enforcement administered by central government til today´s system, and show how this process have evolved over time. The importance of enforcement is much greater than it appears at first glance; Strong enforcement mechanisms reverberate positively in the economy through increased international trustworthiness, strengthened payment behavior of citizens and protection for businesses, which in turn increase chances of foreign investment. Quality of debt enforcement is also one of the indicators in the World Bank's “doing business”-index. Additionally, high quality enforcement works preventative since it affects overall payment behavior and morale. It is sometimes said that the quality of execution reflects the overall quality of due processes. Debt enforcement is followingly an interesting case of policy reform since such core duties of the state are seldom studied in PA-reform literature despite its economic importance. After Soviet Union's collapse, Georgia's economy shrunk day by day and the administrative system faced lots of challenges; corruption, nepotism and overall misconduct. A new progressive government started reforming the public sector after the “Rose Revolution” in 2003. The government aligned with international trends and aimed to transform civil service to become more business-like. Enforcement policy is a case of such reforms; From 2008, National Bureau of Enforcement (NBE) has been as a legal entity with its own budget, and private enforcement was enabled soon after. The creation of NBE marks the start for the period from 2008 until today, which is studied in this paper. Georgia is an interesting context of PA-reform due to the successful modernization since 2003, eliminating corruption and implementing NPM-principles. The research method aimed to cover various perspectives by interviewing strategically chosen actors in enforcement such as managers at various levels in NBE, but also including the customer perspective (private banker), “former employee”-perspective and “private bailiff”-perspective. The interview material is triangulated by analyzing strategically chosen documents and then categorized inductively from what themes that appeared central to the respondents and documents, reconstructing a narrative of the development of Georgian enforcement over the last ten years. The findings show that the process of reforming enforcement has developed stepwise, going through phases where each phase is characterized by certain elements. The paper thereby contributes by modelling a reform process of in post-soviet countries, offering a stepwise process-oriented take. This conceptualization is analytically useful for any politician or public servant working on PA-reform.
